Unfortunately, it wasn’t just insults that were hurled at Rory McIlroy’s wife at Bethpage Black during the Ryder Cup this weekend.
McIlroy’s wife, Erica, was on property for the 45th playing of the heated international competition. On Day 2, Rory McIlroy was center stage, with the home crowd dogging him all day, as he played both the morning and afternoon rounds.
Erica also was the subject of trash talk that undoubtedly crossed the line, and even worse, cameras caught a fan tossing a drink at her after McIlroy’s four-ball round.
Rory McIlroy Plays It Cool After Abusive Ryder Cup Day
McIlroy did all he could to protect his wife in the moment, and it was the peak of a contentious afternoon. The five-time major champion did all he could to ignore the noise, but at various points, he was seen jawing back the crowd, including some expletives directed back at those in the bleachers.
Even a tournament emcee got into the act in a borderline shocking way.
After the round, though, McIlroy, who won both of his matches Saturday, largely played it cool — despite the emotionally charged day.
“Look, you know, when you play an away Ryder Cup, it’s really, really challenging,” McIlroy told reporters after the second session. “It’s not for me to say. People can be their own judge of whether they took it too far or not. I’m just proud of us for being able to win today with what we had to go through.”
Reports Reveal Brutal Day for Rory McIlroy, Wife at Ryder Cup
Golf Digest’s Joel Beall followed the group late Saturday and documented a lot of the verbal abuse McIlroy endured, with everything from his wife to his heartbreaking runner-up performance at the 2024 U.S. Open apparently fair game.
“The mathematics were something: By this reporter’s count, 30-something f-bombs had been hurled at McIlroy in the first four holes alone,” Beall wrote Saturday night. “The tallies for ‘You suck’ and ‘Pinehurst’ references became impossible to track.”
Things were so bad during the Day 2 sessions an additional police presence was required, and Ryder Cup officials felt compelled to put up reminders on video screens that fans needed to behave themselves. It clearly didn’t work.
The Fried Egg’s Joseph LaMagna also filed a dispatch from the grounds, conveying a similar message about the overall unpleasant vibe of the entire day.
“Every fan has a different tolerance level for what’s acceptable to yell at a sporting event,” he wrote for The Fried Egg website. “Saturday at Bethpage crossed any reasonable person’s line, including the many fans in attendance who gasped in disapproval at remarks from other spectators.”
He added: “However, a crowd with bad actors intent on insulting the competitors and disrupting the action is something altogether different. Unfortunately, the latter became the story on an ugly Ryder Cup Saturday at Bethpage.”
Unsurprisingly, tensions had cooled some at Bethpage Black for the final day during singles competition, and that’s largely because of how well McIlroy and Team Europe played. The Euros carried a historic lead into the final day, arguably the best way to quiet an otherwise unruly crowd.
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