Ryder Cup 2025: Fans are flamboyant, rowdy and enthusiastic at Bethpage Black

It is a scene of serious sport cheered by people in ridiculous attire.

Golf’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black this week has drawn American fans dressed as Colonial minutemen and bald eagles, in American flag overalls and cheese-wedge headgear. Their European guests wear gold-starred blue suits in the style of the European Union flag. They accessorize with actual European Union flags, worn as capes in the morning cool at the first tee, draped for sun protection on the back nine.

Everyone wears caps all the time, from fans drinking breakfast beers to the players and caddies walking the fairways. A few are MAGA but more are Ping, Titleist or TaylorMade.

The fans are more boisterous and their fashion more flamboyant than at a typical PGA Tour event.

The players' outfits were conservative. Saturday morning's wardrobe consisted of rust shirts and blue pants for the Europeans, navy blue shirts and white pants for the Americans that made them look like a yacht crew. It was far cry from the shouting polyester patterns popular at the sport’s top levels in the 1970s.

The dominant theme off the fairway is carnivalesque patriotic maximalism  reinforced, at least amongst the American fans, by periodic chants of “USA, USA, USA” and was undampened Saturday even as the European side pulled into a commanding lead, with an artificial intelligence model built by tournament partner Capgemini predicting a roughly 80% chance of European victory through much of the morning.

Mike Lilley and Bo Turnage, University of Virginia students from Rumson, Virginia and Denver, respectively, wore the overalls, the $40 per man fruit of what Lilley said was an online search for “cool American merchandise.” Similar outfits, trouser-length and in shorts, were so ubiquitous at Bethpage this week they might be the tournament’s signature outfit. Lilley said they got theirs from Amazon. Dressing up fit “the history of the Cup, and the time and effort the players and captains put in deserves good fans,” he said. “Ideally,” said Turnage, the overalls would not be single-use, “though I can’t tell you when” the second might be. Perhaps the Fourth of July, he said.

SEE PHOTOSPhotos: Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black

Tim Donovan and Chris Doyle, who took the day off from running the Harbor Pines Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, wore matching flag-motif shirts featuring a bald eagle with red, white and blue wings clutching a golf ball in its talons, paired with flag motif pants. They said they paid about $150 each for their outfits. “The energy is electric,” Donovan said. “It’s not like the PGA Championship, the Masters,” Doyle said. “It’s a completely different feel. It’s more fun. You can let loose. ‘Murica!”

The Europeans were fewer in number and mostly quieter in their dress. “We are representing our continent,” said Eilleen Mitchell, who came from Cork, Ireland, with her son John and husband Karl, all three in royal blue, golden-starred suits. The suits made them “stand out in enemy territory,” said John, who said that “definitely” made a difference to the players on the course.

Diego Bultzin, who lives in Hong Kong but was born in the Basque region of France, wore blue pants, a blue-striped shirt, blue paint on his face and the blue European flag around his neck: all to “show encouragement to the team,” he said. Then he hoisted a giant photograph of the face of Basque golfer Jon Rahm above his shoulders for all to see.

The European gallery was also singing various versions of “Ole, ole, ole, ole” and “Europe’s on fire, USA is terrified.”

“I think the scoreboard is hurting the vibe. I hope the energy is still up for the rest of the weekend,” Donovan said. “This is still the Ryder Cup. It doesn’t matter if we're up or not, we wait four years to get this back on our soil, and I'm still ready to cheer loudly and proudly.”

It was hard to tell how much fan fashion, or fan noise had a material effect at Bethpage, whose atmosphere a PGA Tour writer promised earlier this month “would be fervent, joyous, vicious, and, importantly, have a material impact on who wins and loses.”

Matthew Perenich, Joseph Mattei and Luke Salm, of Tampa, Tarpon Springs and St. Petersburg, Florida, who came to the Cup dressed as early American presidents, claimed some success with a litany of gentle insults, which they’d written down on oversized scrolls. A sampling: “Your queen’s got more power than your driver,” “Enjoy the rough, govenor,” and “Your wife’s American — switch teams already!”

That last, purpose-built for Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy, correctly notes the nationality of the golfer’s wife and, for some reason, appeared to work, Perenich said: “He got a little frustrated.”

Or not. By early afternoon, McIlroy and partner Tommy Fleetword had won their match morning match and the AI predicted a roughly 90% chance that the Europeans, who won the Cup two years ago, would keep it.