Bethpage Black and the Ryder Cup trophy, in a photo taken last month.
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Dear PGA of America,
hello! Love your PGA Championship, of men AND of women. I love us some club professionals and some professional club instruction, too. (The religion is no more, BTW!) It’s in that spirit, then, that this note goes out today, as your showcase event, the Ryder Cup, appears to have put a person in the proverbial cabbage patch by charging fans $750 to enter next year’s edition at the venerable Bethpage Black, on New York’s Long Island. To put the feedback one way, people’s golf quarter chains are undone. It’s like someone suggested that the host city’s bagels and pizzas are inferior.
But we are here to help, not to collect. In fact, one solution can solve everything.
However, some background is required first. Ryder Cup Championship Director Bryan Karns justify the ticket price for it GOLF Sean Zak citing multiple factors, chief among them that the biennial event is coming to the New York market and confidence in its demand and status (think a World Series game or an NBA Finals game). “We knew it was going to be critical to get this right and try to do something that we felt was on par with where we saw ourselves and where our position was in this world,” he told Karns Zak. “But at the same time, understanding that there are some nuances to Ryder Cup tickets. It’s an all-day event versus three hours. It’s unseated, but a GA ticket gets you roped in, (compared to) if I bought standing room only at Yankee Stadium last night. So we try to factor them all out. And it’s never as simple as saying it’s apples to apples. But we got a lot of feedback and we got to this point where we felt, look, this is what we feel confident in.”
It sounds logical. So why the surprise? Because $750 is about three times what it cost to go through the hoops in the last two Ryder Cups, in Wisconsin in 2021AND in Italy last year. However, there is more. This Ryder Cup is being played at Bethpagea muni, which means anyone can fix it there—and for a fee probably less than what they’d shoot at the golf ball-eating giant. (In-staters are charged just $70 during the week; for non-New Yorkers, it’s $140). Bethpage is the People’s Country Club, the capital PcAPITAL C‘s. And now people can be on the outside looking in? GOLF James Colgan, himself a native LI’er, eloquently expanded on this point recently, writing:
“A $750 Ryder Cup ticket… tells us that golf belongs to someone instead of everyone. This suggests that we understand that reality and not complain. It separates those who love golf from those who can afford it.
“Bethpage has never been about the haves and have-nots. It gained its favor precisely because it rejects golf’s less worldly ideals of elitism and exclusivity. Installing these ideals for the Ryder Cup isn’t just an affront to everything Bethpage stands for — it’s a sign that the PGA of America never understood it in the first place.”
Ryder Cup tickets are more expensive than ever. The PGA of America explains why
In other words, the scene here is messier than the Long Island Expressway at rush hour. But unlike the Jets and Giants, there is hope.
There is a way to largely – if not completely – respect the wishes of the PGA, while respecting Bethpagian values. The solution is taken directly from Bethpage itself, where people have been for years they camped overnight on the course in hopes of landing one of the morning classes of the course. So we propose this:
Place one Ryder Cup overnight games, where fans can be refunded for tickets already purchased – and get in for the cost of just one greens fee. Speaking of, here’s the best part – to gain a lot of access, you must have played a round at Bethpage Black in the past year.
You may have questions, so let’s try to answer them.
How many fans are allowed to enter the draw? Let’s do 3000 a day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
When can they start lining up? 3 in the morning; if people are early or without their round test, they will leave. When do they go in? 03:00 Where can the tear be placed? Newsday headquarters, where fans left at the 2019 PGA Championship.
Why the necessity of playing in rounds? You get Bethpage diehards. Why not give people the cheapest ticket after a round is played? Good idea, but a hearty crowd at 3am will continue of Rory back as soon as he fires a ball into the range.
Can there be chaos? Potentially. You can also tone things down by only giving 9,000 passes played per round, assigning each to a day.
Are there teardrops? yes. Beer? Yes, but three glasses at most! Is there music? only “Born in the USA” in repetition. Do these fans have nicknames? hell yes. Bethpage Battalion? Kegan’s Corps? We are open to suggestions. Speaking of captainhe will ride shotgun on a ship one of the mornings. Or all of them.
But who covers the cost?
The real sin of the $750 Bethpage Ryder Cup tickets isn’t the price
Maybe not the PGA, but maybe. However, we are getting a sponsor. Think about it this way: Would you buy a company’s product based on seeing its logo in a Ryder Cup ad, or knowing that company was the funder of this populist idea? He thought so.
Just imagine those fans on the first tee.
And think of those people who bleed Bethpage and are now fed up.
