After 3 days of Ryder Cup hell, Rory McIlroy’s emotions poured out

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — After an out-of-control Saturday at the 45th Ryder Cup — when jingoistic, Mich Ultra-fueled tryhards and even the event’s official 1st-tee emcee turned Rory McIlroy and other members of the European team into their personal punching bags — the vibe felt kinder and gentler in the early-going of Sunday’s singles matches.

Part of that might have been due to the energy-sapping heat on a warm, mostly still afternoon at Bethpage Black when temperatures crept into the 80s, but most of it was due to the stunning seven-point lead Europe had opened up in foursomes and four-ball play, which had had the same effect on this event that a pinprick would on a balloon.

Still, the fat lady wasn’t singing just yet, even if supporters of the blue-and-gold were. On Sunday, McIlroy landed in the marquee bout, in the fourth of 12 singles matches against Scottie Scheffler. World No. 1 (that would be Scheffler) vs. world No. 2. Four majors vs. five. Future Hall of Famer vs. Future Hall of Famer. Dream stuff, even against the backdrop of what was shaping up to be a European rout. Any fans who needed help getting amped on the 1st tee (most didn’t) were aided by The Killers’ heart-pumping anthem “Mr. Brightside,” which boomed through speakers as McIlroy and Scheffler readied to hit their opening blasts.   

McIlroy took the early lead with a birdie at the 2nd and was still 1-up after the players hit their tee balls at the par-4 4th. As McIlroy exited the tee box, European fans flanking the right rope line began regaling him with the familiar melody of The Cranberries’ “Zombie,” but with lyrics tailored to McIlroy. “He’s in your heaaaad / He’s in your heaaad / Roaaar-uh-ee, roaaar-uh-ee…”

When the song — a popular one on property this week — petered out, one of the revelers yelled, “Rory, we have your back!”

On the other side of the fairway, inside the rope line, McIlroy’s manager, Sean O’Flaherty, was walking with a couple of acquaintances.

One of them with an Irish accent jokingly said, “Did you pay them to say that, Sean?”

O’Flaherty laughed and said, “Ah, it’s brilliant.”

THE EXCHANGE SPOKE TO the deeply taxing week McIlroy had here at Bethpage Black. Ryder Cups are never easy on the road team — and especially on road teams’ stars — but the amount of abuse McIlroy endured wasn’t just regrettable, it was flat-out repulsive. “F— you, Rory!” was a common jab. Other fans took shots at his major heartbreaks, his height and even his wife; Shane Lowry said the vitriol Erica McIlroy heard was “astonishing.”

McIlroy ignored many of the barbs but not all of them, sometimes glaring at hecklers, telling them to shut up or having them ejected from the property, as he did with one offender on the 10th hole Sunday. “This should not be what is acceptable in the Ryder Cup,” McIlroy said Sunday evening. “We will be making sure to say to our fans in Ireland in 2027 that what happened here this week is not acceptable. I think if I was an American, I would be annoyed that people — I didn’t hear a lot of shouts for Scottie today, but I heard a lot of shouts against me.”

Every match drew a crowd Sunday, but the Mcllroy-Scheffler clash was the main event. Following the action from inside the ropes was a tournament-inside-a-tournament swarm of team representatives, players’ family members, reporters and even a couple celebrities in SNL cast members Colin Jost and Marcello Hernández, who earlier in the week had served as part of NBC’s TV coverage; comedian Nate Bartagze also made a brief cameo. On the 6th hole, Jost and European captain Luke Donald’s wife Diane discussed Justin Rose’s awe-inspiring play in his Saturday four-ball match. “You just never know who’s going to get hot,” said Diane, who’s seen her husband captain two Ryder Cup teams and play on four more.     

As the match progressed, so did the heckling. As McIlroy sized up a short putt on 7, a fan reminded McIlroy of a similarly short putt he had missed on the 72nd hole at the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. On the next hole, a par-3 set in a natural amphitheater, a fan yelled “F— you, Rory!” as McIlroy paced across the green. McIlroy’s father, Gerry, who was sitting greenside could only shake his head. As Rory’s lengthy birdie try scooted past the hole, someone yelled, “Get in the water!”

MCILROY DIDN’T HAVE his best stuff (neither did Scheffler), but he wasn’t about to capitulate to the foul-mouthed fans. All week, he’d found a way to fight through the resistance. In Friday-morning foursomes, he and Tommy Fleetwood teamed for five birdies and waxed Collin Morikawa and Harris English, 5 and 4. That afternoon, in four-ball, he and Shane Lowry scratched out half a point against Sam Burns and Patrick Cantlay. In Saturday foursomes, he and Fleetwood had a rematch with their Friday opponents and collected another point. Friday afternoon, McIlroy rejoined Lowry for four-ball and they beat Justin Thomas and the U.S.’s hottest player, Cameron Young, 2 up.

Four matches for McIlroy, 3.5 points, which increased his all-time points total to 21.5, one point more than José María Olazábal’s haul and within half a point of Nick Faldo and one of Seve Ballesteros. These names mean something to McIlroy. Much more than something, actually. This event does, too, its place in his heart seemingly growing with each passing edition.

“We talk about all the people that came before us that paved the way for us,” Luke Donald said Sunday evening in the wake of Europe’s 15-13 win. “Now future generations will talk about this team tonight and what they did and how they were able to overcome one of the toughest environments in all of sport. And that is inspiring to me, and that’s what Rory gets and all these other 11 guys get.”

As Donald spoke, McIlroy blinked back tears and rubbed his eyes. He was emotional, grateful and exhausted.

That fatigue showed Sunday in a match that McIlroy dubbed “a pillow fight.” It didn’t sound like a pillow fight, though. As McIlroy and Scheffler crossed the road that bisects the Black course to play the final four holes, the heaving crowds, bunched by the thousands, resembled scenes from Woodstock, minus the peace and love. On the tee at 18, where McIlroy was 1 down, he finally ran out of steam, blocking his tee shot into a bunker 50 yards right of the fairway — and, with it, any real chance of making a 3 to force a tie.

Scheffler’s 1-up win kept alive the U.S.’s slim hopes of pulling off a historic comeback, as his three teammates ahead of him had already put 2.5 points on the board and the eight behind him were keeping things interesting. As McIlroy and Scheffler finished out their match, Ben Crenshaw, who captained the Miracle-at-Brookline U.S. team in 1999, was looking on from the back of the green. On Saturday night, had he had a feeling, as he did 26 years ago, that the U.S. team might pull off the unthinkable on Sunday?

“I got to be honest, I really didn’t,” Crenshaw told me. “The margin was so huge. But you just never know about golf. Golf is so inexact, and they’ve played their hearts out today. But Europe played some of the greatest golf ever played. On Saturday, it’s like they birdied every hole.”

In the face of fire-breathing galleries, McIlroy made or contributed to 10 of those birdies, helping to position his team to accomplish something that, he said, “everyone thought was pretty impossible to do — not just win in America but win here in New York.”

AS MCILROY AND HIS FELLOW Stella Artois-guzzling teammates addressed the media Sunday evening in a tent next to one of the Black course’s putting greens, an intruder without a credential tried to push his way into the press conference. He wore a straw hat and a long-sleeved polo brandished with the American flag. “This is the People’s Course!” he cried, seeming to contend that Bethpage’s muni status should grant him entrée. He was quickly ushered out, but for McIlroy the interruption served as a fitting bookend to his wild week.

Soon after the unwanted guest departed, McIlroy was asked about another spot of unruliness: the moment, in his Saturday four-ball match, when he answered an f-you heckle on the 16th hole by stuffing his approach shot to three feet. How satisfying was that, a reporter asked.

McIlroy didn’t miss a beat.

He leaned into his mic and said, “Very f—ing satisfying.”