{"id":248994,"date":"2025-09-23T13:06:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T13:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/248994\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T13:06:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T13:06:26","slug":"us-european-players-differing-use-of-500000-ryder-cup-pay-emerging-as-point-of-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/248994\/","title":{"rendered":"US, European players’ differing use of $500,000 Ryder Cup pay emerging as point of tension"},"content":{"rendered":"

PGA of America\u2019s decision to pay its Ryder Cup golfers and captain $500,000 each \u2014 with $300,000 going to charity and the rest a personal stipend \u2014 already has emerged as an early point of tension heading into the week at Bethpage.<\/p>\n

Team Europe captain Luke Donald told Sky Sports on Monday that he spoke with his 12 golfers in Rome once it became clear Team USA planned to change its stance and that all of them agreed \u201cthis isn\u2019t a week to get paid.\u201d <\/p>\n

Experiences from the Ryder Cup are \u201cworth more than a couple hundred thousand dollars\u201d to them, he added. Former Team USA golfer and captain Tom Watson said in a recent Golf Channel interview that he didn\u2019t agree with it, either.<\/p>\n

But American captain Keegan Bradley defended the decision when faced with numerous questions about the optics of it \u2014 that one country is willing to participate for free and another wants to get paid \u2014 during his pretournament news conference Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not concerned about what Europe does or what they think,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cI\u2019m concerned about what my team is doing. I was tasked with a job the PGA of America asked me to do, and this was what we decided. We wanted to bring the Ryder Cup into today\u2019s age, and we felt like this was the best way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American golfers previously received $200,000 each at Ryder Cups for donating to charities \u2014 something that had been in place since 1999. Bradley planned to donate his entire $500,000 instead of the just the required amount, but he didn\u2019t disclose what the golfers on his roster planned to do.<\/p>\n

\"TeamTeam USA captain Keegan Bradley and Team Europe captain Luke Donald appear during a news conference Monday ahead of the Ryder Cup. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s a personal decision,\u201d Bradley said of his donation call. \u201cI don\u2019t donate to charities to publicize what we\u2019re doing. These guys on our team are incredible people, and they do a lot of incredible things with charity dollars and with their foundations. A lot of them aren\u2019t comfortable sharing that sort of information, and I feel the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

During Monday\u2019s practice round, Bryson DeChambeau, Ben Griffin, Justin Thomas and Cameron Young were paired together for Team USA. Harris English, Russell Henley, Scottie Scheffler and J.J. Spaun formed another group, while Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele also were together.<\/p>\n

Team Europe didn\u2019t participate in a practice round, but the roster made a trip to Bethpage last week, playing nine holes Monday and 18 holes Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"Brysonryson DeChambeau of Team United States smiles Getty Images<\/p>\n

While walking around Bethpage on Monday, European players donned salmon-colored polos with burgundy sleeves in a nod to 1987 \u2014 when they earned a road victory at Muirfield Village. They\u2019ll follow with white polos that have yellow sleeves (1995 at Oak Hill) on Tuesday, yellow polos that have blue sleeves (2004 at Oakland Hills) on Wednesday and maroon polos with navy sleeves (2012 at Medinah) on Thursday during practice rounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to be a difficult challenge,\u201d Donald said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t come close to winning three out of the last four away Ryder Cups. It\u2019s not been very close at all. That\u2019s my job to bridge that gap. \u2026 I think that\u2019s motivating to the guys that it can be done, it has been done, and again, we\u2019re here to try and do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PGA of America\u2019s decision to pay its Ryder Cup golfers and captain $500,000 each \u2014 with $300,000 going…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":248995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[29108,1430,8656,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-248994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-bethpage-black","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-ryder-cup","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115253764738697769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}