At Bethpage Black, Michael Jordan foretold a concerning American Ryder Cup start long before the Europeans took a 5.5-2.5 advantage.
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. - Michael Jordan did not arrive at the 13th hole camera tower at this year’s Ryder Cup so much as he appeared.
He was not among the people at Bethpage Black, and then he was. All 6 feet 6 inches of him, draped in white Team U.S.A. gear and burning with a blue flame of competitive fury.
Jordan likes golf, and his biennial appearances at the Ryder Cup have made the inverse true. His sudden emergence on Ryder Cup Friday morning was a cultish experience for the Long Island golf faithful, who delighted in the sight of His Airness riding in a cart alongside the American team, and who clearly believed Jordan’s mythical powers of winning could be transferred into his country’s best golfers by osmosis.
But a problem was brewing by the time he sidled up against the 13th hole camera tower. The Americans were not winning, and unless Jordan’s powers started working fast, the home team might be in trouble.
Jordan leaned over as Tyrrell Hatton, part of the day’s first European pairing, stared down a 10-foot birdie putt to sink his high-energy American counterparts, Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas. Hatton aimed his putter and fired. The ball fell into the hole. DeChambeau and Thomas wilted. Jordan winced.
He was walking away before Hatton retrieved his ball from the hole. But before he disappeared again, Jordan could not help himself. He looked off with contempt, and then he delivered three foreboding words.
“We got problems.”
Ryder Cup’s biggest hero, biggest dud from Friday at Bethpage
The truth was much more damning. The Americans did not just have problems, they had old problems. Familiar problems. Problems that were supposed to be solved before the Europeans walked into Bethpage and stole a 5.5-2.5 Day 1 lead.
The truth was the Americans of Friday at the 2025 Ryder Cup looked an awful lot like the Americans of Friday at the 2023 Ryder Cup - and that was the biggest problem of all.
On that Friday back in ’23, the U.S. went down 6.5-1.5 at Marco Simone on a lopsided morning session and an uneven afternoon session. In ’23, the Europeans revealed a three-headed monster the Americans could not answer in four-ball and could not compete with in alternate shot. On that Friday, the Americans started flat and stayed there, watching as their best players faltered and the Euros holed everything. And on that Friday, the Euros displayed a deep knowledge of their roster’s strengths and weaknesses while the American pairings were disjointed and easily second-guessable.
Two years of soul-searching followed that wicked Friday in Rome. The PGA of America eventually settled on Keegan Bradley as next U.S. captain largely because he represented a “break” from the traditional American leadership. He entered the post preaching change and backed it up by hiring the first-ever team manager and a brand-new suite of vice captains. Bethpage, another home game, promised to be different.
On this Ryder Cup Friday, though, the problems were the same. Much like ’23, they went down after a lopsided morning and an uneven afternoon (though the Americans scraped away another point to merely go down three, 5.5-2.5). Much like ’23, they were trounced by a three-headed European monster (this time it was Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood). Much like ’23, the Euros holed everything and the best American players faltered. And, much like ’23, the American roster decisions - particularly the playing of Datagolf’s 132nd-ranked alternate shot pairing, Harris English and Collin Morikawa - seemed overmatched.
The scoreboard is intimidating, but as Bradley pointed out on Friday evening, it is not eliminating.
“Well, we’ve played 25 percent of the points. We’ve played the first quarter of a football game or a basketball game,” Bradley said. “They went out there and they played better than us today. They made more putts.”
That is all true, but the scoreboard isn’t the only thing that needs to change for the Americans at this Ryder Cup. More than any change in outcome, the U.S. needs a change in spirit.
“0-2 today, pretty disappointed,” DeChambeau said. “I played good golf, just not good enough, and they made everything. Luck is on their side right now.”
Luck, maybe, but the Americans know winning is about much more than luck. They have a few powerful voices in that arena at Bethpage, none more powerful than the man in white pressed against the 13th camera tower on Friday morning.
It was Jordan, after all, who proudly told the world he had “failed over and over again, and that is why I succeed.”
The Americans certainly hope that’s true for this Ryder Cup Friday. Otherwise, Jordan was right: They’ve got problems - and at Bethpage, they’re only getting bigger.
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