It's Getting Late Early at Bethpage Black

FARMINGDALE, N.Y.—The ‘Merica vibes were high around the 18th green at Bethpage Black at lunchtime on Friday. The U.S. team of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay had just won their match on the final green, leading to endless chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” in the towering grandstands. Four military jets did a low-altitude flyover, eliciting further roars from the fans were dressed in all manner of stars and stripes, to say nothing of Colonial attire. The WAGs of team USA preened, offering a very specific vision of the American Dream. Commandos with badass weaponry milled about, awaiting the impending arrival of the President of the United States. Stray members of the U.S. team chatted with pilots from the Air Force’s 307 Fighter Squadron, who had done a different flyover that morning. They wore patches with their nicknames: Psycho, Death, Snake. (We’re talking about the top guns here, not the players.) Bruce Springsteen blared out of the speakers, though no one seemed to notice the anti-war message in the lyrics of "Born In The USA." The entire scene was built to evoke America’s might, but only one problem: Team Europe had already taken control of the Ryder Cup.

The victory by Schauffele and Cantlay was the only point the U.S. put on the board during a historically brutal opening foursomes session: this was the first time Europe had won the first three matches of the Cup, and they were all blowouts; you have to go back to 1951 for the last time a team lost three matches in one session by three holes or more. Most ominously for the U.S., Europe won the opening session for the first time since 2004. (That was one of a few nadirs for Team USA, the year it lost 18.5-9.5 as Woods and Phil Mickelson looked miserable paying alongside each other.) Laying an egg on day one was the worst-case scenario for a U.S. team with four rookies facing a confident, cohesive, battle-tested adversary. The Americans showed a little more fight in the afternoon fourballs but still trailed 5.5-2.5 as the last, sullen Noo Yawk fans departed Bethpage.

What went wrong for the U.S.? Let us count the ways. Its two best players—Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau—both got skunked in two matches. Scheffler’s spectacular success over the last few seasons has inspired Tiger comparisons, and that continues with his milquetoast play at the Ryder Cup; Scheffler became the first world number one to go 0-2 on the opening day of a Cup since Woods 23 years ago. U.S. Captain Keegan Bradley rolled the dice and came up snake eyes: he sent Russell Henley out in the second match of the day and the Ryder rookie struggled badly, dragging down Scheffler in the process. In the next pairing, Bradley went with Collin Morikawa and Harris English, who have no history together and even less chemistry. They were rated by Data Golf as the 132nd best possible combination for foursomes…out of 132; they got boatraced 5 & 4 by Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood, the largest margin of victory in foursomes for an away pairing since 2004. After Schauffele’s fine play in the morning, he was rewarded with a benching for the afternoon session.

Worst of all for the U.S., Europe’s top players came through with ballsy play and towering leadership. Jon Rahm continues to be a raging bull at the Cup: after going 2-0 on Friday, including carrying Sepp Straka to victory in the afternoon, Rahm is 7-0-2 in his last nine partner matches. Tommy Fleetwood also put two full points on the board, including a tense 18th hole win with Justin Rose in fourballs over DeChambeau and a shaky Ben Griffin. Fleetwood raised his Ryder Cup record to 9-3-2, tying Tom Watson for the highest winning percentage in the event’s history.

The Europeans may or may not be better at golf than the Americans but there is zero doubt they enjoy a closer brotherhood. Rahm reflexively deflected credit for his ongoing Ryder Cup success, saying, “I’ve had really good partners. [Hatton and I] started hitting good shots and getting really positive vibes. This man is a joy to be partnered with. We spend a lot of time together and he can be very, very dependable when things get going difficult. I have full confidence every single time.”

The much ballyhooed New York crowd was flat and muted for most of the day, though McIlroy was the target of some impolite jeering. He mostly blew that off, focusing instead on his man-crush on Fleetwood. “When you've got a partner like Tommy,” he said of the 2025 FedEx Cup champion, “you can play with so much freedom and so much trust in your game because you know you have someone that's going to back you up. Knowing I have this man beside me, to bail me out if I do hit a bad shot, that's very comforting.”

The Americans, meanwhile, face their biennial gut check. Asked what they needed to do get back into this Cup, Schauffele offered one word: “Fight.”

They will try to draw inspiration from their steadfast captain. What Bradley lacks in acumen he more than makes up for with big, brass ones: For Saturday morning foursomes, he’s doubling down with his two teams that played the worst, Morikawa-English and Scheffler-Henley. “We're sticking to our plan,” Bradely said. “We're not going to panic and make those sort of mistakes. We're going to stick to what we know. We have a lot of confidence in them.” He added, “We've played 25 percent of the points. We've played the first quarter of a football game or a basketball game. They went out there and they played better than us today. But listen, we knew this was going to be difficult. Our boys are in great spirits. They are really excited to get out there tomorrow.”

Alas, there is another way to look at the math:

This poised, powerhouse European team now needs to win only 8.5 of the remaining 20 points to retain the Cup. To quote Yogi Berra, a noted New Yorker: It's getting late early.