10/16/24

In men’s professional golf, the phrase “growing the game” has been thrown around more than a football at recess. This week, “growing the game” has all but been confirmed that it is nothing more than a farce and burlesque phrase to cover up the conspicuous money-grabbing efforts by men’s professional golf.

This week, the Ryder Cup ticket prices were released by The PGA of America. The 2025 Ryder Cup will take place at Bethpage Black Golf Course on Long Island, New York. Bethpage Black has hosted the U.S. Open twice in 2002 and 2009 and the PGA Championship in 2019. Kevin Van Valkenburg, from No Laying Up, posted a screenshot of the tickets for the practice days and event tickets.

I would like to go on the record now and say that if Europe wins the Ryder Cup at Bethpage because the crowds were turned into a polite snooze fest like LACC by the insane ticket prices, it's going to go down as a massive own goal. pic.twitter.com/wnAOP72lqA

— Kevin Van Valkenburg (@KVanValkenburg) October 14, 2024

Where do we begin?

Let’s start with the practice days. Those are $255.27 for just one practice day. Not all of the practice days, not practice days, plus a match day, not a VIP experience at a practice day. One general admission ticket for a PRACTICE DAY is over $250. Would you pay $250 for a general admission ticket to possibly watch Patrick Mahomes practice for the Super Bowl? I can’t imagine many sane people would. So why should golf fans pay such extraordinarily high prices for one day of practice, when the players may or may not even show up? That alone is ludicrous.

Let’s move to Thursday’s ticket prices. Perhaps the best “deal” of the preposterous ticket options is $423.64 for the practice day, the Junior Ryder Cup, Celebrity Matches, and the Opening Ceremony. For the 2023 Ryder Cup, the celebrities for the “All-Star Match” were pretty good. Tennis great Novak Djokovic, soccer greats Gareth Bale and Andriy Shevchenko, Formula One driver Carlos Sainz, Super Bowl champion Victor Cruz and Garrett Hilbert from Dude Perfect. The captains of those teams were Colin Montgomery for Europe and Corey Pavin for the Americans, which again is a pretty good pair for golf fans.

The Junior Ryder Cup does showcase some really good talent, such as Miles Russell, the 15-year-old who competed at the Rocket Mortgage Classic this past summer as one of the youngest players ever to compete on the PGA Tour. Russell played for Team USA in the Junior Ryder Cup in Rome last fall alongside Gianna Clemente, who won the 2023 U.S. Women’s Amateur Fourball Championship at The Home Course. Team Europe would win the competition in 2023 but the talent on both sides clearly would justify some sort of hike in the ticket prices, not $400, but certainly something to witness the potential future stars of golf.

The Opening Ceremony has become a made-for-TV event, with both teams serenading their fans and the opposition’s fans boo’s, matching outfits, and each team’s captain trying to rile up their fanbase. If you’re into that, then maybe coughing up $423.64 for one ticket is for you.

Now, let’s get into the competition ticket prices. This set fans off the most, with the tickets priced at $749.51 per general admission ticket. Bethpage has the Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red Courses, along with the Black Course, all of which are public courses. Here is how much it costs to play Bethpage Black as an out-of-state resident.

If you play the weekend at Bethpage Black during the non-twilight hours, you can play 18 holes four times for the same amount that you would pay for one ticket to attend the 2025 Ryder Cup on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

How outrageous is that?

This is what it costs as a New York State resident.

For the price of one ticket to the 2025 Ryder Cup, a New York resident can play 18 holes on the weekend, NINE TIMES! Granted, that doesn’t include tax on the rounds, so including tax, maybe that takes away the ninth round so you can only play eight times at the host site of the Ryder Cup for the same price as a general admission ticket for Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

So, what happens if you’re a family of four hoping to attend the 2025 Ryder Cup?

Four general admission tickets for a Match Day at the Ryder Cup would cost that family $2,998.04, which doesn’t include parking or any merchandise that the family might purchase. Good news! Your ticket includes free food (one entree and one snack) and non-alcoholic drink vouchers!

This should be a slap in the face to all men’s professional golf fans, and it has been largely received as one. Anyone who is trying to justify these abhorrent ticket prices should be openly mocked.

The 2023 Ryder Cup ticket prices, as brought up by Ewan Murray of The Guardian, were “just over £200.” That puts the ticket prices in US dollars at around $250 for a Match Day ticket, which is what it costs for one ticket to a practice round next fall.

$750 for ONE general admission ticket is not “growing the game”, it’s blatantly defecating on your most ardent fans. No sporting event should cost $3,000 for a family of four. It shouldn’t cost that much to see one-third of the competition, where it is physically impossible to see all of the action at the event you’ve forked up four figures for.

To quote Taylor Twellman, “WHAT ARE WE DOING?”

This is embarrassing for men’s professional golf. One of the best and most passionate events in all of sports is being grossly monetized for what? It certainly isn’t for the betterment of the fans.

Maybe one of these days the men’s professional golf world will get its collective head out from where the sun doesn’t shine, but that seems like it’s a long way away from even being a thought to those at the top. Practically every recent decision made about men’s professional golf revolves primarily around money. Understandably, people in golf need to make money, and they have families to feed.

What about the fans who can’t attend a once-in-a-lifetime event because they can’t afford these obnoxious prices for a ticket, let alone travel, any transportation they might need, merchandise, and other expenses?

This is another brutal reminder that men’s professional golf is moving backward at a rapid pace. Someone needs to step up, genuinely care about the fans, and truly grow the game.

Until that happens, “growing the game” or any iteration of that phrase, is BS.

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