US, European players’ differing use of $500,000 Ryder Cup pay emerging as point of tension

PGA of America’s decision to pay its Ryder Cup golfers and captain $500,000 each — with $300,000 going to charity and the rest a personal stipend — already has emerged as an early point of tension heading into the week at Bethpage.

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 “this isn’t a week to get paid.”

Experiences from the Ryder Cup are “worth more than a couple hundred thousand dollars” to them, he added. Former Team USA golfer and captain Tom Watson said in a recent Golf Channel interview that he didn’t agree with it, either.

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

“I’m not concerned about what Europe does or what they think,” Bradley said. “I’m 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’s age, and we felt like this was the best way to do it.”

The American golfers previously received $200,000 each at Ryder Cups for donating to charities — 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’t disclose what the golfers on his roster planned to do.

“I think that’s a personal decision,” Bradley said of his donation call. “I don’t donate to charities to publicize what we’re 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’t comfortable sharing that sort of information, and I feel the same way.”

During Monday’s 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.

Team Europe didn’t participate in a practice round, but the roster made a trip to Bethpage last week, playing nine holes Monday and 18 holes Tuesday.

While walking around Bethpage on Monday, European players donned salmon-colored polos with burgundy sleeves in a nod to 1987 — when they earned a road victory at Muirfield Village. They’ll 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.

“This is going to be a difficult challenge,” Donald said. “We haven’t come close to winning three out of the last four away Ryder Cups. It’s not been very close at all. That’s my job to bridge that gap. … I think that’s motivating to the guys that it can be done, it has been done, and again, we’re here to try and do it again.”