Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm you up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
Ryder Cup week is near. Let’s do another 9 for the 9, where we look at nine items that I’m interested in because I think you’ll be interested in them ahead of a big event. This time, we’ll write it in a Q&A format.
9 for 9 No. 1: All right, we know that the Ryder Cup starts next Friday at Bethpage Black in New York, and that the matchup pits the best dozen Americans against the best dozen Europeans. We also know that the U.S. captain is Keegan Bradley and the European captain is Luke Donald, and that the home team has won the past five Ryder Cups. But why is this important to players?
Hey, I asked that one last week at the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship, which also served as a de facto U.S. Ryder Cup team training camp. The answers I heard? There’s the idea of playing for your 11 mates. And for your country/continent. Because of those reasons, the event became motivational for Bradley. “When you’re a part of it,” he said, “it really, it changes you forever, it really does. It changes the way you prepare, it changes the way you set your goals for the year, for your career.” He then offered what appears to be his message to his team. It’s an existential one.
Play it as if it were your last — because it might be. Bradley played in the 2012 and ’14 Cups, believed he’d play in more — but has come up short ever since.
“You know, at some point this is going to end for all of us,” Bradley said. “It’s going to end for Scottie [Scheffler]. I tell them it ended for Jack Nicklaus, guys like that, best player, one of the Mount Rushmore players ever. You have to enjoy these moments because you never know when it’s done. You never know when it’s your last dinner like last night, you never know when it’s your last time hanging in the team room with the guys, so you have to cherish every second.”
9 for 9 No. 2: Are the players getting paid this time?
The Americans will. Each will get $500,000 — $300,000 of which will go to charities, and the use of the remaining $200,000 will be determined by the player.
9 for 9 No. 3: How crazy is Bethpage going to get?
You’d think crazy crazy. It’s New York. GOLF’s Alan Bastable wrote a wonderful piece on the subject, and you can read it by clicking here.
9 for 9 No. 4: How much were/are tickets?
They were $750 for a day and are sold out.
Friday afternoon, you could purchase re-sale tickets through the Ryder Cup’s site for $1,177 for Friday; $1,154 for Saturday; and $888 for Sunday.
9 for 9 No. 5: Hey, Mr. Weekend 9, have you ever gone to a Ryder Cup as a spectator, and, if so, what’s your advice for watching?
I have! Three friends and I went to the 2012 event, at Medinah in Illinois. Best advice? If you’re interested in the results, get the radio, if it’s offered. (Thirteen years ago, it was free, too.) Also understand that, at most on Friday and Saturday, there’ll be only eight golfers on the course at one time — and thousands of fans. So if you want to see the action, jump three or four holes ahead, grab a beer and a hot dog, and wait.
9 for 9 No. 6: How did the European visit to Bethpage go this week?
On Monday and Tuesday, the European Ryder Cup team played Bethpage. How did things go? The video below may offer a hint.
9 for 9 No. 7: Any other recent bits from Bradley?
On Wednesday, the gang calling the action for NBC participated in a media conference call, and analyst and longtime pro Brad Faxon shared that players learned they didn’t make the team on the Sunday night after the Tour Championship, as part of a kind gesture from Bradley.
Here’s Faxon’s telling of what happened:
“I would say one of the things that’s hugely important is the communication from the captains to all the players and how he does that. And I think a great example, I had lunch with Ben Griffin a couple of weeks ago after the selection … and I asked him when he got the call from Keegan — it was Monday morning after the Tour Championship — and I asked him if he knew when he got this call that he was in or not.
“He said, I didn’t know for sure. I thought I was going to be picked, but I didn’t know until I got the call.
“But what he said that I thought was very interesting was that Keegan called all the boys on Sunday night. He didn’t want any media around, like what happened to Keegan at ‘Full Swing,’ around the guys that he was going to tell, no, you’re not going to be part of the team this year, because of what happens at ‘Full Swing’ and how that was put on camera. I think that was a big effect on Keegan, how he didn’t want that to ever happen to anyone else.
“And those are certainly the smaller details that both captains are going to have to have in order to have success this week. And I think that was a great nugget from Ben Griffin to hear that, that he didn’t want to have to put a player in an uncomfortable situation like he was, and something he learned going forward.”
For more on Bradley, the video below is also great.
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9 for 9 No. 8: Who’s going to be the MVP?
On the American side, it’ll be Scheffler. Bold to pick the world No. 1, I know. But I believe the memory of the defeat two years ago sits maybe strongest with him.
On the European side, let’s go with Robert MacIntyre. I think he’ll feed off the opposing crowd the best.
9 for 9 No. 9: Who’s gonna win the thing?
USA, on a Scheffler 10-foot birdie putt on 18, in the final singles match, against Rory McIlroy.
Analyst and longtime caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay wants the Sunday pairing. (You can read about that here.) I want it, too.
9 for 9 bonus! Do you have a Long Island story?
You had to ask. Yeah, I do.
Two weeks ago, in this space, I’d written that I once had an internship on Long Island. But I trained for it in Philly, and another intern and I drove out to LI after it was done. Our first stop? We wanted Long Island iced teas from somewhere, because Long Island, right? (We were just out of college, and this was a college-age thought, for sure.) A “restaurant and bar” sign on a place seemed promising. Maybe it was an Applebee’s or something close to it. Good enough. (This was pre-smart phones, keep in mind.) We pulled up.
And a valet came out. Hmm. Might be a club. We were still good with going. We walked up to the door.
And there was a $30 cover charge. Hmm. Yeah, it must be a club. Still no worries. I paid for the two of us. We walked in.
I went straight to the bar and ordered. As I waited, I looked to my right.
I looked behind me. There were other women dancing, and the men weren’t, and I’ll leave it at that. Put another away, no, we were not at a Chili’s-type place.
I looked to my left. The woman I drove with looked at me with a look that makes you want to include it in a story about Long Island. About 10 seconds later, we left.
I did drink the drink, though. Quickly.
Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9.
A takeaway from the week that was
2. As we talk about the Ryder Cup, there’s also unfortunate news that the U.S. Solheim Cup team is without a charter flight to its event next year in the Netherlands. The story comes from Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols — it can be read in full by clicking here — and these paragraphs are notable:
Team USA hasn’t used a charter to fly overseas since 2011. Two years ago in Spain, Danielle Kang’s clubs got stuck in Amsterdam, and both Kang and captain Stacy Lewis took to Twitter to beg for help. Eventually, Lewis sent her father, Dale, to the airport to retrieve Kang’s clubs.
Needless to say, Lewis is on board with having a charter for 2026.
“It’s just the look of it, too,” said Lewis. “If we have players getting on a private plane, it just makes it feel bigger and more important, and it obviously helps out logistically.”
Another takeaway from the week that was
3. This week, the U.S. Mid-Amateur was played, and Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine reported that six of the eight quarterfinalists were one-time pros who had had their amateur status reinstated — and folks had some thoughts. For example, on X, GOLF’s Claire Rogers asked for comments, and she alone received 195 as of Friday afternoon.
Her post is below. Brentley’s story can be found by clicking here.
An instruction tip for your weekend
4. I thought this was good. On a recent episode of Barstool’s Fore Play podcast, Xander Schauffele was asked what work he did to not “spiral” if he hits a bad shot, and he answered this way:
“It was more so as a conscious — when I’m in tournament mode, when I’m trying to compete at a high level, I just have to stay pretty even keel. I feel not like a robot, but I’m at work, and at work, I’m pretty ho-hum. If I hit a good shot, doesn’t really matter. If I hit a bad shot, it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. So in my mind, I’m like, I practice really hard to do certain things really well, and as long as I can attack those shots correctly or with a clear head, I will — I’m more likely to hit the correct shot. And then if I don’t, then I go back to the drawing board and I start over.”
The complete episode can be found by clicking here.
A story that I found interesting
5. The post below was interesting. If you started posting scores on Memorial Day and stopped after Labor Day — a span of 99 days — that would mean the person who posted 294 scores … played a lot of golf.
As teenagers in the summers of 1969 through 1972, we would often go to Bethpage on a Monday or Thursday to play, taking a break from caddying at a Long Island private club.
In those days, prior to the renovation of the course for the 2002 U.S. Open, the Black was not only a difficult layout, but was sometimes in less-than-ideal shape: bare tees, and weeds and rocks in bunkers. Then, as now, it was a long hot walk in the heat of the summer.
It is interesting how the reputation of the course has grown since the Opens, PGA and now the Ryder Cup. When we played Bethpage (always as walk-ups), we usually tried to play the Red, Blue or Green. After arriving at 6:30 a.m., waiting times could be anywhere from 45 minutes to 2-plus hours. Since we didn’t want to wait too long, the Black was our course of last resort, as tee times were seldom more than a 45-60 minute wait. So, we played the Black quite a bit — only because it was usually the easiest to get on. Hard to imagine given today’s situation.
The food shed near the 6th tee was always good for a buttered roll, hot dog or Yoo-hoo, and then you could catch it again on the 12th fairway. Bethpage is a wonderful facility and I have great memories of playing there.
I now live in North Carolina and have been out to Bethpage only a handful of times since the 1970s. I was able to attend the Opens and PGA, but sadly — although I had access through the lottery — the price of Ryder Cup tickets is just too much.
A non-golf thought
9. I haven’t posted NFL picks here yet, so let’s do that now.
I think it’s the Buffalo Bills year.
Another non-golf thought
10. Let’s do 10 items! Saturday is my wedding anniversary. Sometime soon, I’ll share some stories about the greatest woman I’ve ever met.
And yes, she’s heard the one about the Long Island bar written about above.
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