Patrick Cantlay insisted on Sunday that a report of his not wearing a hat out of protest for not getting paid to participate in the Ryder Cup was “totally false.”
Cantlay defeated Justin Rose, 2 and 1, in Sunday singles, doing so, again, hatless. There was a SkySports tweet on Saturday which stated Cantlay wasn’t wearing a lid this week because he felt players should be compensated for competing in the biennial matches. The report also stated Cantlay was a divisive presence in the team room, which U.S. captain Zach Johnson disputed.
Cantlay said Saturday evening that the team hats “didn’t fit” his head. On Sunday, when asked by NBC Sports’ Steve Sands about “all that stuff about the money,” Cantlay replied:
“It’s totally false. It couldn’t be further from the truth. There hasn’t been one word of that all week. The U.S. team has been close all week.”
“Yeah,” he later added, “not a shred of truth in the article that just one journalist wrote. It’s crazy that one journalist can put a tweet out there totally unfounded with complete lies.”
Cantlay confirmed during the U.S. team press conference that he is getting married to Nicole Guidish on Monday. He was asked if he wasn’t wearing a hat this week in order to avoid a tan line on his head, but Cantlay didn’t bite.
“I feel like I’ve answered so many questions about it,” he said.