McIlroy completes near impossible job with Bethpage Ryder Cup mission achieved | Ryder Cup 2025

In the first moments after Rory McILroy finally won the Masters, he already thought of this Ryder Cup. The man who had won everything wanted to earn this more than anything. It had been in his mind since the last in Marco Simone, when he surprised the media, his captain and his teammates by embarking on a speech on the way he was aimed at Bethpage here.

“I said it for six years to anyone who will listen to: I think that one of the greatest achievements of golf right now is to win a Ryder Cup outside,” said McILroy at the time, “and that’s what we are going to do.”

And at the end, McILroy was about as good as his word. And if someone was starting to doubt the truth about how all this was difficult after the beats that the United States took during the first two days of play here, Sunday singles were all the proofs they needed to see how right McILroy was.

The weather said it was the hottest day to date with Bethpage, but in other respects, it seemed that the temperature had dropped in the morning. The fever that had grasped the place on Saturday broke. McILroy was still to move away from the ball while playing the first hole. Someone shouted “Fuck You!” in the silence that fell in front of his putt. But this time, a couple of strong police officers waded in the gallery and the crowd around the heckling began to sing “Take it out!” Take it out! “

For all Keegan Bradley’s speeches on how her team could still win, even if she was lying around in seven in the morning, no one seemed to buy her, and although this European team, and McILroy in particular, had to bear many abuses, there had not been the same vicious edge, there had been the day before.

Maybe there was a collective acceptance that abuses were out of hand on Saturday, maybe it was the additional effort made by the PGA of America to control bad behavior, or maybe it was just that it is more difficult to cry “you have to suck!” And say it when you are in a team on the wrong side at once.

McILroy will not care anyway now that his team has won. He gave everything he had to give to his team here, and in the end, he seemed so drained by everything he experienced, he had nothing much for his simple match against Scottie Scheffler. The emotional, mental and physical effort to play four games in two days, and dealing with all the abuses that occurred while he had left him on smoke.

It was a strange game. N ° 1 V World 1 vn ° 2, the man who won this year’s masters against the man who won this year’s open, the last winner of the Grand Chelem champion in career against someone who will most likely be the next Grand Chelem winner in career.

Maybe it was because the match was so heavy that he never really took off. It should have been a game for ages, but it ended up being more like a game for the elderly. The two biggest players of their generation transformed a fairly grumpy golf course and played a handful of shots that made everyone look much better in the state of their own game.

The 2nd, Scheffler pushed a chip with a few club lengths in front of the Roughr when he was 30 feet from the spit. “It’s good, Scottie!” An American fan shouted: “No, it’s not Scottie!” His friend added as punctuation. It was still not as bad as that that Scheffler served from the middle of the 10th fairway, when he blew up his approach to 40 yards after finishing his swing in one hand. Surprisingly, Scheffler still won the hole with a Bogey, because McILroy was not doing too much better and ended up dabbing his own chip a few feet and making a double. It continued like that until Scheffler finally won 1 out of 18.

One during the day, but three and a half over the week, McILroy will be able to look back and know that he has shown the best of himself, and that he got what he wanted to play here. Scheffler, however, will remember it as one of the most disappointing weeks of his career. He became the first player in history to play the four pairs games for his side and lose everyone. It is taken this week like a seafood sailor by tightening a trick during shore.

Scheffler is an enigma wrapped in a mystery inside a Golfer of Texas. He is all the accounts, a large team, who even helped organize the United States training camp in Napa last week because he was so determined to win here. “Scottie was the best teammate in our team room this week, without a doubt,” said Bradley.

You assume that he will not be the last American captain to bond in knots by trying to understand how to get the most out of Scheffler in this competition. If someone understands it, the almost impossible work that McILroy has taken right now will be even more difficult.