The Ryder Cup says 'Show me the money'
Are the ticket prices for the 2025 matches a rip-off? Not if people are willing to pay the exorbitant prices, writes Gary Van Sickle.
There is one knee-jerk reaction word to describe ticket prices for next year’s Ryder Cup matches at Bethpage State Park in New York.
Rip-off.
Greed is in the eye of the beholder, however. Welcome to the downside of capitalism. The marketplace and laws of supply and demand determine prices. If the Ryder Cup tickets sell out, and they surely will, then they will not have been priced too high. The market will say so.
This will be an unpopular opinion but it’s no different than calling a $90,000 Mercedes a rip-off or a $675 greens fee at Pebble Beach an outrage. The last time I checked, Pebble’s tee sheet was running above 95 percent full. And Mercedes hasn’t gone broke. If tee times at Pebble went unused, then its prices would be too high.
A rip-off isn’t a rip-off if enough customers meet the price. It only seems like a rip-off because you and I are unwilling or unable to pay up.
Here’s the bad news for your digital wallet: Tickets for the 2025 Ryder Cup run about $250 for practice rounds; $420 for the celebrity matches and the opening ceremony; and $750 for each of the three competition days — or $2,250 for all three days.
The last time the Ryder Cup was held in the U.S. was in 2021 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. Ticket prices then were $340 for Friday’s round; $350 for Saturday; $280 for Sunday; $400 for International Pavilion access; and anywhere from $1,400 to $4,000 for the swank all-access 1927 Club.
The last big event played at Bethpage was the 2019 PGA Championship. Tickets for that seem like a bargain compared to next year’s Ryder Cup. They were $35 for practice rounds; $110 for championship rounds; $350 for all seven days; $675 for Wanamaker Club access for the week; $2,700 for the Ultimate Wanamaker Club experience.
A quick check of StubHub, a ticket re-selling site, shows a weeklong Ryder Cup pass for a Grandstand Reserved seat going for $13,049; a Thursday grounds pass for $338; and general admission passes for Friday’s first day of competition starting at $744.
The dirty little secret of the Ryder Cup is that it ranks among the worst golf spectating experiences for actually seeing shots. Imagine 50,000 fans trying to follow four foursomes on the course. It’s not much better Sunday with 12 singles matches.
If you’re not in a grandstand seat, you’re not going to see much. And to get a grandstand seat — many of which are reserved — you’re going to have to set up at a hole way ahead of the action, hope you can find a seat and then wait. Yes, the atmosphere is thrilling but for the fan without Club access who’s trying to walk along and watch, there usually aren’t many good viewing spots. It’s a good week to be 6-feet-9-inches tall or wear stilts.
Oh, and it won’t be easy to get to Bethpage State Park, either. Public parking will be at Jones Beach State Park, 12 miles away (17 minutes if … pardon the laughter … there’s no traffic). Fans will have to ride shuttle buses from the parking areas.
One other thing: The tickets are available only by lottery. First, you’ve got to sign up at RyderCup.com for the ticket lottery drawing in November.
So if you want to go to the 2025 Ryder Cup, you’ve got to really want to go.
A NEW DYNAMIC DUO
The Major Achievements of 2024 got lost in the glare of the major championships and, oh yeah, football season, but golf may have discovered two new stars.
Nick Dunlap became the first player to win as an amateur and as a professional on the PGA Tour in the same season. Dunlap, the University of Alabama star and a former U.S. Amateur and U.S. Junior champion, won the AmEx Championship in Palm Springs, California, to get his tour card. In mid-summer, he won the Barracuda Championship, clearly validating his AmEx win. He won’t turn 21 until December. As one late, cliche-riddled TV announcer used to say, “He’s got his whole future ahead of him.”
Matt McCarty, a lefthander from Santa Clara University, won three times on the Korn Ferry Tour this year, which is a lot harder than you imagine. That earned him a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour in mid-August — tough timing. Then McCarty won last weekend’s Black Desert Championship in southern Utah in just his third tour start.
How big is that? He is not only securely on the PGA Tour, he has berths locked up for the Masters, PGA Championship and U.S. Open.
McCarty lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, turns 27 in December and, yeah, ditto that thing about his future. There’s got to be another Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas out there somewhere.
THE COLD WAR PREDICTION
The divide between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf will never end in anything that resembles a merger because LIV Golf has very little of value to offer the PGA Tour and force a compromise.
After Bryson DeChambeau, one player who does move the needle, what else is there? Plenty of good players, including major champs Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith, but those three are barely missed on the PGA Tour. And none of the other players are. (Sorry, Phil Mickelson. Fans would like to see you play PGA Tour Champions but it’s debatable at this point how competitive you would be even there.)
LIV Golf has no important tournaments. Its team competition doesn’t seem to have gained much traction with the public, although it does sport some lame logos and nicknames. Maybe if LIV Golf was only team competition, it might generate more interest. And sponsorship dollars? Take out the Saudi PIF money and how would the economics of LIV Golf work? It wouldn’t.
Restoring peace in the golf world is a nice concept. But the PGA Tour doesn’t have many reasons to cut LIV Golf in on its very lucrative business. It seems a more likely bet that it will let LIV Golf continue on as is unless or until it becomes significantly more relevant in the U.S.
SET LASERS TO STUN
I am still a laser rangefinder guy at heart because nothing beats the exact yardage to the pin. But I find myself relying on GPS readings, often supplied on the cart I’m riding in, because an exact yardage isn’t that important to me for a recreational round. And I usually go by the yardage to the front of the green, since the pin position on the GPS screen often does not match where the pin is actually located on the green. It must be a real pain to link the actual pin positions with the GPS screen because so often at so many courses I play, they don’t match up. But if you gave me a GPS watch and told me that’s all I could have, I’d be fine with that. So I’m not the laser diehard I once was.
THE SHORT GAME
Considering how much it costs to buy a good golf rainsuit, it is disappointing how they lose their water repellency as quickly as they do. We’d all rather drop $500 on a new driver every two years than a new rainsuit for the same money. … I am among every average golfer who hits a tee shot, reaches down for the tee and pulls up a remnant or half broken tee and then simply flips it onto the grass. Is that really any different from littering? ... As golf crimes go, discarding tees onto the grass is not as bad as golfers who leave their full tee buried in the dirt or, worse, pound it into the turf in anger after a bad shot. Your golf superintendent hates you for that, fyi. (Well, your superintendent probably hates a lot of other things you do, too. But you get the idea.)
MORE FROM GARY VAN SICKLE
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> Does Tiger Woods have any magic left?
> Hey 19!
...and I'd say you are right on the money about LIV. We could argue about the players (although I agree with you), but what really doesn't move the needle is the format. We like actual competition and stories with our sports entertainment - lives changed, that sort of thing. What's the great story coming out of LIV (go on, I'm listening...)? So, PGA is slow playing it very obviously for the reasons you stated.
Wow public parking 12 miles away.
I’m sure cops will be everywhere around the entrance to the facility.
I hope Scottie hires a driver !!!! 😂😂