Jon Rahm has opened up about his experiences during the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, offering a look into what it was like from inside the ropes.
Rahm played in every session for Europe that week, picking up three wins and two losses along the way.
Even with Europe coming out on top, much of the conversation afterwards focused on how American fans acted throughout the event.
Rory McIlroy was one of several European players to mention how hostile things got at times.
And now Rahm has shared what he told Tyrrell Hatton as they started out, realising early on what kind of crowd they’d be dealing with.
Jon Rahm said Tyrrell Hatton should be ready for crowd trouble
Luke Donald, the European captain, received praise for how well-prepared his team was. This included role-playing sessions that mimicked the kind of abuse players might face from American fans.
Even so, Rahm admitted he still wasn’t quite ready for what actually happened once play started. It was more than he expected while standing over shots.
He had figured on hearing heckling from time to time, but assumed it would quiet down when players stepped up to take their swings. That didn’t happen.
Speaking on the Subpar podcast, Rahm said: “With my groups, me, Tyrrell, and Sepp [Straka], all three of us are rather overweight, those two have a very far back hairline, and two of us are with LIV, so all I heard was: ‘Traitor’, ‘terrorist’, ‘fat’, ‘Ozempic’ a lot, and Turkey hairline appointment things. We heard that a lot.
“It’s not so much what was being said… Of course you get the usual ones who say something about your wife or your kids. That was expected but it’s over the line.
“It was more the fact that it started from the second we got to the range until we left the golf course. For 10 to 12 hours it was nonstop.”
The nature of professional golf makes this kind of sustained noise particularly challenging compared to other sports like basketball or football where crowd noise is constant but less personal.
The hostility persisted through every shot,” Rahm noted one specific example: “And another thing I wasn’t prepared for – if you see that opening tee shot that went 400 yards – was having them still talking as we took our clubs back.”
This immediate experience led him to warn Hatton early on Friday: “I told him right there on the green after our first hole: ‘Looks like we’re going to be dealing with this all tournament.’”
Jon Rahm thinks the US fans helped Europe
Jon Rahm thinks that the behaviour of the New York crowd ended up helping Europe in their Ryder Cup victory.
The European side was already tightly knit, but the hostility at Bethpage seemed to draw them even closer together.
When asked if he thought the crowd had an impact, Rahm said: “I think so. I think it made us feel together even more.
“For Tyrrell especially, I was like, ‘If you’re about to just lose your mind, yell at me, not at them. Yell at me, and I’ll do the same.’
“All of us actually had a really fun way to look at it. Whenever they called us fat, especially me and Sepp, we laughed because do they think we don’t own a mirror? We know. We’re the ones eating. I get it. Let’s move on.”
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