I chuckled to myself when the camera panned to Jon Rahm in the opening ceremony of the 2025 Ryder Cup, after Luke Donald said through his microphone, “We are fuelled by something money cannot buy.”
Rahm jeopardised his entire Ryder Cup future by moving to LIV Golf and accepting a reported $500 million package. A conveniently long appeals process opened a loophole for him and his LIV pal Tyrrell Hatton to delay paying fines, so here they are at Bethpage.
While it was an unexpected barb thrown at the Americans by the European captain, Team USA has brought this on itself.
If US team members are paid $200,000 each, whether donating to charity or not, the Europeans should take advantage of that. It’s an open goal. They’ve given Donald a hand up to his high horse.
But before Donald rides too far over the hills, we need to broaden his memory.
“It is not about prize money or world ranking points. It’s about pride. It’s about representing your flag, your shirt, and the legacy you leave behind,” he added.
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Prize money dictates why and where golfers play more than we’re led to believe
Donald took a golf scholarship at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1997, and won the NCAA title in 1999. Turning pro in 2001, he won for the first time on the PGA Tour a year later. He became an affiliate member of the European Tour, as it was then known, in 2003.
His quality allowed him to fast-track to the States and burst on to the PGA Tour scene, where every golfer dreams of being one day, because that is where the best players play, where the money is and where the world ranking points are.
The very same money and world ranking points that helped Donald qualify for several European Ryder Cup teams, and the very same money and world ranking points that his team played for in 2023 and 2025 for his captaincies.
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Rasmus Hojgaard is the only player on Europe’s team who can say he plies his trade in Europe, while the rest operate in the US, like Donald did, where the very same… You get the idea.
I am struggling to separate Donald’s words from the irritating narrative that golfers don’t play for money, and that greed is only associated with the American players.
I don’t need to list the amount of rich European talent that was brought up in the humble beginnings of the European Tour, who eventually followed the path of the Atlantic rainbow, searching for the pot of gold on the other side.
I also don’t need to explain the concept of appearance fees, which European stars have previously accepted down the years to play in events that they naturally wouldn’t give the time of day.
The emergence of the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League in 2022 proved that players at their peak were happy to grab even heavier bags of dangling cash. Rahm was the reigning Masters champion when joining LIV, months after saying in public: “I’ve never played the game of golf for monetary reasons.”
What LIV Golf did was expose the facade of the game that was hiding in plain sight. The players love golf like you and me, but also love money like you and me, but the ratio of this love is more lopsided than we ever thought.
Donald and Team Europe are awkwardly, desperately trying to hold on to the remnants of this ‘spirit of the game’ act, while their bloated wallets burst the seams of their designer trousers.
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No matter what podium a professional golfer projects from, Donald or anyone, they should avoid jabbing others about their outlook on cash, with a double-edged sword coloured in the green of dollar bills.
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