After everything that happened at Bethpage, Rory McIlroy shouldn’t have any reason to have a positive take on the American audience. Yet, after things cooled down, he admitted, “It’s a minority of the crowd. The majority of people here are true golf fans and are respectful,” suggesting that not every fan in New York was bad. Even then, Paul McGinley believes that Luke Donald “asked too much” from the Irishman by making him play all five matches in that environment.

McIlroy was undoubtedly one of the most abused European golfers at Bethpage. Even his wife, Erica Stoll, got a beer thrown at her by one of the fans. But considering his form in 2025, 5 Clubs’ Gary Williams asked if Rors could have maintained his composure and achieved all his feats from this season 5 or 10 years ago?

McGinley told Williams, “Yeah! He showed flashes of it throughout his career. It’s the sustaining of it is the challenge for him. I think he put down a challenge to everybody at the press conference in Rome when he talked about one of the biggest achievements in golf being winning a Ryder Cup away from home.” After capturing the 44th Ryder Cup title, McIlroy revealed that Team Europe’s goal will be to win the tournament in New York in 2025. Now that they have achieved that goal, the Irishman has also fulfilled one of his three biggest achievements in life.

Speaking of the challenge of Bethpage, he said, “As bad as the crowd was, as nasty as they were, we were prepared for that. We were prepared right up to the line of stopping play. That’s how far we had gone in terms of preparing for it being terrible, and got very close to it.” The crowd at Bethpage had truly lost all control. Many would have understood if Team Europe had stopped play to get things in order. But the European pros managed the situation quite well, and some from the rival team, like Justin Thomas, also helped regulate the spectators.

As far as McIlroy performing great despite the abuse goes, McGinley said, “When Rory’s got that look about him, I really do think he’s unbeatable, Gary. He had that last week. His eyes light up, and the focus gets so tied in, and sometimes he’s got the propensity to daydream. He’s so talented that he can switch off and play at 80% and he can still win tournaments. But when he’s got that extra focus, he goes to 90-95%. When you combine that with the talent that he has, he’s pretty unbeatable.”

Throughout his career, McIlroy has faced a lot of criticism for choking at critical moments. Whether it’s the 2011 Masters Tournament or the 2024 U.S. Open, the Irishman has blundered many great opportunities to pick up some big wins. He turned all that around in 2025, when he finally overcame the obstacles and triumphed at Augusta National to fulfill another one of his life’s goals. But fans had been seeing the 95% extra-focused McIlroy, as McGinley put it, since the 2025 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. So what he did to finally win the 2025 Masters was just the buildup to that.

But that’s where Luke Donald may have made a mistake, according to Paul: “I think he is fatigued. There’s one thing playing five matches at home. It’s a different thing playing five matches away. And it’s a different thing playing five matches away when you’re Rory McIlroy and you have to suffer the abuse that he had to do. So I think we asked too much of him last week in playing five matches in that environment.”

McIlroy & Tommy Fleetwood dominated the foursomes and then drew the fourballs with Shane Lowry on Friday. While making him and Fleetwood play against in the foursomes was understandable, Donald could have done without choosing Rory & Shane to have a second go at fourballs on Saturday as well. Especially considering how gradually intense the fans were getting at Bethpage. That extra bit of rest could have helped the Irishman save some energy for his singles match against Scottie Scheffler.

In the end, Team Europe did benefit from having Rory McIlroy play all the events, though. Even if he didn’t win against the world #1, the visitors were able to secure a record points thanks to the strong performance they delivered in the first couple of days.

Playing strong pairings, including Rory McIlroy, helped Luke Donald’s side make history

The record for the highest score achieved by a team after 2 days of the Ryder Cup before 2025 was 11 points. It was achieved by Team Europe in 2004 and by the American side in 2021. However, thanks to Luke Donald’s excellent pairing strategy, Rory McIlroy & co. broke that record this year by managing 11½ points at the end of Saturday. And that wouldn’t have been possible if the Team Europe captain hadn’t played to his team’s strengths.

Before the Sunday Singles, Donald admitted that he was quite aware of Team U.S. being a stronger side in singles contests. And Scottie Scheffler & Co. proved him right by nearly making a comeback on the final day.  From being 7 points behind, the Americans finished just 2 points behind at the end of the tournament after putting on a tough fight on Sunday. In fact, Europe only managed to win one match through Ludvig Aberg after he beat Patrick Cantlay 2 & 1. So while Paul McGinley might have spotted some flaws in Luke Donald’s strategy of managing Rory McIlroy’s workload, at the end of the day, it all worked in favor of Team Europe.