By the time Europe finished the job, finally, on Sunday, the golf had the last word. But until the thrilling denouement, the lasting memory of this Ryder Cup threatened not to be a single swing of the club so much as the ugly backdrop: galleries that drifted from partisan into venomous and the organizers who let the line slide until it snapped.
It didn’t happen all at once. For the first day and a half of golf’s most intense rivalry, it was New York-loud without being unruly. Then Saturday afternoon arrived and the tenor shifted. Rory McIlroy, the visiting lightning rod, kept stepping off shots as volleys of abuse landed in the quiet of his pre-shot routine. Shane Lowry played teammate and minder. Justin Thomas, not exactly a shrinking violet, began shushing his own end of the grandstand so his opponents could putt.
