Fans' venom a symbol of Trump's America

The New York crowd crossed a line and the authorities' response was so poor it effectively permitted it

- Bryan Armen Graham Bethpage Black

The lasting memory of this Ryder Cup won't be a single swing of the club so much as the ugly backdrop: galleries that drifted from partisan into venomous and the organisers 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. Justin Thomas, not exactly a shrinking violet, began shushing his own end of the grandstand so his opponents could putt.

There's a difference between atmosphere and interference, and Bethpage spent too much of the weekend blurring the two. Boos during practice swings and the singsong "YEW-ESS-AY! YEW-ESS-AY!" after a European miss were tiresome, but survivable. What crept in on Saturday was different: insults aimed at players' wives, homophobic slurs, cheap shots at McIlroy's nationality dripping with tiresome stereotypes.