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By Julio Cesar Valdera Morales
Contributing Sports Writer
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Luke Donald has always been respectful of one of the most controversial issues ahead of the Ryder Cup: payments to American players. However, this has not stopped him from expressing the opposition that generally exists in Europe on this issue.
Team USA, including captain Keegan Bradley, will receive $500,000 for their participation in the Ryder Cup. Most of that sum, $300,000, will be donated directly to a charity of their choice, while the rest, $200,000, will be provided as a discretionary stipend.
Be that as it may, the prevailing view on the European side is that this is a practice that does not benefit the event, which has become increasingly commercialized in recent times.
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The sentiment that players should continue representing Europe solely for the honor of doing so was well explained by Luke Donald in a recent interview with Sky Sports, posted to X by the network.
"This came up, and I wanted to get ahead of it and talk to the 12 guys in Rome when it looked like the US was going to do something different with payments," Donald said in the Sky Sports video. E"very one of them was just like, 'No, we don't want to play … This isn't a week to get paid.'
"We have such a strong purpose in this team, what we play for. And to be honest, we reinvest some of that money back into the experience of these guys. And I feel like if you have those experiences that you remember for the rest of your life, that's worth more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the back of your pocket."
The Ryder Cup was first played in 1927, although it had been in the works for six years before that. Players had never received participation fees until the edition that begins on Friday.
In defending this long-standing principle, one that his team strongly embraces, Donald went all the way back to the Ryder Cup’s founder, the Englishman Samuel Ryder.
"So, you know, for me, I was very proud of the guys,” Donald told Sky Sports. “I think the ideals of, you know, how this Ryder Cup was set up back in the twenties by Samuel Ryder, I think he would have been proud too."
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