This Ryder Cup oozes New York spirit. So does watering hole down the street

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BETHPAGE, N.Y. -- Everybody is talking about the New Yorkers. New Yorkers will be the 15th club for the American team -- or will they be the team's 13th man? Is that a better analogy? Luke Donald and Keegan Bradley talked about New Yorkers at the opening ceremony and their Golf Channel surrogates, Paul McGinley and Brandel Chamblee did, too.

Let's bring in Alicia Keys, from the chorus of Jay-Z's epic "Empire State of Mind," because she hits every note on this broad subject:

Now you're in New York:

These streets will

make you feel brand-new.

Brights lights will

inspire you.

Let's hear it for

New York, New York, New York.

In downtown Bethpage, a mile or so from the golf course, at an old-timey shot-and-a-beer stop called Susan's, hard by a Long Island Rail Road track, six actual New Yorkers were hoisting cold ones on Wednesday. Late afternoon, early fall. This is a first, a Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, but nobody cares, not here at Susan's on Wednesday. New York is the wide-mouthed funnel of the American experience. It guzzles new. Old Susan's is part of the whole thing. Eighty different countries fly into JFK. One-hundred and sixty languages are spoken in Queens alone. Susan's is an Irish bar owned by a man named Vinny from Brooklyn with a barmaid from Spain named Maria and posters of great Black boxers on its walls. The bar's softball team is called the Sigourney Weavers.

Susan's advertises -- in paint, on an exterior wall -- 75-cent drafts. They're $3 when you get inside, but nobody at Susan's cares. Nobody at Susan's cares about the Ralph Lauren blazers the Americans were wearing at the opening ceremony across the street, or why Rory McIlroy was so cranky, in those weeks after the Masters. He won. Right? They do care about the Mets. The Mets are holding on to October dreams by a thread. Susan's is a baseball and football bar, and whatever else comes up.

"You Can't Always Get What You Want" was playing. There's a payphone on a wall that doesn't work. Maria is happy to bring you peanuts and pretzels. The several TVs there assault you with new and more new: two boats have collided in the Atlantic Ocean off Fire Island; the Yankees will be playing playoff baseball come October for the 60th time; Zelensky spoke at the United Nations, at the General Assembly.

The six patrons at Susan's gather in two groups of three. There's a threesome of younger guys, in T-shirts and baseball caps, brims on their upper spines, sitting in the front of the bar, near the dartboard and the entrance. There's another threesome of older guys, in T-shirts but hatless, seated toward the back of the bar, near the pool table and the restrooms.

The older guys are talking about the Yankees and looking at the boat accident and hearing about Maria's recent vacation, a Mediterranean cruise. (She loved it. She didn't get to Spain.) The younger guys had been to the golf course, earlier in the day. Maria says that she likes Jon Rahm, but otherwise has no interest in golf. She likes European football and American football. One of the young guys, after consulting his cellphone, notes that you can buy a ticket for Thursday's practice round for $158, the price dropping as the weather forecast, for a drenching rain, becomes more confident.