David Yarrow: Behind the Lens of the Ryder Cup’s Iconic New York Image

In the cobbled streets of Dumbo, beneath the Manhattan Bridge and with the Manhattan skyline rising behind, the European Ryder Cup team stand with their caddies for a photograph ahead of the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black.

But this is no ordinary sports image. It’s not just a portrait either: it’s a story. One of camaraderie, legacy, and European pride, told in a striking black-and-white tableau and set against the most American of backdrops. In internationally renowned photographer David Yarrow’s hands, it becomes a metaphor for team spirit, captured with the elegance of a bygone era and, now post-victory, layered with modern triumph.

Above all, it’s art.

Standing front-right of centre, Captain Luke Donald is unmistakable in an all-white suit, styled with the quiet authority of a Prohibition-era Don. He stands before a vintage van that acts as both prop and anchor, offering compositional balance and a sense of cinematic arrival. Around him, players pose in custom-tailored suits and fedoras, each figure a character in a visual narrative that blends sport with storytelling.

In the centre, Justin Rose—Europe’s veteran Ryder Cupper—is perfectly aligned with the distant Empire State Building. To his left stand Rasmus Højgaard, Robert MacIntyre, and Sepp Straka. To Donald’s right, Matt Fitzpatrick perches on the van’s wheel, while Ludvig Åberg stands beside him with a guitar case, and Shane Lowry leans coolly against the van in sunglasses.

In the next row, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton sit in glasses either side of Viktor Hovland, expressions composed. Behind them, four of the five Vice Captains—Francesco Molinari, Thomas Bjørn, Edoardo Molinari, and José María Olazábal—impose a quiet authority, standing at the back right of the frame. To the left of the Empire State, Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy complete the composition, a pairing who are now 4-0-0 in Ryder Cup foursomes together.

The caddies, dressed in workers’ overalls and flat caps, echo the iconic 1930s image of labourers perched on a beam high above Manhattan. Their presence is a nod to the backbone of every team—a detail Yarrow conceived himself. A smoke machine only added to the cinematic layering, softening the edges of the frame and lending the image a sense of movement

Taken during the team’s practice trip the week prior to the Ryder Cup, the image was installed in the team room for players to see throughout the week. It was only shared publicly the morning after Europe’s 15–13 victory over the U.S. team.

While some questioned how the players had found time to shoot it or whether it was AI-generated, the truth speaks to the depth of European preparation. Luke Donald’s captaincy was underpinned by thoughtfulness, a commitment to “the little things” that fostered team spirit and preparation. This image, conceived as a gift for the players, became one of those things.

Released with the caption “New York was built on the backs of Europeans,” the photograph echoed a line from Ryder Cup Europe’s video Our Time, Our Place—an emotional piece featuring players and captains past and present, and the thematic heartbeat of this Ryder Cup. The phrase felt tailor-made for the image: a nod to European heritage in New York and the team’s shared legacy, captured in one unforgettable frame.

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The man behind the lens, Yarrow, is known for his cinematic black-and-white imagery and his storytelling ability across almost every genre. The resulting image has already been hailed as iconic. But as Yarrow tells it, he had the easy job, and the real magic lay in the collaboration and the logistics.

Now, it’s set to hang on the walls of Art Miami—one of the most prestigious contemporary art fairs in the United States. For Yarrow, that recognition is more than symbolic.

“This picture will be in Art Miami and it will sit very comfortably there,” he says. He’s already certain of its success.

Immersed in the team room throughout the week, Yarrow’s Brooklyn shot isn’t the only picture that was taken. In addition to on course shots, there is also one of the players in their costumes taken in Grand Central Station. While that was iconic enough in its own right, Yarrow knew that this was something incredibly special.

“Grand Central is a great location. And if that picture was taken, and that's all we did, people would say that's a great picture of the European team as sort of mobsters in Grand Central. It's fine. Whereas the Manhattan Bridge picture will be the most coveted sports memorabilia picture of all time. I already know that.”

We sat down with David to explore how the relationship came about, the creative vision behind the shoot, and what it means to truly capture team spirit.

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How did the relationship with Team Europe come about?
Well, I've known Guy Kinnings for about 40 years. I've never really worked in the golf industry, and I know that Guy would not have achieved what he's achieved without occasionally being quite a tough guy and a good negotiator, but I just know him as a friend. So, I have a different relationship to him than most people, I just know him as someone that I can take the mickey out of. And his wife as well.

So, he called me up, and he probably called me up because he'd seen the work I did with Gary Player in St. Andrews, where I dressed everyone like it was the 1870s. And there's full circles. I was with Gary in South Africa for his 90th, and I only know Gary because we went into a dressage shop at the same time and I introduced myself to him and that was probably about 15 years ago. So, the proof is if ever you meet someone in a dressage shop, you've got to say hello. Otherwise, it’s likely I would not have done it. So that's the kind of genesis of it. And when Guy called me, I reckon it was probably 18 months ago. I guess our first meetings were maybe about nine months ago. It appealed to me an awful lot. If you look at some of where the Ryder Cups have been in America in previous four-year slots, it would have been more of a challenge as a storyteller to do it. Wisconsin might have been more of a challenge. But New York, I know New York so well, and I immediately had so many ideas.

When did you land on the eventual concept for the big shoot?
There are lots of iconic settings, the Flatiron building in Manhattan. And then you can do a rooftop setting over Central Park. But I've closed down that area [in Brooklyn] there before. So, it's not like I was going in there naked. I've done it before and I know the New York Police Department and I knew that we could get it done. Obviously, the team was staying 200 yards away too, so that helps.

How difficult were the logistics of a shot like this?
It's not that easy to close that street down. And of course, if you went there right now, there'll be a lot of people there.. We found ways, we donated to the Brooklyn Charity Commission and did all the appropriate things so that we would be given the green light.

It was things like removing cars, which would have been there. If there had been a couple of cars, that would have been a problem. We trusted the people that we're working with to get it done.

Grand Central is a great location. If that picture was taken, and that's all we did, people would say that's a great picture of the European team as sort of mobsters in Grand Central. Whereas the Manhattan Bridge picture will be the most coveted sports memorabilia picture of all time. I already know that. It's incredible. Which is not a function of me, it's a function of the group of guys and the team and it's the team effort.

The key thing was getting that van in, because that van gave reason for people to position themselves without looking awkward,because there were so many different layers that they could be on that van.

The other key thing, which is what we're meant to be good at, is finding a compositional balance in it very quickly, like getting Thomas Bjørn in that position as the big guy leaving that gap, having Rory and Tommy right by the Empire State Building. I hadn't preconceived it.

You touched on the previous golf shoot you’ve done with period dress. Did that inspire this?

I was always of the mindset that you do it in period. If you look at Hollywood productions, and I spend a lot of time working with Hollywood people, if you can find reason to do it in period, you do, because it just adds another layer of narrative and people are in awe of the effort. If that picture had been done with everyone dressed like it's 2025, it would have been okay, but it wouldn't have been remarkable.

How long does something like this take to sort of pre-plan?

When we start getting intense on things, we're normally about three months.

All of those clothes came, a lot of those clothes came out from LA and they were all bespoke for each individual player. Of course, we didn't know the team until about a month before, but we knew most of it. They were all bespoke sizes and stuff, so it was done properly. The biggest cost of that whole production by some way was the costume. You can see that in the picture. Someone mentioned to me ‘that's a lot of people’, they said, ‘my goodness, you got this’ because it wasn't done on a kind of slapdash casual basis. It's almost like you're dressing 40 people for Halloween.

I've got a team in my office and all they do is they take prompts from the work of others fairly unapologetically, and so we just go around trying to find characters. We thought we had to put Luke in a white suit so he looked like the Don. There were so many kinds of gangster prompts from the Prohibition era. I thought everyone looked great.

But all the styling was done by Cindy Crawford’s stylist, and I've worked with Cindy for years. So they knew exactly what they were doing. There's nothing better than delegating and totally trusting.

My one little smart thing I did was I was thinking about the caddies and I remembered that picture from the 1930s of the workers on the beam looking down on Manhattan. I thought that's how you dress the caddies, you differentiate them by putting them in labourers' clothes. And that gave it a real, a real extra kick, that picture.

As you can imagine, I'm often asked that. There are three reasons. Firstly, it's reductive, it’s not reality. Anything that's not reality is not literal because you're taking all the colours we can see and reducing it down to monochrome. Anything that does that and stops becoming literal helps the sense that this is art rather than recording reality. You can take a great sports picture, but it is reality. And that tends to impinge on the idea that it's art. This picture will be in Art Miami and it will sit very comfortably in Art Miami.

The second thing is that it lends a degree of timelessness to it. And because we're going back into an era before the colour movies and colour photography, it also plays in that sense.

The third thing is aesthetics. It's interesting looking at the pictures that the players have chosen and the caddies and their wives, that most of them have gone for the black and white because if I was going to have that in my room, in my living room, black and white works in any room, whereas green doesn't. There are some colours that can be quite awkward in a room. So just aesthetically, it's a much more forgiving medium and palette.

Are you proud of it?

It's up there. It’s not a comfortable emotion for me, pride. But the one thing you could say is, when people look at it, other than technically it's strong, but the one thing when people look at it, they go, the logistics behind doing that are big.

And we nailed the logistics, but that was a team effort. That was everyone. It was the European team, the players being up for it, Luke. I had the easy bit in a way. But I am proud of it. There are people around the world that want this picture. I've had calls from all types of people, and famous golf clubs. Half of those are American, and they don't care that this is a European team because is a metaphor for team spirit. And they want to put that in their boardroom to say, that's what a team is.

You talk about the team. How immersed were you with the team, and Luke?

I felt very much part of things from the word go. When I spoke to the team, actually, on the Wednesday before the tournament, the first thing I said to them was that I identify as a father before I identify as a photographer. To have my son there, who is able to be in the company of, kind of 12, 15, the best sportsmen who leave their ego at the front door and are just so welcoming and approaching was lovely.

There was one lovely moment when everyone was getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning, I came down to the player's room with my son and Tommy is there, I went to get coffee with Rory and he's such a lovely man. He just said, ‘I hope you slept well, David’. I said, I don't think really that's the issue. Thank you for asking, but I don't think it's a relevant question right now. I think the relevant question is whether you've had any sleep.

And Luke was great. It's the small things, it's that last 1%. The handwritten note in the room and the way in which he introduces me to everyone. I was lucky that, I guess, that Rory owns my work in a way too.

How much golf photography had you done before this?

I've photographed golf going back a long time. I photographed Sandy Lyle when he won The Open at Sandwich in 1985. And I did Nick Faldo when he came back and beat Greg Norman and Augusta. I know I've had the privilege of, through Gary, getting to know Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson and actually even Arnold Palmer. I'm actually incredibly embarrassed that I haven't got any better [at golf].

I'm in awe of these players, because the difference between a good shot and a bad shot on a chip, it's just those tiny factors. The fact that these guys can do so well in front of millions of people on television. I take so many bad photographs and no one sees them. Whereas if you play a bad golf shot, everyone sees it.

One of the things that struck me through the week is that your images on the course feel less like a collection of images and more like a visual diary of the emotions of the week. Was that intentional or did that sort of reveal itself as you went?

I've got such great respect for sports photographers. I used to be one myself. I felt in those final 30 minutes when Shane Lowry sunk the part at 18, I was at 17 and there were enough people that were going to be getting that winning putt. That was not the reason I was there. That to me was a treat.

I said this to Luke, that in moments of stress - and there were quite a few on Sunday afternoon - since I was staying with them all and felt very much part of the whole setup, I don't want to be ramming a camera in his face. There was plenty of other occasions to be doing that. So, I wanted to be slightly more inconspicuous.

I know that you do a lot of very different things and your net is cast very wide. Did you relish the opportunity to go into a live sports environment?

I've had this conversation with a lot of people. This is a massive sense of occasion, and I didn't even have a long lens with me because I just didn't think that's what I could bring anything to the party with.

I just wanted to capture more the size of the occasion. I've got a picture I'm going to give to Rosey and Fooch of them walking down the first with just that massive bank of people behind. For some people, the enormity of it all is quite difficult to take in. It's quite difficult to capture in one picture. On the 17th when the Americans were coming back there was just an enormous number of people around one hole and most of them supporting the other side, but trying to capture it and getting it in a contextual way is always a bit of a challenge.

I looked at a couple of pictures yesterday which are quite nice. There’s one with just Luke and Tommy coming up the 18th. There was just a little bank of light with that tented pavilion in the background which was special.

It was just an honour to do. Before the tournament, when I saw it installed in the team hotel and all the players seeing it and their reaction and everyone being so positive about it, I thought I don't think it will ever again have so much riding on the results of a sporting event. Because clearly the picture, people would have bought it had they lost. But since they won, it is a very valuable picture.

So I think for all the players, because they all have their foundations and their charity things, they can have a sort of intravenous drip of these pictures forever, which hopefully raises a lot of money.