For Ryder Cup rookies, the worst is the first
NEWPORT, Wales -- You don't have to ask the locals for the Welsh history lesson. No need. Talk to one of them long enough and it'll crop up in casual conversation.
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A policewoman assigned to a group of European players during practice at the Ryder Cup pointed at a hill in the distance, just across the muddy, meandering River Usk from the manicured Celtic Manor grounds, and noted that the Romans had established a homestead there two millennia ago.
Nearly 2,000 years later, on the resort's Twenty Ten course, a new Colosseum has been erected around the first tee box, where both veterans and rookies will make their nervous starts shortly after dawn Friday morning.
For the Americans, it's akin to the Christians being fed to the lions. Surrounded by three walls of towering metal grandstands and looking very much like a minor-league baseball park, an estimated 2,500 seats will be filled with boisterous, partisan fans encircling the not-so-glad U.S. gladiators.
The fans will sing colorfully ad-libbed and lyrical tunes to their players, serenade their captain, Colin Montgomerie, and of course take more than a passing interest in the Yanks, most of whom will be quivering in their spikes. There is no moment in golf that can prepare a player for the opening salvos of the Ryder Cup -- it's like being deflowered before a zillion prying eyes.
Ian Poulter, making his third Ryder appearance for the European side, says you can take the four majors every year, add up the combined pressure of that fearsome foursome, then double it. Poulter is considered a fairly cool customer, too.
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| Rickie Fowler gets a dialed-down taste of the first-tee experience during practice Thursday. (Getty Images) |
"You're playing for your teammates, your captain, you're playing for your fans. It's the most incredible week. I love it. There's no other week like it. And the best thing of all? You're playing for nothing."
But it means everything -- and it all starts with the first shot. Nearly every player who has teed it up in the Ryder can recall, in vivid detail, the teeth-chattering moment when he hit his opening blow. Those who can't have probably blocked it out to preserve their psychological sanity, which sounds like the case with U.S. captain Corey Pavin's first stroke from the 1991 matches.
"To be honest with you, I don't remember the first shot," Pavin laughed. "So I either topped it or something. I must have hit a bad shot and put it out of my mind."
Out of my mind is an apt way to describe the feeling, actually. It's also an out-of-body experience, and given that the Americans have a couple of particularly fidgety players in Jeff Overton and Bubba Watson, the team colors on the first tee could fast become red, white and brown.
Pavin will offer pretty basic advice to his first-timers, if not the veterans.
"Well, the first thing is, 'breathe' would be good," he laughed.
Earplugs wouldn't hurt, either. The typically understated Pavin can relate in Technicolor detail the particulars of his opening shot from 1993, his second Cup appearance.
"We had about a two-hour fog delay, and I remember just standing around waiting and waiting and waiting, and then we got to the tee and it dawned on me that I had [to hit tee shots on] the odd holes," he said of his alternate-shot pairing. "So I was hitting the first shot of the Ryder Cup that year, as the away team, we had the honor.
"I just remember being extremely nervous. I remember putting the peg in the ground and trying to put the ball on the tee, and I was having a difficult time of it because my hand was shaking so much, but I managed to get the ball on the tee and I hit a good drive and we went on to win that match."
Aye, and there's the rub, as they say over here with a thick accent. Few Yanks have recovered of late to make their debut matches successful. The Americans won the Friday morning matches in decisive fashion in 2008, taking a 3-1 lead and not losing, but otherwise have not carried the first session since 1991.
For whatever reason, the Yanks lost the four previous morning sessions on Friday in slaughterhouse fashion, winning three full points in 16 matches. Overall, the European advantage was 11½ to 4½ over that span before the tide turned in Louisville two years ago.
Evidently, there hasn't been much jabbering about the first-day pressure in the U.S. team room this week, which, depending on your view, is either a good or bad idea.
"[Teammate] Zach Johnson has told me one thing. He put his arm around me and said, "'It's just golf, Bubba,'" Watson said. "Because that's all it is."
Well, yes and no. It's also match play, which is a tournament oddity in itself. It's a team affair, where fans actually root against players. The European fans are fully engaged in the proceedings and often become a tangible part of the process. It's not remotely the same as a stock tour event.
It's not so much that the American fans don't interact with players, but the Europeans have elevated fandom to a high art form. Ever hear the songs during a soccer match overseas? That's a close approximation of the first tee at the Ryder, especially when the Euros are playing a home game.
Even at Louisville, a fervent cluster of Europeans was breaking out in verse, making up sing-song lines about their 12 players. It's best to embrace it, U.S. veteran Jim Furyk said.
"They were outnumbered 20-1 in Kentucky and they made a ton of noise," Furyk said. "They were very low in numbers but high in spirit and I always enjoy coming over to play. It's obviously different; you enjoy being at home because you want all of that noise to be on your side, but they are good fans and they are going to make a ton of noise on the first tee and sing their songs and chants and support their team. It will be a great atmosphere."
By Tuesday morning, European fans were getting in mid-match spirit. Four young males in afro wigs were camped behind the tee awaiting the arrival of their favorite player, curly-headed, 21-year-old Rory McIlroy.
"But he's had a haircut," said McIlroy's father, Ken.
The Americans likely will be publicly shorn, too, if not outright scalped. For all he has experienced in the game, Tiger Woods can recall his first tee ball, a 2-iron tee shot while paired with big brother Mark O'Meara in 1997.
"I was very nervous -- it was my first Ryder Cup and I was playing not just for me, but representing my country and teammates, too," he said. "It's a different type of nervousness than a major."
Everybody has a different comfort threshold, of course. The most telling story in recent Ryder history came from the 2004 matches, when partners Jay Haas and Chris DiMarco had settled their tee-shot strategy for their alternate-shot session on Friday, but DiMarco begged off when they arrived at the first tee because he was too petrified to hit the match's opening shot -- and that was at an American home game outside Detroit.
Tom Lehman, the U.S. captain in Ireland in 2006 and an assistant to Pavin this time around, can actually recite some of the songs sung to the European players that year, they are so ingrained into his eardrums.
"You have to be prepared," he said. "To me, that's some of the beauty of playing in Europe, some of that emotion. You go into it with hair or hackles raised."
Lehman's first shot, while paired with Pavin at the 1995 matches in Rochester, N.Y., came while the legendary Byron Nelson was stationed near the opening tee box at Oak Hill.
"I thought I was going to whiff," Lehman said of his 3-wood shot. "But I crushed one about 310 [yards]. Nerves get you focused. I've always believed that."
Can a player focus on the focusing? Major champions, captain's picks, grizzled veterans or raw rookie, everybody had a first time because it's is a Ryder rite, or wrong, of passage. Former British Open champion Stewart Cink got a break with his debut -- he got to hit second in an alternate-shot match in 2002, choosing an 8-iron from the light rough for his approach after Furyk had teed off.
"It was as easy a shot as you could imagine and I got behind the ball and took my line and everything and had to ask myself, 'What's my pre-shot routine again?'" Cink recalled, laughing. "I forgot what to do."
The 11 rookies in the matches this year will hear anecdotal reports from their teammates about the suffocating pressure of the opening hole. In fact, some have been trading stories about their stomach-churning experiences. Maybe that's not a good thing.
"Everybody keeps talking about the first tee shot, and now something bad's embedded in there," said Hunter Mahan, pointing toward his head. "You plant a seed and it's bound to grow.
"Maybe you should be thinking about how fun and exciting it will be, not how nerve-wracking it'll be."
Nerve-wracking, nerve-wrecking or whatever, everybody has to start somewhere in the team affairs. One of the five American rookies this week, Dustin Johnson, was playing in the Walker Cup matches in Northern Ireland in 2007 and was so anxious to get started on the first tee, he swung away despite the fact "they hadn't finished announcing my name yet."
At least he still remembered his own name, which is a start. Johnson joins Overton, Watson, Matt Kuchar and PGA Tour rookie Rickie Fowler as Ryder newbies. With four professional wins already under his white belt, Johnson has seen the grandstands on the first hole at Celtic Manor and is anticipating the deluge. He doesn't mean the rain that's in the Friday forecast, either.
"It's going to be loud," he said, "and it's going to be fun."
Might as well try to embrace it, right? Although walking into the first-hole stadium sounds as enjoyable as wrapping your arms around a barrel cactus. It looks like the fabled 16th at TPC Scottsdale, the rowdiest hole in golf.
"Who said I was nervous?" Overton said, laughing. "It's awesome."
We'll be sure to check back with him after it's over.
"They are prepared for it, but it's one shot," Cink said of the first-timers. "It's the first shot and it will take, you know, five seconds or whatever and it will be over. It's always a nerve-wracking experience and a little scary at first.
"But it's a privilege and an honor to be able to experience that."
