Just what is it about the first tee at the Ryder Cup that can reduce the best golfers on the planet into quivering wrecks barely able to remember how to play a game they’ve been masters of?
The sights and sounds are familiar to us all, the constant chanting and singing gives way to a thunderous ovation when the players emerge from over a bridge, through a tunnel – however it’s set up that year.
Once the crowd settles, the customary photographs are taken on the tee box and then, unless Bubba Watson is playing, the crowd goes silent – it’s then that nerves, adrenaline, even blind panic courses through the veins as the enormity of the situation hits.
Yes, mere mortals will hear the songs, feel the noise and be riddled with the nerves and excitement of another Ryder Cup match about to get underway, but we’ll never know what the monumental stress of having to put that little white ball on a tee peg and then try to hit it feels like.
Schauffele filled with nerves
“You don’t realize what it does to your body and your brain,” Xander Schauffele told Sports Illustrated. “It is one of the most nerve-wracking shots.
“There’s no way to stay calm with a bunch of people yelling and super loud noise. You know what’s on the line. At the end of the day, it’s not a big deal. But at that moment, it feels like a very big deal.”
And Schauffele has a novel way of dealing with it, instead of trying to prepare something special – embrace the chaos.
“I don’t even try (to prepare). I just look forward to it. You get excited about it, and you embrace it. You’ve seen guys get the crowd pumped up while they hit. It’s really up to you, and whatever makes you tick.”
Simpson skies one in 2014
Webb Simpson was first man out on Friday morning at Gleneagles in 2014 – the ultimate nervy position of nervy positions – and produced one of the most infamous first shots of recent times when he sent a moon ball high into the Scottish skies and only just about made the fairway.
Simpson calls it “the pop up” as he described a shot that made the rest of his team wince a little – and made Justin Rose change his club selection, allegedly!
“So the backstory, why…
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