SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – You can spend as much time as you want envisioning what it might be like.
The feel of the crisp morning air. The cacophonous serenade of the fans. The unsettling, enveloping, intoxicating sense of apprehension that consumes the body.
But when it comes down to it, the only way to prepare for the first-tee scene at a Ryder Cup is to experience it for yourself.
Much has changed in recent years about these biennial matches, but there is no more tangible example of that evolution than the size of the grandstands that surround the first tee. Shockwaves might still be reverberating around suburban Minneapolis from the roars and chants heard at Hazeltine, but the Europeans have outdone themselves with the towering monstrosity behind the first tee this week at Le Golf National.
Something of a hybrid between a golf grandstand and an SEC football stadium, it has become a frequent talking point for players early in the week with opinions generally falling somewhere between “massive” (Sergio Garcia) to “unbelievable” (Patrick Reed).
Players who are accomplished enough to play in this event have plenty of experience when it comes to first-tee jitters. But even the best in the world address the setting at the Ryder Cup with the sense of trepidation you might expect them to use if asked to bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower.
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“You never get comfortable with it,” said Justin Rose. “I don’t think you can ever really walk on to that first tee Friday and go, ‘Yeah, this feels good, or this feels normal.’ Of course it feels good. You feel alive.”
Rose knows that of which he speaks, having struck the first tee shots alongside Henrik Stenson each of the first two days at Gleneagles the last time the Ryder Cup was held in Europe. The two also were first out of the gates for Europe at Hazeltine, where the results went a bit differently.
“Given the size and the setup we have here this week, which looks absolutely phenomenal, it’s going to be something different, something special,” Stenson said. “So I expect everyone to feel a little bit of jelly in their legs walking down to the first tee.”
Of course, tee shot attempts under crushing pressure do not always go as planned. While Stenson and Rose tamed their nerves four years ago in Scotland, Webb Simpson hit the pop-up heard ‘round the world, a 3-wood that barely cleared the 200-yard mark. The American team of Simpson and Bubba Watson never made a single birdie in that fourball match and got drummed, 5 and 4.
This time around, Simpson admitted, he’ll likely tee off on the even-numbered holes in foursomes play to avoid a similar first-tee display.
“The funniest, most embarrassing part of it was the camera crews and probably a lot of (media) went ahead to where we normally drive it,” Simpson recalled. “So the camera crew and everybody had to come back.”
Simpson’s gaffe is a classic example of why many players, regardless of how the first hole is designed, will pull driver for their opening swings. The bigger the head, the reasoning goes, the wider the target and the more margin for error as players try to prevent mind from defeating body.
But that strategy might not be in play this week at Le Golf National, where the opener is a tight dogleg right that features water on one side of the fairway and lush rough on the other.
Bubba Watson famously asked the crowd to make noise while he hit his opening tee ball at Medinah in 2012, but that strategy is off the table this time around in enemy territory given the difficulty of the shot he’ll face.
“I’ve been told that I can’t get the crowd to rev up,” Watson said. “I don’t want to get revved up trying to hit a bullet (iron) off the tee and fat it 20 yards down the fairway, so I don’t want to do that. They told me I can’t do it this time.”
A third of the players this week have never hit a shot in the Ryder Cup, while others like Tiger Woods, Francesco Molinari and Paul Casey haven’t experienced the first-tee environment for several years. It’s sure to take on a life of its own as the sun creeps above the horizon Friday morning, with players attempting to warm up both literally and figuratively while a crowd 7,000 strong whips itself into a frenzy 100 yards away.
To the 16 men who will step into the cauldron at dawn to finally put an end to months of anticipation, the advice is simple: good luck getting any sleep tonight.
“It’s the most nervous you’ll ever be,” said rookie Tommy Fleetwood. “So then it’s up to you to embrace it and deal with it.”
