SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Don’t expect the dizzying display of birdies and eagles like at Hazeltine.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I don’t think you’ll go anywhere else where you’ll see as many fist-pump pars as you’ll see this week,” Jordan Spieth said.
The difficult course setup for this Ryder Cup didn’t come as much of a surprise to the Europeans. Le Golf National annually hosts the French Open, so the players are familiar with the challenge that the narrow, hazard-filled course presents – the winning score has been single-digits under par three of the past eight editions, including this year, when Ryder Cupper Alex Noren won at 7 under.
This Ryder Cup feels particularly claustrophobic, however. Unlike when the European Tour event was held here in July, the thick, lush rough has been mowed back toward the tees, meaning that errant tee shots oftentimes cannot be advanced to the green.
Ryder Cup: Articles, photos and videos
Home captain Thomas Bjorn can alter the course setup to his preference, and he was wise to try and minimize the Americans’ distance advantage off the tee while also exploiting their general inaccuracy. U.S. captain Jim Furyk – who ranked 190th out of 193 players in driving distance on the PGA Tour this season – said that he only hit seven drivers, total, during his initial scouting trip here. So long irons and 3-woods will be the choice for many off the tee.
“This is one of the hardest Ryder Cup courses that I’ve seen in a while,” Webb Simpson said. “There’s just a massive premium on finding the fairway.”
Ryder Cup officials would be hard-pressed to find more disparate venues than Hazeltine and Le Golf National. Two years ago, players on both sides bombed away with reckless abandon, unafraid to pull driver because the already-generous fairways were lined with minimal rough. The hole locations didn’t instill any fear, either – Justin Rose said they were so easy it was like a pro-am – and the competition was largely reduced to a putting contest from inside 30 feet. Which the Americans will win on most occasions.
“At Hazeltine you were winning holes with birdies; very few times you would make bogey and not many holes were won with par,” Rose said. “This week, you’re going to see a lot of holes won with par, and it’s going to create a very different mentality and some exciting matches. You have to work very hard for par on quite a few occasions around here. You could argue it’s quite U.S. Open-esque.”
That led Spieth to predict that while there still will be spectacular moments, because the repercussions for a poor shot is only a loss of hole, “I don’t think there will be as many roars.”
“It’s one of the most difficult golf courses that we’ll play all year,” he said.
That includes the watery closing stretch, which will provide even more thrills and spills if the wind picks up.
Paul Casey may have said it best, when assessing the challenge of this week’s venue.
“Thank goodness we’re playing match play,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to play stroke play around here.”
