Just a game of golf. One shot, just like any other. The same tee, the same swing, the caddie you know and the club you chose and the ball you like. A pale blue sunrise and a vast green pasture. Is this really the hardest shot in golf, or does it just feel that way when everybody is watching?
A little before half past seven on a crisp Roman morning, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton enter the 1st hole to a bestial roar. But this is merely the climactic act of a tableau set in motion some time earlier. Long before the opening shots, long before the Icelandic hand claps, long before the gates opened and thousands of fans came bounding across the grass like wildebeest in a David Attenborough documentary. The 1st tee is one of the Ryder Cup’s founding mythologies, and like all mythologies it seems to have gathered new layers and details with every retelling.
The tales are legion. Scottie Scheffler stepping on to the tee box at Whistling Straits in 2021 and realising he could no longer feel his arms. Ian Poulter whipping the crowd into a frenzy at Medinah in 2012. A petrified Tiger Woods begging Mark O’Meara not to make him take the first shot at Valderrama in 1997. Peter Baker at The Belfry in 1993, looking out on to a fairway he knew better than any other, and convincing himself that the tree in his eyeline had been planted there overnight.
My own favourite first-tee anecdote goes back quite a bit further. It’s 1931 and Walter Hagen is at the Scioto Country Club, about to begin his Saturday singles match, when he is interrupted by a waiter in a bow tie and waistcoat, waddling across with a platter bearing a cocktail. Hagen picks up the glass, downs it in one, nails his drive and saunters to a 4&3 victory.
Then again, Hagen never had to enter the arena through a tunnel, or plant his tee peg in front of thousands of booing fans, or endure months of ominous preamble about a single golf shot. And in many ways the story of the first tee is a parable of the Ryder Cup itself: the evolution not just of a competition and its audience but of the folklore attached to it, a folklore so rich and well-nourished that it has hardened into reality.
The first thing that strikes you is the architecture. At 5,000 seats the grandstand at Marco Simone is a little smaller than the one in Paris five years ago, but the idea is essentially the same. The two wings are angled not up the fairway – where the ball is going to go and where most of the golf is going to be played – but at the tee box, enclosing it like a theatre in the round. All those gazes, and all that noise, is focused on a single point.
First come the TV cameras and the officials, marking out and sanctifying their territory. Then the starter Alastair Scott, carefully unpacking his clipboard and box of tee pegs. Then the fans, many of whom will have booked the “First Tee Experience” ticket upgrade that guarantees you a grandstand seat. Then a man with a squeegee and cloth, polishing the Rolex clock. Then the vice-captains and captains, the non-playing players, the pundits and media, the wives and the VIPs. Nick Faldo prowls behind the ropes, munching a mini-croissant. Novak Djokovic shoots videos on his phone. In the temporary NBC television studio just behind, a dozen eager faces are pressed against the glass.
You can see why the players are as keen as everyone else to feed the legend. In a sport largely defined by even tones and textures, the drama of a packed grandstand at dawn must feel like the rarest of buzzes. For broadcasters and organisers, the hype is the perfect hook for viewers and premium ticket buyers. But for all the froth and hysteria, what unfolds is almost reassuringly mundane. Rahm finds the fairway. Scheffler finds the first cut, but is fine. The six following players all find varying degrees of safety. Nobody panics. Nobody loses their arms.
And perhaps on reflection we should not find this surprising. Modern players actively train themselves to handle these moments of high stress. Rory McIlroy tracks his heart rate and sleep patterns daily. Rahm puts a time limit on his practice sessions to replicate the pressure of a major championship Sunday. Justin Thomas sets himself increasingly difficult challenges to stimulate adrenaline. Sports psychologists are now commonplace on tour. None of this is a perfect facsimile. But the best players are undoubtedly better equipped for the big stage than ever before.
It takes about 20 minutes for the circus to dissolve. Djokovic and his entourage disappear up the fairway. The wives disperse. Scott packs away his clipboard into a black rucksack and starts checking his phone. A steward in yellow hi-vis announces that the stand is closed and shoos the few remaining spectators towards the exits. The VIP tents seem asleep. And all that mighty heart is lying still!
This account may diverge a little from the official promotional spiel. But in the grander scheme of things, perhaps it is possible to read a little too much into eight tee shots over a three-day competition. Certainly this was true at Whistling Straits two years ago, where all the players who found the fairway ended up losing their opening matches and all the players who missed it ended up winning. Or, as Xander Schauffele so succinctly put it this week: “It’s a special moment. But it just counts as one shot.”
