Tension builds ahead of golf’s grittiest rivalry

As sporting contests go, the Ryder Cup takes some beating for hype.

For golf fans, it's a week in which to fully immerse yourself in a form of the sport that is all too rare now on the professional circuit: matchplay.

Unlike the week-to-week strokeplay events you see on Tour, the Ryder Cup pits players directly against one another. In strokeplay, you're against the golf course. In matchplay, you're against your opponent.

More to the point, for the wider sporting public with only a passing interest in golf, it's an attractive way to get hooked on the sport because the Ryder Cup is different. Mainly because, as a team format, it's a little different to your normal event: there's niggle between the teams and the crowds are partisan. Basically, it's a bit better craic than your normal golf event.

Take 1999, for example, when Justin Leonard holed a raking putt in a crucial match against Jose Maria Olazabal to virtually win the Cup for the US – they all stormed the green, before Olazabal hit his putt. Not exactly in keeping with golf's hard-line on etiquette but still an iconic moment.

It also pits a plucky underdog, Europe, against a behemoth in the United States. That said, the underdog has performed better in more modern times: 12 wins in 22 editions since Europe replaced Great Britain and Ireland represents a very good return.

Two years after Europe's latest victory in Rome, the two sides come up against one another again this week at New York's Bethpage Black, where the atmosphere is set to be raucous, to say the least, with the US crowd sure to try and push things to the edge of golf's decorum limit.

In the wider scheme of things, that might be no bad thing. At least if the home crowd are vociferous in their support of their team, it shows they care. Because, there has been a suggestion that the Americans care less about the Ryder Cup than their European counterparts. If it is to thrive, the Americans need to have their back up about losing so often (they've only won the trophy three times in the 11 editions held since the turn of the Millenium).

They have consistently had the best players on their side, too. Tiger Woods is an obvious example of someone who excelled as an individual but his Ryder Cup record is far from unblemished. In his last appearance, 2018 in Paris, he lost all four of his matches and his haul of 14-and-a-half points from 37 matches across eight Ryder Cups is a pretty dire return for the dominant player of his, or any, era. Lanny Wadkins and Tom Kite both won more points for the US in their time as part of the team. Staggeringly, Woods has only been part of one successful US team, that being the narrow, and controversial, victory at Brookline in 1999.

That points to something special around the Ryder Cup: it doesn't follow form lines. Team dynamic, as opposed to individual prowess, is often a more powerful tool. The team being greater than the sum of its parts, and all that.

Padraig Harrington knows a thing or two about that, having played in six Ryder Cups and captaining the side to a hefty defeat in 2021 at Whistling Straits.

In his preview of this week’s meeting stateside in the company of Joe Molloy on the Indo Sport podcast, Harrington offered an interesting view on why Europe tended to, on the face of it at least, appear to be more of a cohesive team.

His opinion was that there are less egos involved when it comes to the European team to the US. Harrington’s analysis suggested that, because players were from different countries, that was actually of benefit.

“When they’re in the team room,” Harrington said of the European players, “they don’t have to be the number one European, they can be the number one Swede, the number one Spanish player, you can be the number one from your country and that’s ego enough.

“Whereas in the States team room, everybody is competing to be the number one US guy. There’s always two or three guys fighting for that position in the team room, to be the number one for sponsors to go to, the biggest brand or whatever it is.” 

It's an interesting viewpoint and, when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense and perhaps underlines the reason why the US were so unsuccessful as a team when Woods was so successful as an individual.

On the European side, Rory McIlroy will attract lots of attention and, you can be sure, the US crowd will want to take him down a peg or two after the highs of this year. He has also been very quick to stress how important it is to him, and Europe, to win a Ryder Cup away from home. Only once has that happened since 2004 – that being the ‘Miracle at Medinah’ in 2012.

To further add to the sense that something might be brewing this week, McIlroy said last week that “it’s inevitable something is going to happen in New York. It might not involve me but it is inevitable that something will happen, whether like in Rome last time or something else.” 

“I just think when you go into that environment and you are there for five or six days and the crowd are on you for eight hours, so many days in a row… it is inevitable it will get to someone or get to us as a group at some point.

“We are just going to have to do a really good job of managing that, having each other’s backs and protecting each other.” 

The golf will be good, but the niggle outside of it all too will only add to things.

The Ryder Cup is like nothing else in golf – and that's no bad thing.