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      U.S. Ryder Cup Team Seizes Big Lead on a Wild Opening Day

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      The action included some harrowing moments for a couple of golfers, and the gallery included Michael Jordan.HAVEN, Wis. — A snapshot panorama from the first day of the Ryder Cup would start with a crowd of 40,000 — 90 percent of it American fans because of pandemic-related travel restrictions — noisily arriving before sunrise on Friday to roar unabated for 12 hours and through eight matches that concluded in the gloaming. Patriotic costumes were in vogue, though not among the most prominent spectators in the mix: Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry.Whistling Straits, the topsy-turvy golf fun house designed by Pete Dye along Lake Michigan, almost claimed two competitors as a stumbling Jordan Spieth ended up a hop step from a Great Lakes face plant and Ireland’s Shane Lowry flopped to his backside on an embankment like a toddler on a water slide. Tiger Woods, still recovering from a devastating car crash in February, was there in spirit on Friday, having sent an inspirational message to the U.S. team on the eve of the event. Bryson DeChambeau, ever the lightning rod for attention, boomed his opening drive of the day off line and off the ankle of a spectator. Later, DeChambeau ripped a towering 417-yard drive and then helped chase down the world’s top-ranked male golfer, Jon Rahm, to earn a pivotal half point.DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?! 🤯@JordanSpieth // @RyderCupUSA 📺 Watch now on GOLF and @peacockTV💻 https://t.co/FGvI8M8F19 pic.twitter.com/wHxO9XuSKr— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) September 24, 2021
      Ultimately, the big picture would reveal that the Americans had taken control of the event by winning each of the four-match morning and afternoon sessions for a 6-2 lead over the European team. It was the largest first-day lead for the United States at the Ryder Cup since 1975, when it had a five-point lead.But that was when the Americans routinely dominated the event. Since the mid-1990s, the script has been reversed, with the Europeans having won four of the past five events and nine of the past 12.“It was good to finally get things going, and it was obviously a good start,” Steve Stricker, the U.S. nonplaying captain, said. “We’d like to win every session.”Stricker, a mild-mannered Wisconsin native not known for risky moves, took some big chances with his afternoon pairings after the Americans had built a 3-1 lead in the morning matches. Every match featured two-man teams from each side. The morning format was foursomes, in which players alternate hitting the same golf ball on a hole, while the afternoon brought a four-ball format, in which each golfer plays his own ball, and the lower score for a team decides the result on a hole.The strongest American combination in the morning was Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, two of the American team’s six Ryder Cup rookies. The pair surged to a big lead early and routed the high-profile, veteran European team of Rory McIlroy and Ian Poulter, 5 and 3.“I don’t know that anyone could have beaten Xander and Patrick today,” McIlroy said later.Usually when a new team is formed and has immediate success, Ryder Cup captains keep the players together and playing often. But for the afternoon matches, Stricker surprisingly had Schauffele play with Dustin Johnson, who had teamed with Collin Morikawa for an easy win in the morning. It had been expected that Stricker would keep that pair together as well.Instead, Morikawa, the reigning British Open champion, sat out the afternoon matches, as did Spieth and the team of Brooks Koepka and Daniel Berger, who had been victorious in a morning match.But on Thursday, Stricker said that he had arranged his lineup for the first eight matches and that nothing that occurred in the morning session would change his plans for the afternoon. Given the pressure the Americans are under to win on home soil, few believed Stricker would stick to such a plan. But he did, and the results were impressive.Justin Thomas celebrating on the ninth green as Viktor Hovland of Norway looked on. Thomas emerged as the emotional leader of the U.S. team on Day 1.Warren Little/Getty ImagesCantlay teamed with Justin Thomas, who had played in the morning with his close friend Spieth. Cantlay, the PGA Tour player of the year, was steady, and Thomas, who appears to be the emotional leader of the American team, was fiery. But the duo was losing for most of its match against England’s Tommy Fleetwood and Norway’s Viktor Hovland. Then, with two holes remaining, Thomas rallied for a crucial putt that created a tie, which is how the match ended.The usually stoic Cantlay even showed some emotion during the round with an occasional fist pump.“I was feeding off J.T. a little bit,” Cantlay said, referring to Thomas. “He carried me around all day today, and he played great, and it was a dogfight.”Cantlay was also doing most of the post-round talking because Thomas had all but lost his voice from screaming and yelling toward the American crowd, which he did after sinking any meaningful putt.Tony Finau, left, and Harris English of the United States on the 10th green Friday afternoon. They defeated Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, 4 and 3.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe Johnson-Schauffele team defeated England’s Paul Casey and Austria’s Bernd Wiesberger, 2 and 1. DeChambeau was paired with Scottie Scheffler in a match against Rahm and England’s Tyrrell Hatton that ended in a tie. The American team of Tony Finau and Harris English used their length off the tee and their accurate iron play to overpower McIlroy, who combined with Lowry in a 4-and-3 loss.The competition continues Saturday with another eight matches.Some of the Americans mentioned that Woods’s message had been part of the motivation for their winning play on Friday.“I’m obviously not going to reveal what he said,” Schauffele said. “But we referred to it a few times a day, and we knew what we needed to do. We knew he was fist-pumping from the couch. Whether he was on crutches or not — he’s fired up as any of us back at home.” More

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      At the Ryder Cup, the Fans Are Part of the Show

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      The most un-golf golf tournament in the world brings camaraderie, rambunctiousness and world-class banter to a sport normally played in hushed tones.At the Ryder Cup, fans are everything.They bring excitement to the biennial match, which starts this week at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin on the Lake Michigan shoreline. But they also provide an energy that can swing a match or sway an entire day of competition. For three days, Ryder Cup fans make golf feel like football, shaking a normally staid sport and transforming a quiet golf course into a packed stadium.Ben Crenshaw knows that power well. A four-time Ryder Cup player — and two-time Masters champion — he was captain of the 1999 U. S. team that mounted one of the greatest comebacks in the event’s history. Down four points heading into the final day, Crenshaw’s American squad rallied on Sunday at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., to win by one point.“The ebb and flow of the tenor of the crowd is an amazing thing to watch,” Crenshaw said. “Emotions can change very quickly. As a player you know what’s going on. You sort of sense it by instinct.”That afternoon in 1999, the key shot was made by the American Justin Leonard who sank a 45-putt on the 17th hole at Brookline. The crowd erupted. “There was no one on the face of this planet who would have given Justin Leonard a chance to make that putt,” Crenshaw said. “Seeing it go in, it was like a lightening bolt. We lost our composure. We had to apologize for that. But it was just in the moment.”The Ryder Cup, the most un-golf golf tournament in the world, brings camaraderie, rambunctiousness, singing, hollering and world-class banter to a sport normally played in hushed tones.Team Europe golfer Ian Poulter of England walks past a group of enthusiastic supporters during a practice round at the 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah, Ill.Jeff Haynes/REUTERSThe question that concerns many people this year is, what will the Ryder Cup be like with the Delta variant surging and international travel a challenge? It’s going to be different for sure, but not so different as to be unrecognizable. For one, there will still be fans. Their importance was one reason the P.G.A. of America, which is the host of the event in the United States, did not try to stage the Ryder Cup last year without them.“We held a P.G.A. Championship without fans [in 2020], but a Ryder Cup without fans isn’t a Ryder Cup in our view or anyone’s view,” said Seth Waugh, chief executive of the P.G.A. of America. “We were able to roll it ahead to get to this year when we could have a Ryder Cup with a full fan experience.”Waugh said he was pleased that very few European fans had asked for refunds, even though the P.G.A. offered them no questions asked. He said he was hopeful there would be a robust European crowd at Whistling Straits.Jubilant fans have always been a part of the competition. The first Ryder Cup was held in 1927 at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts. Two of the great players of that time, Walter Hagen from the United States and Ted Ray from Britain were the captains.Ray was well known in the Boston area: He and Harry Vardon, another great British golfer, had lost the 1913 U.S. Open in a playoff to Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur, at the Country Club in Brookline.In that first Ryder Cup contest, the American side easily won, with 9½ points to Britain’s 2½ points. In defeat, Ray “heavily praised the crowds for being nonpartisan, his players were troubled by the many photographers,” according to the club’s history.And so was born the Ryder Cup tradition of players trying to find their footing on foreign ground with a decided home-field advantage.Before 1979, the United States had dominated the Ryder Cup. From that first match at Worcester in 1927 to 1977 when it was played at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in England, the Americans won 18 times to Britain and Ireland’s three, with one tie.But starting in 1979, with the inclusion of European players, particularly Seve Ballesteros of Spain, the event drew greater fan support. Since then, Europe has won 11 times to the U.S. team’s eight wins (and one tie).“I’m not sure if Seve was the catalyst for the Ryder Cup change, but once he was included it became competitive again,” said David Smith, an English professional golfer turned golf course developer. “It became fun. Now there’s an opportunity for both sides to win.”The European team celebrates its victory at the 1985 Cup in Wishaw, England.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty Images/Getty ImagesThis year’s European squad will include Ian Poulter, an English golfer ranked 49th in the world who has had an outsized influence on the Ryder Cup over six appearances. He has a record of 14 wins, six losses and two ties. (For comparison, Tiger Woods has a record of 13 wins, 21 losses, and three ties over eight appearances.)“Ian Poulter’s trying to get the crowd charged up,” Smith said. “You don’t normally have people screaming and chanting when you’re teeing off on the first tee.”If you were rooting for the European side in 1999, the American fans’ enthusiasm was over the top.Davis Rowley, a real estate broker and a longtime Brookline member, volunteered as a marshal at the 1999 Ryder Cup and said he tried to keep the worst of the rowdiest fans in check.“I was stationed on the 15th hole, which was the main entrance to the club,” he said. “I had four to six Boston College football players at my disposal. At one point, another marshal relayed that there were a couple of inebriated fellows on 15 tee that were heckling the heck out of Montie [Colin Montgomerie]. At my command, my boys went up and threw them out.”But that control was lost when Leonard sank his putt. “The place exploded,” Rowley recalled. “There was just this roar that shook the course.”The nature of fans is that the opposite side does not always agree. “Crenshaw at Brookline whipped the fans up,” said Andrew “Chubby” Chandler, a longtime agent for players on the European Tour. “It was a pretty unpleasant atmosphere. It was about as volatile an atmosphere as I’ve ever been to at a Ryder Cup.”Crenshaw, for his part, doesn’t deny that he played to the crowds. “I plead guilty to exciting the fans,” he said. “I was going out in my cart, and I’d see a whole bunch of fans and I’d raise my hands. They’d acknowledge that. But it was much the same way as Seve was doing in Spain.”That was the previous Ryder Cup at Spain’s Valderrama Golf Club in 1997. The Europeans won that contest by a point with Ballesteros as the team captain.Playing in the Ryder Cup, particularly for first-time participants, is difficult. “The one thing rookies don’t realize and expect is how nervous they’re going to be,” Chandler said, noting the noise on the first tee. “They’ve all played in majors, and they’ll be more nervous than that. I could never imagine that Darren Clarke [a five-time Ryder Cup player] would be so nervous on the driving range and then go birdie the first three holes.”Padraig Harrington, this year’s European captain, cited the need for experience in the selection of his team. “The older guys bring something, but the younger guys bring a huge amount of passion,” he said. “They light the fire in the team room for the old guys. You know the young guys can play. But you need those veterans as well. There’s an equilibrium point.”Changes have been made to the course at Whistling Straits, like flattening steep mounds, widening carts paths and putting the concessions on an adjacent course that won’t be in use during the competition, to move people around more easily under Covid protocols, said Jason Mengel, director of the Ryder Cup. But what matters most this year is that fans will be there in person.“People haven’t been able to root for their country in quite some time,” Waugh said. “The animal spirits are high.” More

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      The Challenges of Whistling Straits

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      Pete Dye designed the course, home to this year’s Ryder Cup, for all golfers, but threw in a few surprises for the professionals.Players come and go, but golf courses remain. The United States will try to wrest the Ryder Cup back from the Europeans this week, and standing between them will be the golf architect Pete Dye and the course he designed at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.Dye, who died last year, was known for defying conventions.“Pete Dye changed the direction of architecture around the world twice,” said Bill Coore of Coore & Crenshaw, who is a former Dye associate.Over his six-decade career, Dye created memorable and difficult courses, including Harbour Town Golf Links in South Carolina and T.P.C. Sawgrass in Florida. Coore said courses like Harbour Town were “based on finesse and shot placement, and then later in his career he went the exact opposite way with T.P.C. Sawgrass,” building big, brawny courses he once eschewed.The courses are indicative of the ways Dye changed golf design.“You can pick any course with smaller mounding, pot bunkers and small angled greens that was built after Harbour Town’s acclaim, and you can be certain it was influenced by Pete Dye, if not designed by Pete,” Coore said.His work for the P.G.A. of America gave Dye, a former insurance salesman who turned to golf design, the opportunity to build courses that challenged the professionals.“What’s that great line of his,” said Mike Clayton, a designer and former player. “‘Once you get these guys thinking, you’ve got ’em.’ And he was certainly able to do that.”The 17th island green at T.P.C. Sawgrass is an example of how Dye can get in the head of the world’s best. The short par 3 would often be a birdie if it were on dry land, but, surrounded by water and coming late in the round, it’s a challenge.Dye’s courses require golfers to hit the proper side of the fairway to score well. An easier shot from the tee may provide the safety of short grass, but will likely block a golfer’s best scoring angle.A daring shot toward a hazard is often rewarded with an easier scoring chance. As matches conclude this week, notice the options Dye presents players on the par-4 18th hole at Whistling Straits. The split fairway offers a path right to avoid the many bunkers to the left. But an aggressive play over those bunkers, requiring a 300-yard drive, provides a straighter path to the hole and a chance at birdie.“Pete understood exactly how talented the pros were, and he really did design for them,” Tom Doak, another former associate, said. And yet, Doak said Dye also understood how to build for the average player, which came from his wife, Alice, an excellent player.“Because of Alice’s influence, Pete’s whole design style was thought out to scale down for those who couldn’t hit the ball so far,” Doak said.He said Dye accomplished this, in part, by not placing hazards at logical yardages, like a bunker at 280 yards down the right, just because that might force an average player into a tough spot. By focusing on angles and sides of the holes for players to score, Dye allowed his designs to flow seamlessly in challenging the professional and the everyday player.Over his six-decade career, Pete Dye created memorable and difficult courses, including Harbour Town Golf Links in South Carolina and T.P.C. Sawgrass in Florida.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesHerb Kohler, executive chairman of the Kohler Company, said he was so taken with Dye’s designs that he had him build four courses at Whistling Straits.“Pete’s greatest contribution to growing the game of golf was that he considered golfers of all age and skill levels,” Kohler said.Steve Stricker, who lives in Wisconsin and is captain of the U.S. team, said Kohler put Wisconsin on the golf map.“Whistling Straits is a tremendous test, a beautiful piece of property,” he said. “It’s just one of those iconic places here in our state thanks to Herb and his family. It started right here for Wisconsin golf, to be quite honest.”The Ryder Cup is, of course, about challenging the pros. Jason Mengel, director of the Ryder Cup, which ends on Sunday, said he believed that the course was “One of the finest tests of golf anywhere on the planet.”There will also be the raucous crowd on the first tee, where Mengel said they had put hospitality tents in high visibility areas to help set the atmosphere. Coming down the stretch, Mengel said the par-3 17th hole, named Pinch Nerve, “could play a critical role” in determining the winner.Pinched Nerve continues a Dye tradition of testing the mettle of a golfer late in the round. Cut into a hillside, the green is flanked by bunkers left and right with a severe falloff on the left of the long, somewhat narrow green. Past those bunkers is Lake Michigan. Should golfers err toward the right and push the shot onto the hill, they will have virtually no chance to stop the ball from racing off the green from the elevated perch.Looking at the course’s two finishing holes, it’s hard to believe that it lies on land that was once an airstrip. Dye cut into the bluffs that overlook the lake to create a ragged appearance, as if the course had always been there waiting to be discovered. Doak said the dirt he excavated from those bluffs then allowed Dye to create the dunes and mounding found throughout the course.Dye’s courses continue to test the best players. He had a singular vision, which was not that each course must possess a set of qualities, but that a golf course should push golfers to play their best by thinking their way around the course. The pressure of the Ryder Cup will compound that thinking. More

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      Seth Waugh, Head of the P.G.A., Says the World Needs the Ryder Cup

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      The pandemic has caused a lot of stress, which he said this raucous tournament could help relieve.Seth Waugh, the chief executive of the P.G.A. of America since 2018, is ready to hold the biennial Ryder Cup, a year after it was postponed because of the pandemic.The Ryder Cup, with 12 golfers from the United States pitted against 12 from Europe over three days starting on Friday at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, has become more than a golf tournament; it has become a raucous event that Waugh described as a combination of the Super Bowl and a Rolling Stones concert. No other golf tournament regularly has players and fans taunting each other.This year, after Covid-19 seemed to ebb in the spring, the Delta variant has surged back, presenting a challenge to an event that typically hosts about 40,000-plus, all following only a few players.Add to that the tension over critical comments made between two of the U.S. team’s top players — Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka — which has led fans to taunt DeChambeau. Waugh said he, like the PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, would not tolerate bullying. “We’ll be vigilant to make sure it doesn’t cross the line,” Waugh said. “We’ll enforce it if it does.”This year, the P.G.A. of America has created an award to recognize sportsmanship in the contest. The Nicklaus-Jacklin Award commemorates Jack Nicklaus’s conceding a short putt to Tony Jacklin in the 1969 Ryder Cup. As a result, the match ended in a tie.The following interview has been edited and condensed.What will be different about the Ryder Cup this year?There will be different protocols, with masks indoors and masks in some of the more crowded seating areas. The players are likely to be in a bubble. We can’t ensure that everyone is vaccinated, but to make sure we can have a final putt on Sunday we’re going to put them in a bubble. We contemplated checking vaccinations for the fans, but we couldn’t guarantee all the players were going to be vaccinated, so how could we check all the fans?Will European fans be able to come?We said we’d offer refunds for people who couldn’t come or didn’t want to come now. It’s only been a small number of Europeans who have asked for refunds. We hope there will be a good attendance on both sides.How did the planning change with Covid?Part of it is how much more we learned about the virus. There wasn’t as much knowledge last year. We didn’t know how hard it was to catch it outdoors. We think there are natural advantages of being outdoors that make it safe for people to be there. Indoors we’ll have masks. People have gotten better at living with this thing. That’s very different than it was a year ago. We came to the conclusion that the amount of fans doesn’t make a difference. It’s the protocols.How are you preserving the spirit of the event?The first Ryder Cup I went to was at the Belfry in 1993. It was the year Davis Love III made the putt to win. I can tell you I was on the 18th green when he made the putt, but I didn’t see it. I just saw him raise his putter. The experience is the excitement. It’s being there, it’s the fans. If you’re at a Stones concert and you’re not in the front row you don’t see Mick Jagger, but you’re still there hearing “Jumping Jack Flash.”What do you hope this year’s contest will achieve?The Ryder Cup is about fostering relations between each side. We’re trying to recapture some of that purity with the Nicklaus-Jacklin Award. We want to make the stress and the tension of the Ryder Cup the best moment of a player’s life. I hope it will recapture the spirit of what these things should be.Everyone is just fatigued and worn out by this pandemic. Normally, you come back from summer and you’re ready to go. But we’re hurt animals. People haven’t been together for a long time. Schools haven’t been schools, work hasn’t been work, games haven’t been games. The world needs a Ryder Cup to remind us of the good in the world. More

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      Steve Stricker Hopes to Lead U.S. Ryder Cup Team to a Win

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      In 2008, Paul Azinger led the United States to victory over Europe after dividing his team into three four-man “pods.” Would that system change the Americans’ luck this year?“Pod” is not a golf word. And yet it has been on the tongue of nearly everyone in the golf community during the last, tense days before this week’s Ryder Cup, the biennial, pressure-packed team competition between American and European pro golfers that begins Friday.Paul Azinger, the American Ryder Cup captain in 2008 and a former PGA Tour pro, deserves the credit, or the blame, for injecting “pod” into the golf vernacular. Thirteen years ago, after learning that Navy SEAL units bonded by training and living together in small, carefully selected platoons, Azinger decided he would divide his 12-man team into three four-man units before that year’s Ryder Cup. The hope was that a finite, close-knit group could match the unity exhibited by Europe’s triumphant teams.Called the pod system, Azinger’s four-man corps were chosen after each player took a personality test. Grouped together based on compatibility, the players did almost everything together before the Ryder Cup matches — practice rounds, meals, nightly table tennis games. When the competition started, they were paired together in matches and routed the Europeans to claim the first U.S. victory in nine years and just the second since 1993. Azinger was celebrated for his innovation.But in a show of the stubborn individualism that may be hampering the overall American Ryder Cup effort, the U.S. captains who succeeded Azinger rejected or diluted his approach. Only one of those teams won, in 2016, when Davis Love III embraced the pod system.At other team competitions in professional golf, including the Solheim Cup, which pits women’s golfers from the United States against those from Europe, leaders chose to adopt Azinger’s model with success and failure. Last month, the American Solheim Cup captain, Pat Hurst, implemented the pod system and her team lost, 15-13.Even Azinger, now an analyst for NBC, which will broadcast the three days of Ryder Cup matches from Friday to Sunday, has questioned the current efficacy of his idea.“The way I did it wouldn’t even work today, to be honest, even though the concept was good,” he said last week. “I just think the pods, they don’t work all the time. We keep getting beat. If everybody’s still using the pods, pods isn’t the answer. It’s something bigger than that.”The pod debate has not stopped or impeded the discussion about the best way to replicate Azinger’s success on the American side. In the run-up to the event, the overarching intrigue is how Steve Stricker, this year’s U.S. captain, will make up the two-man partnerships he sends out for the 16 matches against Europe’s two-man teams on Friday and Saturday. (On Sunday, the Ryder Cup concludes with 12 one-on-one singles matches.)The American hand-wringing about their player pairings has generally been a source of quiet amusement for the European squad. Devising the pairings on their team is rarely controversial or the product of profound, multilayered planning. Players often form natural partnerships based on which European country they represent.“The Europeans are bonded by blood, which means everything to them,” Azinger said. “The Spaniards play together. The Englishmen, the Irishmen, the Swedes, they’re bonded by something that really gives them a full-blown 1 percent advantage.”From left, Shane Lowry, Bernd Wiesberger, Tommy Fleetwood, Captain Padraig Harrington, Tyrrell Hatton and Lee Westwood of Europe walked with the Ryder Cup trophy on Monday before leaving Heathrow Airport.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesAzinger said a 1 percent advantage may not seem like much, but in the three days of a Ryder Cup competition, more than 4,000 shots are likely to be put in play. A 40-stroke swing, or 1 percent, could conceivably decide a couple of matches, where one point is awarded for each victory and half a point for a tie. Europe has won nine of the last 12 Ryder Cups, but on four occasions the margin of victory was a single point.Seizing on that 1 percent edge, Azinger said of the Europeans: “They bring an intangible with them. It’s a fact.”Outside the golf world, there may be some precedent to explain how the European team’s geographic makeup improves its Ryder Cup results.Some of the strongest, most effective troops during World War II were soldiers assembled from the same town or village, according to Charline Russo, a senior lecturer in organizational dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania and a consultant on executive coaching and team development.“It wasn’t just because they grew up together, there was also that accountability factor,” Russo said. “You didn’t want to go home and admit that you screwed up.”Russo, who has a Ph.D. in organizational leadership, has a deep familiarity with the personality tests that Azinger used 13 years ago. Stricker, who was on the 2008 team, last week conceded that he would employ a variety of tactics to devise his pairings, although he declined to be specific on whether he would use the pod system. Russo said the assessments could be valuable tools, but cautioned, “You need somebody who knows what they’re doing with it because these things can be dangerous.” Azinger, for example, consulted at length with a clinical psychologist.Moreover, Russo, who worked for pharmaceutical and biotech companies and assembled teams for large-scale initiatives, insisted that there was a “special sauce” for winning teams.“There’s a magic to it, too,” she said. “You’ve got a team of rivals and you want to bring them together to face something that’s greater than all of them. And that’s not easy to do.”It may be even more difficult if Brooks Koepka, who qualified for the team but injured his wrist last month, is healthy enough to play. Koepka and his American teammate Bryson DeChambeau have spent most of this year feuding on social media. Stricker has asked the two men to put aside their differences during the Ryder Cup, and each player has been discreet of late, but do not expect Koepka and DeChambeau to be paired for a match, or even assigned to the same pod — if there is a pod system.Justin Leonard, who was a member of several American Ryder Cup teams including the 2008 squad, said that keeping Koepka and DeChambeau apart should be “real easy,” especially if the players are in pods.“We ate breakfast together, we ate dinner together, we played our practice rounds together, and when we were in the same room with the whole team, we sat at a table together,” Leonard said of 2008, adding that the arrangement provided a level of comfort because there were no surprises when the pairings were announced.Additionally, Leonard, who is now an NBC golf analyst, said he expected the pod system to return for the Americans this week because Phil Mickelson, who was on the 2008 team, is a nonplaying vice captain to Stricker.“Phil Mickelson was a big proponent of the pods,” Leonard said. “He loved that system. Him being a vice captain, I feel fairly confident that we’ll see something similar to that.”Azinger said he did not have a clue how Stricker might proceed.“I don’t know what’s he’s doing,” Azinger said. “He’s not told me.”Statistically, the Americans would appear to enter the Ryder Cup with a significant advantage since eight of the top 10 players in the men’s world rankings are on their side. (Jon Rahm, the top-ranked male golfer, is the only European player in the top 10.)But Azinger laughed and swatted away predictions.“The Ryder Cup, it’s a different animal,” he said. “Getting those right players together, I mean, I did personality types, and I felt that trumped analyzing their golf games. So that was my philosophy. The players fell in love with it. I gave them ownership of it. They made the decision. So it worked out great.“But it was still up to them once the bell rings.” More

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      Man Utd’s Ronaldo naps five times a day, while Dwayne Johnson snoozes for four hours… how much sports stars sleep

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      BEING one of the most well known sporting icons on the planet is tiring work.But rather than sleep all night, Cristiano Ronaldo instead takes FIVE naps a day while Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson snoozes for just four hours to keep himself going.
      Cristiano Ronaldo takes FIVE naps-a-day
      Last year, it emerged Man Utd superstar Ronaldo, 36, grabs 40 winks five times each day and sleeps in the foetal position.
      And here SunSport can reveal the different sleep patterns of several other sporting icons from across the globe and how many hours of ‘Zzz’ time they get, according to Online Mattress Review.
      Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson – 4 hours
      The Rock survives on just four hours sleep every nightCredit: Getty – Contributor

      The WWE icon turned movie star hits the sack for just four hours-a-night.
      At 49, Hawaiian born Johnson clocks off between midnight and is up and about again at 4am.
      Presumably to work out at least 25 times a day to maintain his impressive physique.
      Muhammad Ali – 6.5 hours
      Muhammad Ali was a religious man and slept for 6.5 hours after dinner and prayers

      The greatest boxer of all time put many opponents to sleep in his time and would wind down between 10pm and 4:30am.
      As a devout Muslim, much of his time would be split between prayer and training.
      And his evening routine would include a walk after dinner, a quick wash, prayers and short stint in front of the TV before he dozed off.
      Serena Williams – 7 hours

      Serena Williams clocks up a solid seven hours of sleep after socialising and work
      You do not need hawk eye to tell when Serena is out for the count but we can neither confirm or deny whether her snoring makes a racket.
      The tennis sensation takes a solid seven hour sleep between midnight and 7am each day after a post-dinner routine of socialising and work.
      The 39-year-old former world number one is also a mum of a young daughter so her slumbers are no doubt interrupted by the littl’un every now and then.

      Cristiano Ronaldo – 7.5 hours
      Ronaldo sleeps in the fetal position to stay in top shape aged 36

      Ronaldo has perhaps the oddest routine of all the big stars.
      Rather than one lump of rest at the end of each day like most of us, Ronnie reportedly prefers to take short naps of an hour-and-a-half each time throughout the day.
      After dinner, he relaxes with his friends before a swim at 10pm.
      He then takes one of his signature naps until midnight and relaxes until another short burst of sleep from around 3am before waking up for the day.
      Ronda Rousey – 8 hours
      MMA star Rousey does not mess around when it comes to getting the right amount of rest

      MMA and WWE star Rousey’s routine seems pretty standard.
      Eight hours between midnight and 8am.
      Nice and simple.
      Tiger Woods – 8.5 hours
      Tiger Woods – perhaps the greatest golfer in history – spends more than a third of his day asleep

      Woods is generally considered the best golfer of all time.
      And to maintain such high levels, the superstar spends eight and a half hours dreaming of sinking putts and splitting fairways.
      He snoozes from 10pm to 6:30am – proving the early birdie really does catch the worm.
      Tom Brady – 9 hours
      Tom Brady is widely considered the best quarter-back ever to play American Football and he does not compromise when it comes to rest

      Like Woods, Brady is considered the greatest ever in his field.
      The former New England Patriots quarter-back is revered in across the world for his sustained and unrivalled talent.
      And the 44-year-old – who is still playing for the Tampa Bay Bucacaneers – makes sure he touches down to sleep for nine hours each day between 8:30pm and 5:30am.

      Stephen Curry – 9 hours
      NBA star Stephen Curry is one of the longest sleepers on the list with a solid nine hours

      Basketball star Stephen Curry is another record breaker who is set to go down in the NBA history books.
      The Golden State Warriors point guard is another who does not take rest lightly – opting to hit the hay for nine hours between 11pm and 8am every day.
      Inside Cristiano Ronaldo’s luxury yacht as it flies through the water More

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      A Resort Developer Who Puts the Emphasis on Golf, Not Real Estate

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      Mike Keiser has become a star in the golf world by putting the sport over vacation homes. Though he’s sold plenty of those, too.This article is part of our latest special report on International Golf Homes, about some of the top spots to live and play.Mike Keiser started building Bandon Dunes, a remote golf destination in Bandon, Ore., with little care as to where the golfers who came might stay after they played.Bandon is certainly hard to get to: It is hours away from any airport and a five-hour drive from Portland. But in the late 1990s, Mr. Keiser felt the time was right. He also had the funds to make it happen, having built a successful greeting card company, which he sold for $250 million in 2005. And he wanted to test his theory that golfers in America would love links golf — an old form of the sport, invented in Scotland, involving a more open landscape and generally near the water — if exposed to it.“I expected we’d have 10,000 rounds the first year, which was the break-even number,” Mr. Keiser said. “We did 24,000 that first year and that basically paid for two years of development.”Bandon Dunes, built along a barren stretch of the Oregon coast, has 1,200 acres, 48 rooms and a clubhouse. The club and vacation homes were added by Mike Keiser at the urging of Howard McKee, an early partner.Bandon Dunes Golf ResortEven with that sort of success, Bandon needed somewhere for players to stay. Enter an early partner, Howard McKee. At Mr. McKee’s urging, Mr. Keiser built a clubhouse with 12 rooms and four guest cottages with individual rooms for group trips. “It was self-funding after the initial investment in 1,200 acres of land, 48 rooms and a clubhouse,” Mr. Keiser said. “But that wouldn’t have been possible if Howard hadn’t made me build the rooms and the clubhouse. I give him kudos for that.”Mr. Keiser is one of the most successful golf developers of the past three decades. From barren, coastal land in Oregon, he created a new template for the stay-and-play buddies’ trip. He has since built three more.His model is the reverse of many developers who lead with real estate and fit the golf in around it: Mr. Keiser puts the golf courses first, then he listens to what the local market wants. Today his name is spoken of among serious golfers in the same manner as top players and star architects: with reverence, a bit of jealousy and a good deal of amazement.Soon, he was expanding. In 2014, he had opened Cabot Links on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and has recently begun development on Cabot St. Lucia in the Caribbean, both with an outside partner, Ben Cowan-Dewar. In between, he helped spread the model to Sand Valley, a golf resort his sons Michael and Chris opened in 2017 in central Wisconsin.Sand Valley and Cabot Links both have real estate developments within the resort. Cabot St. Lucia is experiencing a pandemic-driven boom in demand for its homes — even though the resort is still years from opening.At Bandon, however, Mr. Keiser had a practical reason to build temporary dwellings and not vacation homes: He could not imagine golfers’ successfully selling their families on trekking out to a vacation home in coastal Oregon.“The Bandon brand is it’s cold and windy and it rains a lot,” Mr. Keiser said. “Does that sound like a marketing hook? Had we tried, we would have failed.”Two decades on, Bandon, with its five full-length courses, two short courses and international reputation, has remained a “spartan” experience, as Mr. Keiser’s son Michael put it. But the resorts under the Keiser brand that have come since Bandon have all found a way to include real estate without cheapening the golf experience with Florida-style condos lining every fairway.“Most developers try to maximize the amount of real estate they can put around their golf course,” Michael Keiser said. “We sell just enough real estate to fuel our golf addiction.”The market for Sand Valley, unlike Bandon Dunes, is one where most guests are driving less than three hours to get to a part of Wisconsin known for vacationing. So the homes can be rented and earn income for their owners.The Sand Valley golf resort in central Wisconsin was built to be family-friendly. “We got golf going first, but we’re adding other things like a pool and a pool house and court tennis,” said Michael Keiser, Mike Keiser’s son.Sand Valley“It doesn’t go against the spirit of Sand Valley,” Michael Keiser said. “Our guests love staying in them. By selling real estate we’re also able to give our resort guests more of what they want, like fire pits and screened porches.”Yet, like his father, Michael Keiser said he was resisting the siren call of money from home sales. He has built only 15 homes at Sand Valley with eight more in the works.“We just want to sell enough to house our resort guests and fund golf courses,” he said. “I’d rather spend my time building great golf courses, and the real estate lets me do that.”At Cabot Links, which opened in 2012, real estate has come slower. For years, Mike Keiser was uninterested in partnering with the prospective developer, Mr. Cowan-Dewar, then a 20-something Canadian golf enthusiast, and did not return his calls.“A friend convinced me to take his call,” Mr. Keiser said. “The deal was land for a dollar. It was remote, but I’d already done that.”“When I finally went there,” he added, “I was flabbergasted that it looked that good.”Cabot sold out its original 19 villas in 2014, but it only recently got zoning approval for 29 additional homes at its second golf course. Those homes sold quickly and are now funding other improvements. Mr. Keiser said that he had never wanted to rush a development and that he had been fortunate to have the money to take his time.After surveying the original homeowners, Mr. Cowan-Dewar said people wanted more non-golf amenities like tennis, walking trails and barns for exercise and entertaining. “As people live in these places, they behave differently than if they just come for golf,” he said. “You start to go to the beach. You don’t just play 18 holes when you arrive, then 36 holes the next day and 36 holes the day after that.”Mr. Keiser did not balk at the different formula. One of his business philosophies is to listen to the clients and shape the resort around what they want.“You need to find the best property you can, but then sit next to the first tee and ask people what they want,” Michael Keiser said. The Dunes Club in New Buffalo, Mich., was an early acquisition of Mike Keiser. A nine-hole course, it is not far from Lake Michigan. Lyndon French for The New York TimesHis father takes that approach literally: When Cabot Links opened, he eschewed the ceremonial first round, and instead sat with Mr. Cowan-Dewar on the first tee, asking people what they liked and disliked.Largely because of its geographical location, the project underway in St. Lucia is the most different. There is nothing cold or unpleasant about the golf season there and it has been a pandemic escape, which Mr. Cowan-Dewar credits for selling out the first 42 homes upon their release.Per the Keiser formula, the golf course in St. Lucia came first: Nine of 18 greens will be on the ocean and the course is being designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, acclaimed architects who have also built courses at the other Keiser resorts. The philosophy of Sand Valley has evolved to be something different still — not a dream buddies’ trip or a Caribbean escape but a family-friendly vacation spot.“Our goal is not spartan, it’s comfort,” Michael Keiser said. “The non-golf activities are the difference at Sand Valley. We got golf going first but we’re adding other things like a pool and a pool house and court tennis.”In addition to its two existing courses at Sand Valley, a third is about to be approved. For hard-core golfers, one of the Keiser family’s favorite course architects, Tom Doak, is in the process of recreating the Lido, a revered Long Island course that closed after World War II. The new Lido, scheduled to open in 2023, will have just 17 homes, with half of them for rent to provide 50 guest beds. Additional rooms might be added above the club house, if needed, he said.“Part of that secret sauce is that nimbleness and ability to flow and adapt,” Michael Keiser said. “Just like at Bandon, my dad didn’t set out to build all these courses. He set out to do what was immediately in front of him.”The success of Bandon begot the subsequent resorts, but that success required a wholesale reimagining of what the golf vacation would be.It started with the land. Then Mr. Keiser added architects who were little known — David McLay Kidd, now a sought-after designer, had yet to design a course when he was selected at age 26 to build the first Bandon course, which opened in 1999. And he asked the designers to make the courses fun, not penal as many top courses had been.“I’m using a no-name inexperienced golf architect at a remote site that had no chance of succeeding,” Mr. Keiser said. “It was ridiculous that it could work. But I had the money to lose, which was good because no bank would have financed it.”That risk has been rewarded. In addition to a steady stream of golf tourists at all the resorts, Bandon was just awarded 13 national championships from the United States Golf Association over the next two decades, starting with the U.S. Junior Amateur next year. Mr. Keiser is proud of getting the recognition but prouder still of having the courses to do something that, again, hasn’t been done before.When Bandon hosts the U.S. Men’s and Women’s Amateur in 2032, the tournaments will be played the same week. “With five courses, we can have two televised golf tournaments going on at the same time,” he said. “It will be very important for girls golf. I’m very proud of that. That’s the direct result of having enough golf courses.” More

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      in Golf

      ‘Golfing Heaven’ in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides

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      This article is part of our latest special report on International Golf Homes, about some of the top spots to live and play.It was his love of fishing that would change Gordon Irvine’s life. In 2005, the golf course consultant, who lives in Ayrshire, Scotland, was casting about for a place to tackle for his next trip.Try the Outer Hebrides — the island chain off Scotland’s west coast — someone told him, casually; the fishing was superb.On one of the islands, a community golf course was being rehabbed, and within a few years Mr. Irvine was offered a simple barter: the locals on South Uist, the second-largest of the islands, would trade advice on how to restore it in exchange for trout fishing rights.Standing on the west coast of that island, he surveyed a nine-hole, par-3 course that had been carved out of the grass runways where mail planes had once landed. It was fine, if unremarkable, but then he heard that it was not the original site of the local golfing greens.“Someone said this famous old golfer had laid that one out, right on top of the old dune system nearby,” Mr. Irvine recalled. He said he became curious when someone mentioned Tom Morris, the prolific 19th-century champion-turned-greenskeeper nicknamed the father of golf.Mr. Irvine assumed it must be folklore, or a hoax. But as soon as he hiked to the dunes and looked out, he was stunned by what he saw: the well-preserved remnants of a world class, 18-hole course. It had been built in 1891 and named Askernish, after the small settlement in which it sits. Mr. Irvine resolved at that moment to bring Mr. Morris’s masterpiece back to playable perfection.Tom Morris, a golf champion and later a master of course design, around 1905. Some call him the father of golf.Print Collector/Getty ImagesThis isolated spot — a tiny island whose year-round population at the last census just topped 1,700 — might seem an unlikely location for such an important course.The coast of South Uist is mostly machair, a low-lying grassy plain that’s extremely fertile and appears only in this corner of the British Isles. The 6,300-yard Askernish course was coaxed from that landscape, rather than carved or sculpted, as might be more commonplace now, according to Mr. Irvine. Mr. Morris would prowl a plot, planting flags in the ground wherever he could envisage a hole.Askernish was particularly precious, Mr. Irvine said, because many of the other courses Mr. Morris designed have been renovated and updated, often destroying his vision in the process.These greens, though, were abandoned by the 1920s, left almost in suspended animation. Mr. Irvine and other volunteers resolved to restore it using old techniques and minimal machinery.The 16th hole, now nicknamed Old Tom’s Pulpit, is particularly noteworthy. “It’s the one we felt reflected him more than any other — it has that classic blind shot Old Tom Morris was in favor of,” Mr. Irvine said. “The view from the elevated tee is just breathtaking.”The course reopened in 2008 and is now operated as a community course, available to anyone. In the winter, the grassland is opened up to local farmers for their animals to graze.Even in summer, when it’s tended, the greens are rougher and more like those used for hickory golf (a classic variation played with hickory clubs) than today’s manicured lawns. “We do have old sets of clubs available in the clubhouse if people want to play that,” said Mr. Irvine, who still goes regularly to South Uist to fish for trout and to golf.Machair, a low-lying grassy plain, covers the island coastline.AlamyBut it is far from the only course in the region. Other impressive playing grounds pepper the 130-mile-long island chain, both nine- and 18-hole courses.“Golf in the Outer Hebrides is golfing heaven, an experience like no other in Scotland,” said Roger McStravick, a golfing historian who lives in St. Andrews. “It’s a time capsule, in many ways, back to the 19th century. It’s the best bit of golf escapism in the world.”There are so many courses here for a reason: It’s all about the unusual history of the Hebrides.Victorian-era British aristocrats often summered here in the 19th century — the islands are surprisingly warm in season, thanks to the Gulf Stream that flows to them.“They were an exclusive place to escape to; it’s where the landed gentry would go on holiday,” Mr. McStravick said. “It was their Aspen, their exclusive resort.”(Its upper-class connections remain — Queen Elizabeth has twice chartered a ship to cruise around here with her family.)That wealthy niche of Britons was among golf’s most avid proponents, and those who lived here commissioned courses to keep their guests entertained.Lady Cathcart, for example, whose father-in-law had bought South Uist in the 1830s, hired Mr. Morris to create one of Scotland’s earliest private golf courses.Elsewhere, her upper-class peers followed suit: Lady Matheson, whose family held sway in Lewis, the northern part of Lewis and Harris, the largest of the islands, financed a course in its largest town, Stornoway. Her budget did not stretch to hiring a talent like Mr. Morris.With the encouragement of the upper classes — and the convenience of the facilities they funded — golfing culture spread among the working-class locals.More courses followed, including on Harris. The course there has also been restored as a community resource, and all greens fees are paid by the honor system.Mr. McStravick said that the champion golfer Nick Faldo had once played the Harris course and had deposited a signed, five-pound note at the end of his round. “The locals thought that wasn’t enough, and he subsequently apologized for such a meager donation — all in good spirits.” A tournament now recalls the incident, Mr. McStravick said. “Known as the Faldo Fiver, it’s played every year, like a trophy.”The chance to play these links is often cited by those who want to buy property in the islands, according to John Gillies, of Ken MacDonald & Co., a Stornoway-based real estate agency. “Part of the appeal of Askernish is you could phone up in the morning and be able to play that day,” said Mr. Gillies, himself an avid golfer. “There’s an aura about it and it’s worthy of all the accolades it gets. It’s a phenomenal course, like stepping back in time.”Demand has surged for housing on South Uist, but inventory is low. At some point, one real estate agent said, “we’re just going to run out of properties.”DACameron/AlamyThe northerly latitude of the islands are a boon in summer, he added, with games viable until 11 p.m. or so in July; it’s also the reason Askernish hosts its Open every August. (It was canceled in 2020, but returned this summer.)Demand for property in the Outer Hebrides has surged during the pandemic, as have prices. Mr. Gillies noted that another agency in the islands typically had a roster of about 40 homes available at any time, but its inventory had dwindled to four by midsummer this year. “At some point, with the demand there is, we’re just going to run out of properties,” he said.Homes here tend to fall into two broad categories, he noted: older, historic cottages and eco-friendly, contemporary architecture with an emphasis on sustainability.Conventionally, he said, houses here would sell for the price suggested on a surveyor’s home report; in the last six months, successful offers have usually hovered 20 to 30 percent above that number.Tenancies for crofts, or local farms, used to sell for £15,000 to £20,000 (about $21,000 to $28,000), but one that overlooks the picturesque Luskentyre Bay in Harris was seeking bids of £200,000 or more.Of course, there are no homes for sale overlooking Askernish, nestled in the dunes. But it’s worth the drive, or ferry ride, to South Uist from any home in the islands, said Mr. McStravick, the golf historian.“Golf is so much more than a stick and ball game — it’s about escapism,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s anywhere better in Scotland to lose yourself either in the golf, or the scenery.” More