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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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      Padraig Harrington Faces Hard Choices

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      He is captain of the Ryder Cup’s European team, and he has to pick the last three players for his team.Padraig Harrington of Ireland is back in the spotlight — not as a player, but as the captain of Team Europe in this month’s Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.Harrington, 50, a three-time major champion, will be competing in the BMW PGA Championship, which begins on Thursday at the Wentworth Club in England. There, he will be monitoring how potential members of his team perform.After the tournament, he will pick three players to round out the 12-man squad that will face the Americans. The other nine will have qualified on points.The following conversation, which took place in late August, has been edited and condensed.Can you talk about the BMW, the tournament and the course?Wentworth is the traditional home of the European Tour. It is really a great tournament venue. You can score well on it, but when the pressure comes on Sunday, those tree-lined holes and out-of-bounds get a little tight.How are you going to be able to focus on your own game this week?Hopefully, I won’t be able to focus on my play. Maybe being on the course will be a slight respite.How do you think the event will play out because of Covid-19?I’m interested in that, actually. Will the fans be more excited because they waited so long and there’s a certain level of, “Gee, we’re happy to be here?” I suspect, because of Covid, it might be more of a celebration of golf and the Ryder Cup than anything else.I won’t ask you for your three picks, but do you have certain people in mind?There are three weeks to go, and I’m very aware that things can change, especially with the BMW being such a big event. It would be pretty straightforward right now, but three weeks is a long time in golf.And you’re happy with having three picks?I chose three. They were offering me eight picks when it was at the height of the pandemic. The reason I wanted three is anybody who gets picked is under more pressure and stress because the media and public second-guess whether somebody else should be picked.Your thoughts on Whistling Straits, and how it fits your team?It’s very difficult for the Europeans to beat a U.S. team on a stereotypical U.S. golf course. Whistling Straits is a links-style course. They’ve opened it up as much as possible — I’m sure there will be plenty of birdies — but the elements [wind] will come into play.You sound like you’re saying the Americans are the favorites?To beat them in the States, it’s going to require a momentous effort on our behalf, and we are definitely going to have to figure out how to make the collective more confident than the individual. They look like they’re the strongest they’ve ever been.Are you satisfied with your career or do you feel you didn’t achieve as much as you thought you should?I achieved far more than I could have ever possibly dreamed in this game. I studied accountancy. My goal in life when I took that school was to become an accountant and manage a golf course.I was a good player, but I didn’t think I was good enough to be a professional. And even when I turned pro, my goal would have been to survive on tour half a dozen years and retire and get a good country club job.How much more golf will you play?I will try and play where I’m competitive.If I don’t feel like I’m competitive on the regular tour, I’m very happy to try to compete on the Champions Tour [a circuit for golfers 50 and older]. I will continue to play and do whatever I can around golf for years to come. More