As Matt Fitzpatrick Worked on his short match around the Greens of Bethpage Black, a group of American fans has seen an opportunity to get in the ear. They laughed with some of his stamped chips with long herbs and predicted hard that he would not be chosen to play Friday morning quartets by European captain Luke Donald.
“They said to me,” Oh, you’re probably going to be here (to make the scarage) on Friday, “smiled Fitzpatrick. “I said to myself:” Yeah, you are probably right to be just “.” They were wrong, it turns out that Fitzpatrick will be thrown directly into action in new European twinning with Ludvig Aberg, as Opening couples were finally announced.
There is a lot of discussions in the accumulation to a RyderObviously speaking too much. While the rain fell on the golf course on Thursday, Final press conferences I wandered on strange tangents while the media were trying to withdraw even more discussion points. At one point, Viktor Hovland I spent two good minutes to discuss his interest in UFOs.
Everything has been said, at least twice. There are few scratch terrains, partly because the European team is practically identical to that of Rome and the pairs will also be similar. The questions therefore returned to an irrepressible theme. Europe won it at home. But can they prevail? Can they play at the same level They need a few ozempic shotsas Jon Rahm Experienced during his training round?
Each player will have to find their own path through a feverish atmosphere. Sepp Straka spoke of getting lost in his routine and Bob Macintyre said he would be focused on eye -free eyes only on the only thing he could control, his golf swing. Others, such as Fitzpatrick and Rahm, plan to embrace the sense of American humor and appreciate it.
“It was very fun,” said Fitzpatrick about his stay with us fans. I think you have to buy it. I laughed well with these boys, we laughed well and they followed us for a few holes. I think you have to grasp it, anything. What makes this event so fun, so special is fans. This is obviously an excellent opportunity for us to come and try to play our best golf course in front of them. “”
Fitzpatrick said that his parents would not be in part here because they had horrible experience watching him play the whistling strait four years ago. American fans have liked, including a particularly disturbing comment that called for Fitzpatrick’s opponent, Daniel Berger, to “cut his throat”.
It is a story that extends through the generations, until when the father of Colin Montgomerie left the Brookline course in 1999 due to the ugly insults targeting his son. There has not been great maliciousness during training sessions here so far, but Call of Collin Morikawa in “Chaos” When the game begins on Friday suggests that the Americans would not bother them with engineering.
Hovland, perhaps the friendliest man in golf, is not used for animosity but insisted that he was well prepared for what could be thrown away around Bethpage. “They won’t really get closer to the thoughts I have in my own head,” he laughs. “I’m just going to try to smile and do some stews. It usually seems to do the trick. “
Rahm says that the Ozempic line was “funny”, and as one of the Team Europeis two clear leaders alongside Rory McILroyIt is probably a target for many more beards this weekend.
“So far, humor has been there,” he said. “I imagine that tomorrow, things could turn a little, but there are always funny, and not only towards me, towards everyone. I will not say what they said, but yesterday, on the 17th, me and Shane Lowry laughed a good thing that someone said in the crowd. People can be really creative these days.”
McILroy knows that he will be another lightning rod on the course.
“I’m very lucky, I get a lot of support almost everywhere I go when I play golf,” he said on the eve of his eighth Ryder Cup. “It will feel a little different for me this week, but it is to be expected and it is quite understandable.
“I felt like at Hazeltine (in 2016), I probably got into too much sometimes, then with Whistling Straits (in 2021), I did not commit myself enough and I felt fairly flat because of that. He just tries to find this balance. I cannot tell anyone in the team what is this balance, he must really find it themselves.
“It’s the challenge of playing, right? Anyone in the American team troop a putt and then you have to try to follow them, but you have a crazy crowd and you expect them to be silent. There are a lot of little things that make you get out of your normal routine, that you have to face.”
In the midst of all pretty things said Thursday – Tyrell Hatton took by saying absolutely nothing consequence at lengths – it was McILroy who may have best summed up this Ryder Cup and its place in history. There is the feeling that this week has offered the best opportunity since Medinah for any team to break hegemony at home on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Since 2012, you have been looking at the results of the Ryder Cup, the home team has won each time,” added Mcilroy. “But they also won convincingly. It is quite unilateral anyway. So, whatever the team, whether Europe or America, it is the one that will break this duck, honestly, will be one of the best teams in the history of the Ryder Cup. Luke said it in its opening remarks yesterday – we are here and we play for history.”
And so everything comes back at this point of definition, this main difference from two years ago – really the only difference. Europe has been fed by Rome fire. Now they have to play inside the heat of a New York cauldron, and each player must find their own path.
A player who is not worried? Straka. “Fortunately for me,” smiles the Austrian, “I don’t think many of the crowd know that I am.”
