The first Ryder Cup tee has long been an intense objective.
For players, the nerves are tested when they hit their opening blows in front of thousands of supporters.
The noisy buzz makes it an essential element of the day for fans, who arrive in the dark in the morning to play their place, while the latecomers, took place to miss, leaning on the fairway.
The Bethpage Black offer this week is shaped by the topography of the course. It will welcome 5,000 people, a little more than Rome two years ago, but certainly less than the 6,500 that settled in the Paris giant in 2018.
And rather than the intimidative form on three sides in horseshoe two years ago, this vast stand “looks more from London Stadium than Upton Park”, according to the BBC Sport golf correspondent, Iain Carter.
From Down in the fairway, it looks like a giant exclusion, along the back of the T-shirt and the 18th adjacent green.
Has the horseshoe element has been lost and, through it, has the advantage for the home team?
“The way it is installed is a little further than what we have had in recent years,” Tommy Fleetwood told BBC Sport.
“But it is always the first tee of a Ryder Cup and we will always move away from this week with stories of the first nerves of Tee.
“This is something you need to kiss. I think it’s a cool scene.”
In 2023, the first tee was a cauldron of noise and color.
Thousands of fans have piled up in stands that dominated above the players, with fans of music and European fans welcoming each player in the tee with their own unique song.
While European players were delighted with this racket, it seemed to serve too much as a claustrophobic start for the games for the American team, which won the first hole in none of the first 12 games.
He does not have the impression that this level of claustrophobia will be part of this week, but fans of the days of practice are committed to the “Phoney War”.
A pantomimal hoots have come through Bethpage Black while Rory McILroy was heading for the first tee for a training lap.
The stand was around a full quarter, but the people seemed to derive aimlessly on the number one in Europe when he joyfully agitated, before descending the fairway, signing forcing autographs as he was going.
It was the European charming offensive booming.
But as Fleetwood, 34, said it: “No matter what you are doing, nothing is preparing for a Friday morning on the first tee of the Ryder Cup.”
The only recruit in Europe, Rasmus Hojgaard, expects his first TEE experience to be “my most nervous” moment of the week.
The American Bryson Dechambeau gave an overview of what could follow when he engaged in fans who wanted to see him reach green at 397 yards, breaking half a dozen starting strokes.
There were shouts of accompaniment to the stands of “Rory cannot do this”.
The double champion of the US Open Dechambeau – the only member of the American team to play on the Golf Liv circuit – is the perfect show, lounging in adulation, while demanding that its subscribers increase the volume.
Not that home support, as history has shown, necessarily needs encouragement.
