The Ryder Cup

Golf fans finally get to root for the home team.

We’re headed into the biggest month of the American sports calendar, October, with football in high gear, baseball playoffs about to start, and both the NHL and NBA seasons kicking off in the next few weeks.

And there’s even one last big golf tournament, the Ryder Cup with the best dozen U.S. golfers against the E.U.’s top twelve.

Played every two years, the Ryder Cup is the main team and nationalist event in golf, and thus gets the craziest fans.

Great golfers tend to be loners who enjoy endless hours by themselves on the practice tee. But the typical average golfer is a team player who, deep down, wants to cheer for his team, while the nature of golf tournaments typically require fans to applaud excellence no matter who delivers it. So, the golf tour packs up the main part of its season right when the NFL kicks off, knowing that golf fans are usually even bigger football fans.

But the Ryder Cup is the one big event in golf when the home crowd gets to root for their team like a Philadelphia hockey mob.

This year the Ryder Cup is at Bethpage Black on Long Island, perhaps the most legendary American municipal golf course.

The uphill triple dogleg par 5 fourth hole (flag is at top left)

Built on big hills with massive sand traps, it’s a golf course on a grand scale (although the greens are a little flat so that muny players will be able to sink their last putt before dark). Residents of the state of New York can play for just $80 on weekends, the best financial deal in American golf. So, tee times are rationed instead on a first come first serve basis, with players typically sleeping in their cars in the parking lot the night before.

In other words, the fans at Bethpage Black are likely to be lively. The gates opened up at 5 am this morning and the crowd jogged in.

Europe is led by emotionally tormented Northern Irish artist Rory McIlroy.

The U.S. is led by the otherworldly technician Scottie Scheffler. But the home team fan favorite may be slugger Bryson DeChambeau, a former nerdy physics major who has remade his personality in his popular social media videos into a Will Ferrell-Owen Wilson-like comic leading man.

Here’s DeChambeau hitting the first drive of the Ryder Cup for USA on the 397 yard opening hole, a sharp dogleg right around a forest.

Note that for some reason the sound of the broadcast is out of sync with the action, which is why the crowd appears to start cheering on DeChambeau’s backswing. They’re not actually that rowdy. Yet.