When, during Global Golf Post’s most recent Zoom conference, the conversation turned to the fans at Whistling Straits, it was as if there had been one crowd for those GGP writers who were on site in Wisconsin and another for those of us who were watching the match on television here in the UK.
In the eyes of the American writers who attended, the fans had been more subdued than they might have expected. They had barely heard any booing on the first tee and, one way and another, they had been left with the impression that the people were pretty well behaved.
So surprised were the four European writers at what they were hearing that they were rendered speechless. Indeed, their silence was in keeping with Shane Lowry’s description of how the American crowds had greeted some of the Europeans’ finer shots: “You stand up and you hit a 3-iron into 10 feet from 250 yards and you don’t even get a ripple of applause. … You almost get booed for it.”
When the UK journalists finally found their voice, their first thoughts were of the importance of not coming across as lousy losers. As such, they did as the European team had done in prefixing every criticism with a heartfelt acknowledgement of the Americans’ superior golf.
Captain Pádraig Harrington had done just that on the day he delivered his thoughts on the sound of silence. “It was interesting,” he said. “I assumed there would be more Europeans here, not travelling from Europe but from the US, and it took a while to get used to the different sounds. Silence is golden when it comes to the Europeans this week. Silence means we've hit a good shot. So that was different.”
Lowry’s two-word, end-of-match response to a question as to what he had thought of US crowd behaviour served as a pretty good summation of events. “Not much,” he said.
To recap on the abuse which came his way, Lowry was a target for drink-fuelled insults about his comfortably-contoured physique during the course of the four-ball win he shared with Tyrrell Hatton. Luckily, he is blessed with a lovely sense of humour and, thanks to that, he was probably better placed than most to shrug off the attacks.
Last Wednesday, at his press conference ahead of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at the Old Course, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, he delved a little deeper. “Some of the stuff was not very nice. Some people are idiots, especially when they drink … No one turns into a genius when that’s what they’re doing.”
He added that he could take whatever anyone said about him, but it was altogether different when people started giving “dog’s abuse” to his wife and his teammates’ wives and partners. He had warned his wife, Wendy, what was going to happen, while he advised his father, Brendan, not to get involved with anyone, whatever was said. Bethpage, he surmised, is going to be horrendous. (That is where the Ryder Cup will be held in 2025, following the 2023 instalment in Italy.)
A silence suggests that 100 percent of the crowd had preferred not to acknowledge a good European shot.
Though Lowry emphasised that it was only a small percentage of the fans who had ruined things for the rest, that, of course, did not exactly tally with what he and Harrington had said about those unsportsmanlike silences. A silence suggests that 100 percent of the crowd had preferred not to acknowledge a good European shot.
Lowry’s father was understandably proud of his son and the way he had lightened the mood at Whistling Straits with his ready smile and bursts of fine play. He, too, thought the crowds were “pretty nasty,” his suspicion being that they belonged to that brand of troublemakers who go to as many different sporting occasions as they can – they get labelled “big-eventers” – with their own favoured sport one of drinking overmuch and being abusive. By all accounts, the reason they don't get kicked out is because they serve a useful purpose in swelling crowds and making whatever event it is look like a “fun” place to be. (Never mind that the connoisseurs wonder if they would do better to watch on TV.)
Pete Coleman, who used to caddie for Bernhard Langer, has attended more Ryder Cups than most. In his opinion, the American crowds at Whistling Straits were not a whole lot worse than those he had seen in the past. “What made the situation harder to stomach was that there were no European fans to balance the ledger,” he said. “Usually, in a first-tee situation, you would get the Americans saying something and the Europeans answering back. Cheerful banter is what I would have called it, even if there was a bit more to it than that.
“What I learned from Langer very early on was that players do well never to react in any way to what’s said to them. People used to make perfectly vile comments to Bernhard about his slow play when we were walking between greens and tees, but never once did I see him lift his head.
“Our crowds have never been angels but they’re not in the Americans’ league,” Coleman concluded. Which is more or less what Billy Horschel had to say at St Andrews. When quizzed on what kind of a character he had been in his Walker Cup days, this feisty would-be Ryder Cup American owned up to having been a bit of Sergio García: “Like him, I had a naive cockiness about me … I felt as if I could take on the world. I certainly knew when to pump up a crowd.”
That was the prompt for him to pose a question of his own, one about the fans at Whistling Straits.
“What were we doing with all that fist-pumping on the first tee?” he asked. With no-one venturing a reply, I asked him afterwards if he had heard the booing. He had. “I’m not a great ‘boo’ man myself,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t like it at all.”
Top: The first tee at the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits
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