In the Ryder Cup, home advantage is very serious
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Team USA's Max Homa lines up his putt on the first green during the foursomes at the Ryder Cup.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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ROME – Max Homa returned from a scouting trip earlier in September to the site of this week’s Ryder Cup in Rome incredulous with how the course had been set up.
Not only were the fairways reduced in width where a tee shot might land, but the rough has grown so thick, high and gnarly that slightly errant shots could disappear.
“One day someone hit it over a bunker, and we just lost it in the regular rough,” Homa said.
“The whole first day I didn’t see a single ball from the rough hit the green. The rough is borderline unplayable. There’s going to be the highest, highest premium placed on being in the fairway, but they’re narrow.”
In other words, this sounds like a typical set-up for a Ryder Cup played in Europe, where the home team have not lost the biennial competition in 30 years.
The Ryder Cup, hosted alternatively by Europe and the United States, is the rare event in elite golf where the home team have an edge, given that they get to determine how the course will be played.
At regular professional events, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour work with local tournament directors to bring consistency from week to week. For the Majors, the governing bodies dictate how the courses will be set up, and typically lay them out in predictably difficult ways.
But the Ryder Cup is different.
What the captain of the home team says goes, right up until Sunday night of tournament week. And it is codified in the Captains’ Agreement, which states: “It is recognised that the home side has the opportunity to influence and direct the set-up and preparation of the course for the Ryder Cup.
“It is hereby agreed that any such influence, direction and/or preparation will be limited to course architecture/course design, fairway widths, rough heights, green speed and firmness.”
In this edition, there is an added bit of home advantage at the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club because very few of the US players are familiar with the course. Several players on the European squad have at least played the course when it hosted the Italian Open on the DP World Tour.
In the hope of getting an understanding of how the course would be set up for the Ryder Cup, US captain Zach Johnson took the team on a scouting trip.
“This is a course that most if not all of our guys have not played,” Johnson said. “To get their feet on the ground of Marco Simone ahead of the Cup is very important.”
The European side have historically gone with a set-up that features narrow fairways and higher rough, under the premise that American golfers are less accurate, along with greens that are much slower than those typically found on the PGA Tour. This year was no different, Homa said.
“You’re rushing to get to know things about the golf course, you’re rushing to get some extra practice in,” he added.
“At Quail Hollow (2022 Presidents Cup) we all played it a billion times but this one we had never been to.” NYTIMES
