FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — The true challenge of hitting the opening tee shot at the Ryder Cup isn't hitting the ball itself. It's managing the emotional crash the lingers after.
Here's why.
When players approach the first tee of the Ryder Cup, surrounded by screaming crowds, the inner workings of their brain don't recognize it as a golf tournament. It senses whatever inkling of fear there is, and perceives it as a threat.
So, it begins ramping up all its survival instincts that it has honed throughout thousands of years of evolution. Your heart starts beating really fast. Blood pumps into your key organs. Your muscles tense up and switch on.
"It's a fight or flight response," explains Hans Larsson, longtime coach of European Ryder Cupper Ludvig Aberg. "Your body goes into survival mode."
The first tee spike 📈
Naomi Baker
A recent study at the World Scientific Congress of Golf looked into how this affects golfers' swings. Mainly:
- Golfers turn less in their golf swing—both with their upper and lower bodies.
- Golfers' overall backswing length gets shorter as a result.
- Golfers' hands, partly as a result, become more active.
The overall result are drives that don't just fly shorter, but more crooked than normal. And this isn't just true for golfers on the tee of big tournaments. The study found this even true for golfers on the first tee at their local club.
There are some classic dealing-with-first-tee nerves techniques that players resort to in this situation. And pros, for the most part, are prepared for this.
As Justin Thomas spoke about on Tuesday:
"I definitely remember at a young age being nervous was not cool. Now I recognize being nervous as a great thing. I think if any of us were out here on the first tee or in position to have a putt to win a Ryder Cup or win a match and weren't nervous, that would be extremely concerning for our profession."
The 11th hole crash 📉
What can often catch players by surprise is what happens next.
After all your systems ramp up on the first hole and cruise at a high altitude for a little while, they begin to tick down. Effectively it's like your body is sprinting. You can do it for a little bit, but it's too hard to sustain. You simply get too tired.
This gradual crash is something I wrote about ahead of the 2023 Ryder Cup (check it out here), but it can hit particularly hard at the Ryder Cup because of the general atmosphere, like the first tee.
The main tactic players use to combat this one is to acknowledge that a crash is coming, and to prepare physically for it.
David Davies - PA Images
"Feeling nervous is natural. Acting nervous is the problem, because when you're acting nervous, you're doing things differently than you ordinarily would," says Larsson. "Eating, drinking water; simple things that are easy to forget, may take more conscious effort to do, but it's what allows you to keep doing things the way you prepared."
And again, this peak-then-lull is something that happens to the rest of us during regular rounds. Simple things like eating and drinking water help smooth that crash by keeping your blood sugar and energy at a consistent level. It's what prepares pros not just for the emotional peak of the first tee—but what comes next.
