A first tee that strains every nerve

THE FIRST tee of the Ryder Cup does bad things to good men. It’s what happens when the weight of all the talk and all the build-up becomes too much for the cap of the toothpaste tube, causing its contents to squirt out every which way and make a mess of the place. You’re never playing the first at Medinah or Celtic Manor or The K Club. You’re playing the first at the Ryder Cup. And it’s just awful.

The first hole at Medinah is about as straightforward an opener as you can get. A downhill par four of 433 yards with a big bunker down the left side for everyone to ignore, it couldn’t be a more gentle introduction to the course. And yet at dawn yesterday, it grabbed the golfers ranked 2, 3, 4, 9, 14, 18, 23 and 26 in the world and dangled them by the ankles to see what they had inside them. Very few of them escaped with dignity intact.

First up was Graeme McDowell. Cornered by the Sky cameras on his way into the course before the sun was even up, he was asked who’d be hitting the first shot. “I think it’s me,” he said. Pause. “Actually, I know it’s me.” In fact he’d known for days yet it was still making him jittery enough to doubt himself.

An hour later, he was on the tee taking the applause. As soon as the tumult died down, he was swimming alone in a thousand-deep pool of silence. The only sound was the chug of a distant train going by. McDowell had a wry smile as he took his practice swing, as if he was wondering what the hell he’d let himself in for here.

His shot went left. Way, way left past the bunker that he had indeed ignored. This was the sort of miscue that scattered the galleries and sent them scuttling along after it as it came to rest near the boundary of the course.

Standing beside him, Jose Maria Olazabal could only knot himself laughing. His partner Rory McIlroy didn’t particularly see the joke.

Next came Jim Furyk, he of the ugliest swing in golf even on a good day. Well this wasn’t a good day. This was a day when his swing should have come with sound effects. A banjo string snapping, maybe. Something to indicate the unravelling of a tightly wound coil in any case. Furyk followed the European effort out to the left, nearly pinballing the ankles of the crowd that had gathered around McDowell’s ball. Both sides walked off the tee giggling at the absurdity of it all.

Not everyone caved. Luke Donald and Keegan Bradley came out for the second match and had no problems. Donald drew a looping three-wood down the right-hand side and let the curve of the fairway kick it back into the middle. Then Bradley – the first rookie of the day, remember – stood up and just demolished a drive straight down the middle. Maybe it’s a simpler task if you don’t know what to be afraid of.

Lee Westwood and Jason Duffner bore the brunt on the third match. Westwood nailed his, bending down to rip his tee out of the ground even as the ball was still rising. Duffner had a bit of a wobble, the only man all morning to find that bunker on the left.

Playing partner Zach Johnson could be heard croaking, “It’s alright . . .” in the manner of a soccer mom whose little boy had just missed a penalty.

The final match had Ian Poulter and Tiger Woods up to the gallows. Poulter did his Poulter-in-the-Ryder-Cup thing, tonking a huge drive down the middle as if he wasn’t the lowest-ranked player on view. But then Woods – the highest ranked to have to tee off on the first – hit by a mile the worst drive of the lot. It was left of Furyk’s, left of McDowell’s, left of Marx and Engels even. It was a shocker – far from his first on an opening morning, as anyone who was in The K Club in 2006 or the Belfry in 2002 will remember.

Steve Stricker had to get a free drop from a temporary wall to play his shot and even then he was in Hansel and Gretel territory, deep in the woods. Another hapless victim of the ruthless Ryder Cup first tee.