STRAFFAN, Ireland \u2014 Rory McIlroy watched\u00a0Novak Djokovic handle boisterous spectators\u00a0during a win at the US Open and is ready to follow the tennis star\u2019s lead at the Ryder Cup held in the United States this month.<\/p>\n
A hostile and partisan crowd is set to greet McIlroy and the European team at Bethpage Black for the Sept. 26-28 matches as the Americans look to regain the cup two years after losing in Rome.<\/p>\n
Djokovic had to deal with a similar environment during his US Open quarterfinal match against home favourite Taylor Fritz and handled it well, even blowing kisses at one point to the fans rooting against him.<\/p>\n
McIlroy liked what he saw from Djokovic, who gave Europe’s golfers a motivational speech in their team room before the victory at the 2023 Ryder Cup about dealing with high-pressure moments.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been the best at handling that,\u201d McIlroy said Wednesday at the Irish Open. \u201cHe\u2019s had to deal with it his whole life, whether it\u2019s playing against an American in New York or playing against Roger (Federer) or Rafa (Nadal).<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came and spoke to us a little bit about that stuff last time in Rome. So maybe taking a leaf out of his book and channeling that energy the right way. But again, all we can do is control our reaction and our emotions to it. I think the less we play into it, the better it is for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience of Rome should come in handy at Bethpage for\u00a0a European team \u2014 finalized Monday \u2014 showing just one change\u00a0two years on, with Rasmus Hojgaard qualifying automatically to be the only rookie in the 12-man roster.<\/p>\n
McIlroy used Robert MacIntrye \u2014 a rookie in Rome and now a regular contender for events on the PGA Tour \u2014 as an example to back up his belief that \u201cpretty much every player on the team is more accomplished than what they were two years ago\u201d and believes Europe has a \u201cwonderful opportunity\u201d to win a Ryder Cup on the road for the first time since 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a very strong team,\u201d McIlroy said of the Americans. \u201cThey\u2019re going to have a pretty raucous crowd on their side and on a golf course that a lot of them know pretty well from previous tournaments there.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo make no mistake, we know we\u2019re up against it and we know we\u2019ve got a tall task on our hands, but I love the team that Luke has assembled.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STRAFFAN, Ireland \u2014 Rory McIlroy watched\u00a0Novak Djokovic handle boisterous spectators\u00a0during a win at the US Open and is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-117868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}