Turns out that European is only the second-worst thing you can be at Bethpage this week. Luke Donald and his team may have been booed at the opening ceremony on Wednesday, but the reception they got from the tens of thousands of liquored-up golf fans who had hung around to watch was a warm welcome compared to the one they gave New York state\u2019s governor, the Democrat Kathy Hochul, who was jeered so loudly that her short speech was just about drowned out. Donald should maybe think about bringing her in as a last\u2011minute vice-captain, just to draw the fire away from his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cRelax everybody, she\u2019s not Roger Goodell,\u201d said the master of ceremonies, Carson Daly, referencing the unpopular NFL commissioner. It didn\u2019t help. \u201cWhat should everyone coming here for the first time know about New York?\u201d he asked Hochul. (\u201cShe has no idea! She lives in Albany!\u201d bellowed a man standing nearby, \u201cGet her outta here!\u201d roared another.) Hochul, a rictus grin fixed on her face, said something about how \u201cwe have the most friendly people you will ever meet\u201d and was immediately shouted down by the locals. \u201cThat went well,\u201d Daly said, deadpan, after Hochul beat a retreat from the stage.<\/p>\n
New York state\u2019s governor, the Democrat Kathy Hochul (left), was jeered by fans at the Ryder Cup opening ceremony. Photograph: Maddie Meyer\/PGA of America\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Donald got off lightly in comparison. \u201cNew York is a place where if you show up with talent and a fighting spirit the city will get behind you\u201d he said, gamely. \u201cNo it won\u2019t!\u201d someone cried back at him. He nearly broke out laughing when they booed him again for saying: \u201cYou\u2019ll make us earn every cheer.\u201d He couldn\u2019t help himself but slip in a couple of subtle little digs at the USA team over the way they are being paid to play here this week, but they were so subtle you needed to speak diplomat\u2019s English to pick up on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fuelled by something money can\u2019t buy,\u201d Donald said, a wry smile passed across his face while he let the comment settle, \u201cby resilience, togetherness, and proving people wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
You get the impression he has enjoyed every awkward question which has been fired at the US players about it this week. And there have been a lot of them, especially from the European journalists. Before he finished, Donald made a point of offering his thanks to Hochul, who was roundly booed again, just for having the temerity to be mentioned in someone else\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n
Keegan Bradley followed him on. He spoke about his formative memory of the Ryder Cup<\/a>, which turned out to be one of the most infamous moments in its history. When he was 13 his father had taken him along to watch at Brookline in 1999, when the USA came back from four points back to win in the singles on Sunday. He was one of the people charging around the 17th green when Justin Leonard\u2019s putt went in. Only he misspoke and told everyone it was Justin Rose. Given Rose is 46, and 1999 was his second year as a professional, he couldn\u2019t have been so very offended by the suggestion he was old enough to have done it.<\/p>\n US Captain Keegan Bradley leads his team out on to the stage. Photograph: Erik S Lesser\/EPA<\/p>\n It was a good speech regardless. He told everyone the story about how he used to climb over the fence by the maintenance sheds to play here at Bethpage when it was supposed to be closed while he was a student at St John\u2019s University, and how he once got busted by the park service while he was midway down the 17th, and how he used to work in the coat check room at the Wheatley Hills course, a few miles up the road. He\u2019s a New Englander by birth, but a New Yorker by upbringing, and he closed with: \u201cGo Giants!\u201d The crowd lapped it up.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The Americans are good at this stuff. The opening ceremony of the Ryder Cup is usually one of the most painful spectator events in all sport, especially when it\u2019s held in Europe. This one moved along at a brisk clip, and was soundtracked by the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z, and studded with a helicopter fly-by which was timed to arrive during the closing notes of the national anthem, and a parachute display team who landed just off the 18th fairway. Actually, that last part might have been a better idea on paper, because it took them an awfully long time to arrive, even falling at 80mph, and there was a long pause to fill while everyone watched them drop.<\/p>\n US military helicopters perform a flyover at the Ryder Cup opening ceremony as the locals wave the Stars and Stripes. Photograph: John Angelillo\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cThis might take a while,\u201d said Daly. \u201cWhile we\u2019re waiting, does anyone have any questions for the governor? Form a line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turns out that European is only the second-worst thing you can be at Bethpage this week. Luke Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-158611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}