One Song, You’ve Only Got One Song!
Got back from Louisville on Tuesday morning and have been sleeping mostly since! The Ryder Cup is by far the best sporting event I’ve ever attended, even though Europe did eventually lose out.
Our hotel was actually in Indiana, with Valhalla an hour and 20 minutes bus ride each way, so other than having a lie in on Sunday, we were up at 5am most days and returned to our hotel around 9pm most nights. Add walking several miles a day in 86 degree heat it’s the most tiring holiday I’ve ever had!
The highlight for me was the Saturday afternoon session, where Europe gained some momentum and 3 of the games finished on the 18th. I was standing about 10 yards away from the pin and the atmosphere was electric.
Now I love the USA. We holiday there every year and it’s people generally couldn’t be any nicer. But Oh My God if you’re ever supporting the away team prepare yourself. “Partisan” doesn’t begin to describe the crowd, there were a few times where you would start to feel very uncomfortable cheering on Europe within the mob. Despite golf etiquette being a fundamental part of appreciating the game, it didn’t stop the locals cheering every time something went wrong for one of the “Euros” as they deemed to call us.
Another highlight was Sunday on the 1st tee. A hundred or so “Euro” fans had squeezed into one of the stands beside the tee and gave the home support a lesson in singing. The standard response to any attempt by us aliens to get chanting was to be drowned out by “USA, USA, USA” ad nauseum. Better prepared by this time, the home fans were treated to a handful of songs from the Europeans in the stand. You’ll find a good description of the events here.
Also worth sharing, course radios were sold with 2 channels, one which gave the audio to the giant screens piping NBC and the other was BBC’s own Five Live coverage, which seemed very popular even with the home support. This could also have been something to do with the fact that NBC seemed to break for adverts every 4 minutes.
I’m greatly looking forward to Wales in 2010, if only for the opportunity to be as smug to the visiting fans when Europe reclaim the cup!
Top Quotes heard around the course from our American cousins -
“F**king Spaniard, get back to Britain”
“Communists!”
