Give a guy from Bushwick several hours to day-drink and a chance to yell on Rory McIlroy’s backswing, and it’s going to happen. Garrulous and unseemly noises always seem to break out whenever golf and New Yorkers are adjacent. The organizers of the Ryder Cup have nevertheless brought the famously contentious event to Bethpage Black this weekend for the first time. This municipal course is just 33 miles from Manhattan, setting the stage for a sub-contest: How badly will etiquette collapse in the blood-rush of patriotism, combined with New York sarcasm, concessionaires peddling a vodka-and-grape-juice cocktail named the All-American Transfusion, corporate tents packed with bayingly overserved Wall Street wolves wreathed in Padrón smoke, and the carrack-carrack of packed trains carrying an expected 225,000 comers from across the boroughs and beyond?
The 98-year-old biennial Ryder Cup, which pits America against Europe in three days of rare-for-golf team competition, is an emotionally combustible event no matter where it is held. “Tribal,” the American golfer Patrick Cantlay calls it. For golfers accustomed to silence and solemnity, the Ryder Cup’s home crowd is always an opponent in and of itself, along with the course, wind, rain, sand, and rival players.
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