YYou get a fluorescent green bib at the reception and it looks a bit like you are going to do community service, but you don’t mind that much, because what you have just received is actually a golden key. One of the most precious items in all of sports literature – along with your thesaurus, your dog-eared envelope full of expense receipts and Wikipedia. You’re about to enter a magical portal to a sunlit universe full of big swings and perfumed shoulders, cigar smoke and mild swearing.
There are times in this job where you feel the need to explain to people that it’s actually not as lush and idyllic as it all seems. That there are deadlines and demands, getting up brutally early and late at night, endless hours spent in windowless rooms waiting for a man in a tracksuit to shower you with banalities, long train journeys with Jonathan Wilson. Then of course there are the moments that simply need to be enjoyed and shared. Lean into the smugness. Come with me. We go behind the ropes at the Ryder Cup.
Is there any other sport that offers this kind of intimacy at the highest level? The equivalent of this is probably watching a Champions League final from the dugout, or crouching behind the starting blocks as silence falls during the Olympic 100m final. Most sports fiercely guard their hallowed grounds, drawing a steel ring around it, buffering it with strict signage and security details, and keeping you at a safe distance. But here we are at the second tee of Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, so close to Justin Thomas that you could reach out and grab the distance booklet from his back pocket. It’s madness. It almost certainly won’t last. But at this moment it has come as close as possible to the core of top sport.
Jordan Spieth lines up his tee shot. Has a little discussion with his caddy about whether he can carry the bunkers on the left side. Steps up to address. You hear the rustle of its three blades as it shoots through the hot air and the violent metal explosion as the ball flies. You see exactly what he sees: the ball disappearing into a cloudless sky, over the galleries and the scoreboards, the candy booth and the portable toilets, finally ending up in the thick grass, bobbing twice before disappearing into the undergrowth . The audience lets out a low, menacing chuckle. Spieth’s brow, already wet with sweat, wrinkles slightly. Then he hands the bat back to his caddy and puts his hands in his pockets.
We set off along the side of the fairway, walking through wild grass and over steep banks. And at the modern Ryder Cup there’s quite a traveling circus: wives and partners, vice-captains and VIPs, marshals and carabinieri, scorers and spotters and snappers and writers. You catch small fragments of a conversation. One of the players’ mothers says she’s thinking about going horse riding on Monday. One of the women admits that she doesn’t really understand the difference between stroke play and match play. There are regular complaints from Americans about the rudeness and legality of the crowd.
The feeling is undoubtedly mutual. Picture this: you’ve paid thousands of euros for tickets and travel for the Ryder Cup, set the alarm for 4 a.m., queued for a rattling shuttle bus, spent most of the day on your toes to your neck. of others sit and stare and, just as you finally get a prime spot at the 14th green, some VIP freeloaders plop down right in your eyes. “Sorry,” you meow pathetically, and in a way you’re apologizing not just for blocking their view, but for venturing outside the rope in the first place, for being the kind of person who wears the bib, for the recklessness of privilege.
But you don’t mind that either, because every now and then you also sit in the front row in the theater of history. In 2012, through a series of extremely fortuitous circumstances, I found myself sitting on the 17th green as Martin Kaymer stood over a putt to beat Steve Stricker. Suddenly I heard a strange sound: someone grabbing handfuls of grass. It was Stricker’s daughter Bobbi, perhaps twelve years old, pained and frightened, digging her fingernails into the turf a few yards away. “Please ma’am, please ma’am, please ma’am,” she begged softly. Well, Kaymer didn’t miss. Europe won the Ryder Cup. Bobbi started to cry. And so I experienced the wonder of Medina.
It felt special then, and even more so now. Perhaps this is because live sports these days are essentially packaged as something you can see but never touch. Watch footage of old World Cup or test matches or even the Formula 1 Grand Prix, and the audience stands there, at the very edge of the playing field, not separated from the spectacle, but bleeding into it.
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And this was always the point, right? This is why we went to sporting events in the first place: to feel the glow of the divine, to awaken the senses in a way that television can only approximate.
Now, golf and cycling aside, this is a world that has largely disappeared, replaced by security cordons, press officers and varying levels of choreographed cheerleading. Come. We have to go back and return the bib to the front desk. But for a few hours, we got to live in the dream while it was being created.