By Martin Dempster

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Especially in the first hour or so in the opening foursome session, the crowd felt more like one you’d expect at Augusta National for The Masters than an eagerly-awaited team tussle between the United States and Europe around 40 miles from Manhattan. Yes, of course, we had some shouts that you don’t really expect to hear at a golf tournament. “F*** you, Rory”, for instance, was the chant from a group of US fans in the grandstand behind the first tee and 18th green as McIlroy appeared on a giant screen before the action had even got underway. “Good shot MacIntyre, you choker” was another nasty one later in the morning as Bob came up short with his tee shot at the par-3 17th in the only game won by Keegan Bradley’s side as the Europeans started their defence of the coveted trophy with an impressive 3-1 session win. The moment it was announced back in 2013 that golf’s biggest team event would be staged at Bethpage State Park on Long Island, we all feared the worst about how it would pan out in front of New Yorkers, who are famed for being sports lovers. At first glance, the aforementioned giant grandstand looked as though it would be like a bear pit when Luke Donald’s players headed into battle, but we got that one badly wrong. In fact, it was the tamest first tee this correspondent has witnessed in the Ryder Cup and this one is my 11th. For starters, there was no real atmosphere and that was partly down to the fact it wasn’t a horseshoe grandstand like the one at Marco Simone Golf Club on the outskirts of Rome two years ago. On top of that, the US fans on this occasion were hopeless when it came to trying to create a proper atmosphere and they also didn’t have a ‘thunderclap’, which has been introduced by Europeans to brilliant effect in recent home matches. Or, for that matter, Nicolas Colsaerts, who, in his role as one of Donald’s vice-captains on that occasion, did a superb job orchestrating the crowd in Italy. At one point, a woman appeared and shouted through a microphone that she was “here all day and will be keeping you pumped up” only to immediately disappear as a very predictable playlist of US songs started playing again. Make no mistake, the Americans are very proud people and love wearing anything that bears the Stars and Stripes, though dungarees being worn by men this week without anything underneath on the top half really should be kept for indoor areas only at home. One of the reasons they were definitely a bit more subdued than normal, of course, on this particular morning was that their boys – world No 1 Scottie Scheffler in particular – took a bit of a hammering and they definitely don’t like that. Unfortunately for Bob MacIntyre, someone stepped out of line at just the wrong time as he was heckled just as he was about to pull the trigger on the 17th tee. In the main, though, it was more like a ball pit than the bear pit we’d been expecting.