Ryder Cup first tee jitters are real for Luke Donald, Tiger Woods and more

European Ryder Cup Captain Luke Donald can chuckle now when he recalls his Ryder Cup playing debut.

It was at Oakland Hills in Detroit in 2004 and Donald sliced his opening tee shot at least 60 yards right in a fourballs, or best ball, match.

“Literally the worst shot ever,” he said. “Walking to the first tee, I felt fine, just normal nerves, little butterflies. As soon as they announced my named, it just hit me. I went to jelly, my knees, my legs and my mind just went blank. I had no idea how to hit a golf ball. It was awful.”

Fortunately, Donald drew Paul McGinley as his partner, who draped an arm around his shoulder as they walked off the tee and told him it would be all right. Donald regained his composure and still remembers the 2-iron he pured at 18 with McGinley in trouble that secured a half point. 

First tee jitters is a story as old as the Ryder Cup itself. As Chick Harbert, a member of the 1949 U.S. team put it, “When I stood on the first tee and they played the Star-Spangled Banner, you couldn’t have driven a nail into my (bottom) with a sledgehammer.”  

Davis Love III remembers a similar sensation. As a rookie in 1993, he teamed with veteran Tom Kite in his debut against the Spanish Armada, the dynamic duo of Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal. “I still remember (U.S. Captain) Tom Watson saying the night before those matches, ‘Rookies, be ready tomorrow. This is the only event in golf that will make your legs shake,’” Love recounted. “I thought he was nuts. The next day, walking to the first tee behind Seve and Jose I realized my legs were shaking.”

Bernhard Langer blacked out, Padraig Harrington stood over the ball and couldn’t see it and 10 minutes before his tee time Stewart Cink begged partner Jim Furyk to swap places with him. The first tee jitters at the Ryder Cup are real even for the best in the game as Tiger Woods confirmed. 

At the 1997 Ryder Cup, Woods was making his debut in a morning foursomes, or alternate shot, with partner Mark O’Meara, who suggested Woods tee off on the odd holes. But Woods preferred the even holes. O’Meara, who sliced his first tee shot into the 10th fairway at The Belfry in England in 1985, shook his head and replied that Woods should have the honor on the first tee.

“I’m the vet,” O’Meara declared.

“So I listened,” Woods recalled. “I hit a 2-iron, tracked it down in the fairway, and phew, it was all good.”

Twenty-one years later, roles were reversed as Woods was the vet assigned to shepherd around rookie Bryson DeChambeau in Paris in 2018. Woods pulled an O’Meara and told DeChambeau he’d be leading the way.

“I guess I’m hitting first,” DeChambeau recalled thinking. “It was the most nervous I’ve ever been.”

“There’s a lot of nerves. It’s excitement. I mean, it really is,” Woods said. “It’s something we don’t get to experience in that regard because basically it’s the final round of a tournament on the very first hole and every match you tee it up. It’s a different atmosphere and one that we absolutely love.”

Or dread. In 1969, the Americans had honors and Miller Barber, who was paired with fellow Ryder Cup rookie Raymond Floyd, was expected to bat leadoff. “The pair had settled on a strategy where Floyd would play the even-numbered holes so he could attack the three even-numbered par-3 holes,” wrote Hank Gola in his new book Ryder Cup Rivals. Strategy went out the window when Barber experienced a golfer's version of stage fright.

“We go walking to the tee and he says to me, ‘I can’t hit it. I can’t hit it,” Floyd recounted to Neil Sagebiel in his book Draw in the Dunes, which chronicles the 1969 Ryder Cup. “You gotta go.”

And so Floyd put his peg in the ground and off they went. Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard, the lone rookie on the European squad this year, said he anticipated his first tee shot as a Ryder Cupper will be his most nervous moment.

“But again, I try to look at it in a way that I only get to try the first Ryder Cup tee shot once in my life, so trying to embrace that in a way,” Hojgaard said.

That follows the sound advice of American Max Homa, who was a Ryder Cup rookie in Rome two years ago. “You're going to be nervous, no reason to shy away from it. Just trust yourself and go play. You could hit the worst shot ever on that hole and you're 1 down, that's it. Head to 2,” he said. “Whether you hit the best shot ever or the worst, it just turns into a story so you might as well enjoy it. Look around, laugh a little with your partner. You hear all those great stories these days. It's just fun. You only get that first time one time so you might as well soak it in a bit.” 

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Tiger, Ryder Cup rookies recall being terrified of opening tee shot