Wednesday, September 17, 2025
MODERATOR: Welcome to the NBC Sports Ryder Cup media conference call. In a moment, we’ll be joined by our play-by-play voice, Dan Hicks; analysts Brad Faxon and Paul McGinley; on-course reporters Jim “Bones” Mackay and Smylie Kaufman; and our lead golf producer, Tommy Roy.
NBC Sports will present more than 100 hours of live tournament and studio coverage from Bethpage Black Course in Farmingdale, New York, beginning next week.
Our live tournament coverage gets underway on Friday, September 26, at 7:00 a.m. Eastern on USA Network before Saturday and Sunday’s coverage is live on NBC and Peacock.
We’ll have Golf Central Live From the Ryder Cup daily coverage beginning Monday, September 22nd on GOLF Channel, and will feature post-round coverage at the conclusion of each round.
We’ll have a transcript of this call available on NBC Sports.com/pressbox a little bit later today. We’ll begin with opening remarks.
TOMMY ROY: Thanks, everyone, for joining. These team match play events are right in our NBC Sports wheelhouse. We’ve done every Ryder Cup since 1991. Home Ryder Cups happen only once every four years, and I can tell you we’ve been looking forward to this one out at Bethpage.
We’ve televised two U.S. Opens out there, so we know the course well, and we’ve experienced the energy of the Long Island crowd and what they bring to a golf event. So I’m expecting this to be an epic three days.
We’ll have more cameras on this Ryder Cup than we’ve ever had on a Cup before, including three drones and a plane. And a big change we’re making this time is we’re going to have a partisan booth. We’ve always covered our sports events in a completely impartial way, never referring to the Americans as “we.”
I used to have to correct Johnny Miller quite often when he’d say “we have to win this hole.” And I’d get him in the headset and say, “Oh, Johnny, not we, the Americans.”
But if you’ve worked the Olympics like we’ve had the good fortune to do and you’re in the international broadcast center, you can dial up the feeds from the different countries’ broadcasts, and they are almost all very partisan.
For example, if you listen to the Brits’ track and field, they are literally blatantly rooting for the UK athletes. I kind of used to scoff at this style because I was so brainwashed into impartiality, but you know what, it’s actually a pretty fun listen.
So our executive producer, Sam Flood, said let’s give it a shot at Bethpage. We experimented with it at the Presidents Cup last year, but with the Ryder Cup, with its two fervent fan bases, we are all-in. This is not going to be the new norm at NBC Sports, but at Bethpage, this is what we’re doing.
Dan Hicks will host the afternoon sessions on Friday and Saturday and the Sunday singles, and with him representing the American team will be Brad Faxon, and representing the European team will be Paul McGinley. And in the mornings, Terry Gannon will host with Notah Begay for the Americans and Nick Faldo for the Europeans.
We think this will ramp up the entertainment factor and get added insights into what’s going on with two teams.
Can’t wait to get it started. Over to Dan Hicks.
DAN HICKS: Tommy, thank you very much. Just hearing you talk, I might need to adopt a referee jersey for McGinley and Fax, but I think it’s a great idea, too. These guys bleed their country’s colors, especially at an event like this, and I really think we’re going to get more insight out of these guys with the gloves on, so to speak. And unrestrained from any of the usual journalistic responsibilities, they’ll be able to do their thing.
This is my 16th Ryder Cup. Can’t believe it. We’ve had some good hype leading into so many of them through the years. Kiawah back in ’91, which I was not part of that broadcast, certainly had a vibe, but this one I really think has more pre-match storylines, which has set it up for the greatest one ever. I know that sounds like a hype line, but I really believe it has been set up better than any other Ryder Cup that I can think of.
And there are really three main reasons why: First of all, start with Keegan Bradley, who is the whole story coming into this Ryder Cup. I’ve never seen a story dominate from the summer months all the way into it. Does he pick himself? Well, ends up he doesn’t. I think any other captain would have picked him, and Bradley at age 39 would be playing in his final Ryder Cup, maybe, at that age. You never know.
That could have been the case. No, he doesn’t. So you’ve got this kind of selfless realization that you can’t do both. I think it’s built a “win it for Keegan” kind of atmosphere among the U.S. players. They may say it or may not say it, but I really believe it has built that in.
Number 2, in the European squad, I think they’ve got the best chance they’ve ever had to win this away game. A deep, experienced team. Their super captain, Luke Donald, is looking for that rare double; only Tony Jacklin has won a home and away in the history of European captains. So that’s going to create a lot of intrigue.
Finally, it’s all unfolding into what I think will go down as the wildest, wildest venue in Ryder Cup history. It remains to be seen, obviously, what the final review on the whole experience at Bethpage is going to be, but suffice it to say that if Europe can pull this off, I think it would rival and maybe even surpass the great comeback victory that they had at Medinah a few years back when they came back from 10-6 on the final day.
That’s the stage. I think it’s the greatest setting of a stage for a Ryder Cup that we’ve ever seen, so now we can’t wait to see how it all unfolds.
BRAD FAXON: Well done there, Dan. I can tell why you’re our leader. I was lucky enough to play in a couple of Ryder Cups, one at home at Oak Hill in Rochester, one away in Spain when it first moved to the European continent, and a huge difference, we know, home and away. And if you look at all the team sports that are played in America, there’s nothing quite like the domination of home teams in the U.S. Ryder Cup over every other sport.
When I look at this team, like Dan said, it seems to be the best on paper Europeans have ever had. Both teams have seven winners who have won on U.S. soil. I think Europeans have a very deep team as well. It’s hard to tell exactly how well players like Hatton and Rahm have played on the LIV Tour; we have obviously the ace in the hole with Bryson DeChambeau, and how they will contribute.
I can tell you from the crowds, playing in 2002, there’s nothing quite like a Long Island sports crowd. I’ve been a Red Sox fan my whole life, and seeing the rivalry against the Yankees, I see something like that, this European team and the U.S. Team. There’s a huge rivalry. I love how the Europeans come together, but I also think Scottie Scheffler, again, has paved the way to captain this team for a captain like Keegan Bradley. It’s incredible how well he’s played.
PAUL McGINLEY: Hi, everybody. I’ve got a bit of a dual role this week. I’m the strategic director for the European team, so I’m involved with the team, as well as my work with NBC, Golf Channel, and SKY. So I’m going to have a busy week. I’ve completed two and a half days with the team in Bethpage, where we had a practice run-through, which all went very well, and had a good look at the golf course. We had a few meetings, shared ideas, and had a bit of a dry run for next week.
So got a lot of back-of-house stuff done, which will help the players and Luke next week focus more on preparing for Friday morning, everything with the clothes and just getting a whole sense of where everything was on-site, where the practice range was and how the golf course was playing as well as meeting rooms and stuff like that that we’re going to be using.
That was very beneficial.
Like I say, this is the seventh time I’ve been involved with the team. It’s been a successful run for me where I’ve been part of a winning team six times. Hoping to make it seven. But we’re aware of the dauntingness of this task. It’s a big one. It’s a huge one. Maybe the most difficult ever to win away from home in New York. So we’re aware of that.
We’ve done a huge amount of preparation over the last 18 months, and we’re coming off the back of a record loss the last time we played on American soil in Whistling Straits.
Three of the last four away matches we’ve lost by an average of seven points, so we just haven’t come over and lost the Ryder Cup; we’ve been hammered three times out of four, except for the miracle at Medinah. So we’re aware that we’re not performing on American soil, and we’ve tried to change things and look at things differently this year.
We’ve had several rolls of the dice already, which are quite obvious, the first one being the returning captain Luke Donald coming back.
Looking forward to the challenge ahead. We feel we’ve got a very good team. Eleven of the 12 players who were in Rome have made the team again. Experience is obviously going to be important in what would be an electric atmosphere, let’s just say. That’s what we’re anticipating. That’s what we’re getting ready for, and looking forward to it. It’s going to be absolutely terrific.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: Good afternoon, everybody. Hope everybody is doing well. I just want to say that I can’t wait for next week. The Ryder Cup is without question my favorite event in all of golf, in all of sports. I’ve had the pleasure of being at every one of them inside the ropes since 1993, and I just think we’re going to have an incredibly competitive, highly juiced Ryder Cup next week.
And all I’ll say is that I think that if it hasn’t already been said, I would love if things look really close as we head into Sunday, if the two captains, Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald, who are close friends, could find 60 seconds for themselves and for the good of the game, maybe find a way to see that Rory and Scottie play each other in singles on Sunday. I think at a close Ryder Cup that would basically bring the house down in terms of the excitement that everyone sees around the play there on Sunday, and of course, a close competition.
But I think it would be really cool if they could find a way and buck tradition and see that those guys play each other.
Just can’t wait to get there. Again, love the event, and looking forward to seeing everybody next week, and let’s send it over to Smylie.
SMYLIE KAUFMAN: I would say that you and I probably have one of the most fun jobs next week, the fact that we get to be kind of the eyes and ears a little bit on the golf course. Most of the time, I have my earplugs all the way in. I think next week I’ll probably have them halfway out just to make sure that I hear potentially all that’s said to the away team. The eyes and ears, obviously, are in New York with the fans. Just two other things I want to talk about are Keegan not playing, of course, I can’t wait to see how he captains, but anytime he’s in any match play situation, he’s been such an electric match play player, bringing so much energy. So look to find, you know, a Bryson DeChambeau could potentially be in that energy piece for the United States team.
And also, I think who’s going to be the No. 2 guy that kind of steps up outside of Scottie Scheffler. We’ve seen how good he’s obviously been, but the players that have been in form are guys without experience. J.J. Spaun and Ben Griffin come to mind. Seeing those guys potentially play Friday morning, how they’re going to step up in an atmosphere they’re unfamiliar with, but no doubt they’ve been playing as good as anybody.
Q. Brad and Paul, do you think fan behavior is different at U.S. courses compared to European sites, and do you have any concern for what we’ll see next week at Bethpage in terms of crossing the line?
BRAD FAXON: I’ll take that one. I would just say that there are certainly huge differences in crowd behavior at every different city, every different venue that the players go to, and the Ryder Cup. I think these players, like Paul mentioned earlier, know what to expect. I hope it doesn’t cross the line. I know there will be certain times when it will cross the line.
I would say that the home and away that I played, I felt like the fans were very appreciative of good golf. They certainly would cheer great shots from both sides, certainly louder for the home team, and I never saw anything that crossed the line.
But it’s gotten so much bigger in the last 20 years, so much promotion behind it. We’ll see some crazy stuff for sure. Hopefully, if somebody does cross the line, they’ll be reprimanded and maybe taken off the property so that everybody doesn’t do it.
Like Bones said, there is nothing more exciting than watching match play Ryder Cup golf, particularly in the U.S., being a U.S. player, now media commentator. I can’t wait for it to start.
PAUL McGINLEY: Yeah, I’d endorse that, what Brad said. But I think this is not just a golf issue; this is a society issue, whether it’s social media or whatever. But there certainly seems to be a change in human behavior and people’s behavior, even at sporting events, where they’re a little bit more front-footed, a little bit more -- what can I say – a little bit more aggressive in their tones than they might have been in the past.
I think it’s a society thing.
We are aware that New York crowds are very passionate about their sport, and we are aware that it’s going to be probably the noisiest atmosphere that a Ryder Cup has ever had, and that includes some of the European venues.
So we’re expecting that. We’re anticipating that, and we’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes in terms of preparing the players for that atmosphere and trying to perform in that atmosphere.
We’ve had some expert speakers in. I’m not going to say who they are. Luke can tell you that next week. We’ve taken a lot of advice from a lot of people who have been and performed in these areas, in these arenas, and we feel, like I say, we’re a very well-prepared team for what this huge challenge is going to be away from home.
I think there’s a myth out there that Europe is great at the Ryder Cup and America is rubbish at the Ryder Cup, and I don’t buy into that at all. It is a mix. If you look at what actually has happened in reality, both teams are very, very good at playing at home. Neither team is particularly good on the road. So we’re trying to address that.
Q. Tommy, there are two members of your team, Kevin Kisner and John Wood, who are working for the U.S. next week. Any kind of special access or interviews or anything, we can expect to have some kind of insight about what’s going on with the U.S. Team room?
TOMMY ROY: No, it’s a very good thing for the NBC golf team to have Kevin Kisner and John Wood officially a part of the American squad, and especially for future events where they will have insights that they have learned about these players. But next week, they aren’t in the TV business. They’re with Team USA.
Q. For Smylie and Bones, normally, players and caddies can ask you guys for what’s going on ahead of you to just know what’s going on so they can prepare properly. Are you allowed to give information? And Bones, as a caddie, are you even interested in what’s going on around you with other matches?
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: Well, I will certainly check with the referee who’s walking with each match, but certainly there won’t be a lack of scoreboards or a lack of buzz throughout the crowd. Certainly the players are going to be very, very interested in knowing what’s going on ahead of them or that someone has come from 2-down to being 1-up or from 1-up to being 2-down, and if it’s kosher with the referee and we’re allowed to let them know with the score in other matches, I’ll happily give out that information to both sides if they ask.
SMYLIE KAUFMAN: Yeah, from just my experience in Rome, you could find out pretty much anything just with the amount of scoreboards and video boards out at the golf course. I don’t know if sometimes these guys want to know if the weight of the Ryder Cup is on their shoulders, so maybe head down is best. But if they happen to ask, definitely most often refer to a referee, who there’s plenty of people walking with each group to just make sure that we are following protocol.
Q. I’d like to start with a quick follow-up with Bones. I think I used the term “bucking tradition.” Do you like the way the Presidents Cup does the picking of the pairings better, and are you also saying you’d like the captains to come to some agreement off to the side to set up that Scottie/Rory Sunday singles?
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: Yeah, I’m saying that -- while I’m saying that the Ryder Cup is my favorite sporting event in the world, I think there’s something to be learned from the way they do it at the Presidents Cup in terms of how the teams ultimately present their lineups.
And yeah, I think it would be amazing, as I said, if we have a very competitive Ryder Cup heading into Sunday, which I anticipate will be the case, that one of them sends a text to the other or they just have a gentlemen’s agreement to at least, insofar as Rory and Scottie are concerned, put them out against each other. I think the fans deserve it. I think everybody, the millions at home watching it on NBC, deserves it. I just think it would be an amazing thing to witness.
Q. Would you be in that group, Bones? You’re setting yourself up for having the best seat in the house for the greatest match of the year.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: You know, I’d definitely take that assignment if Tommy gave it to me (laughs). They can yell at me all they want as long as I get to be on that first tee.
Q. There always seems to be some surprise player that emerges as a star of this thing. Is there someone you look to on either side that you think could be a real key figure in this and how it all goes down, and is there anyone also that you look at as a weak link on one of the sides?
SMYLIE KAUFMAN: I would say Ben Griffin from the U.S. side could be a complete X-factor for this team. This guy walks around with confidence. I think he’s a budding star, potentially.
From the European side, I think Robert MacIntyre. He’s been a player who’s really impressed me throughout this entire year, but at the playoffs, he came up just short at the U.S. Open. Just reading his transcripts from the last Ryder Cup in Rome, feel like it was a lot, almost too heavy that first Ryder Cup. I think he’s much more seasoned two years later, so I’d say Robert MacIntyre potentially is.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: I’ll say from the American side, I think the real X-factor for the American team as we head into it, pardon the pun, is Xander Schauffele. I personally consider him, when he’s on form, to be at worst the third-best player in the world. So he’s had a really up-and-down year. Certainly started the season out with some injuries and never really seemed to pick up any momentum.
I think he’s a guy next week for the U.S. team. People have to step up, other than Scottie Scheffler. No one is going to be able to ride his coattails to victory, as great a player as he is, and I ultimately think Xander is a guy that’s capable of having a big week and potentially dictating the outcome insofar as the way the Americans are concerned.
PAUL McGINLEY: My view, I’d agree with Griffin. I think he’s a really good competitor. I think he’s going to relish the environment that the Ryder Cup is.
Henley is another guy who, again, had a wonderful Presidents Cup. I know he’s a world-class player. But he goes under the radar somewhat. I expect him to have quite a big role.
Then you’ve got Young as well, too, with his New York heritage. I think he’ll have a lot of support out there and will relish that environment.
On the European side, I do think that Matt Fitzpatrick, who’s got a poor Ryder Cup record so far, I think that’s a matter of time before that’s corrected, before that gets balanced closer up to the 50 percent. At the moment, he’s at about 30. He’s a much better player, he’s a better competitor, and his recent play would suggest that he’s in line for having a much better Ryder Cup than he has had in the past.
Tyrrell Hatton is a guy that I know is playing on LIV, but he actually qualified for the team. Playing so few events, he still managed to be one of the six players who qualified for the team. Phenomenal performance. He doesn’t seem to have missed a beat, even though he’s playing on LIV. He hasn’t missed a beat competitively, certainly not in DP World standards, as well as the high standards that he’s been showing on LIV.
Maybe not in major championships. I think it’s a matter of time, though, before that happens.
They would be the two that I would highlight besides the obvious ones that have been mentioned on the European team.
BRAD FAXON: Let me jump in here now with Bryson DeChambeau, who arguably will be the most watched player between the two teams there. DeChambeau was kind of the crowd favorite, ironically, at Pinehurst against Rory as the crowds started to chant “USA, USA” in that final round, and I just can’t imagine anything that could be more electrifying than Bryson DeChambeau starting the Ryder Cup and driving the first green at Bethpage with whomever he’s playing with in his pairing.
It could be someone like Cam Young, another New York player, or even Ben Griffin, who could certainly stand right up there with Bryson in that pressure situation, being a rookie but who’s played so, so well this year.
I just can’t believe that this crowd won’t want to see every single shot Bryson hits.
We have just so many experienced, steady players on this team, like Justin Thomas, who can play any format, who’s seen every situation that comes up, and he seems to rise to the top in the toughest situations.
I think when Bones said Xander is an X-factor, how is he going to come not having played in potentially five weeks? And how is Collin Morikawa going to play? How will he play not having had a great year around the greens, particularly the second half of the year? Will he find that spark? Because he’s such a great player to have in foursomes. That’s what I’m looking for on the American team. He really has to step up.
DAN HICKS: I’ll just quickly throw in Patrick Cantlay’s name just for the sake of getting it in there. We all know what happened in the last Ryder Cup and what a lightning rod he was over there.
So it’s going to be interesting to see the home crowd’s reaction to him. Are they going to light his fire? Are they going to try to get him going, involved, you know, specifically after what happened a couple of years ago?
And again, Cantlay earned his way on as a captain’s pick. He was 15th or so on the Ryder Cup points list for the U.S. But I think that’s indicative of Keegan Bradley and his vice captains, and everybody on the U.S. side knows what Cantlay can bring.
And I think in the conversations that I had with Kevin Kisner, who obviously is one of the vice captains, he just seemed to think that Cantlay was one of those guys that they really wanted on the team because you don’t know what you’re going to get in this Ryder Cup, right? But you do know what Cantlay can bring and has proved in past Ryder Cups what he can bring. He can bring the sauce. He can bring the game. And at this point, you just need guys who are going to get a point. So I think he’s going to be really interesting to watch.
Q. Tommy, just wondering if there are any cool toys for this year’s Ryder Cup?
TOMMY ROY: Yeah. Well, as I said, we got the three drones and the airplane, got bunker cams out on the course. Got scorpion crane between 1 and 18, a scorpion crane between 16 and 17. Tracing on every single tee box. One of the drones is the tracing drone, which I think on that course, is really going to be effective. So, yeah. Ready to roll.
Q. And then what happened to your philosophy change for this event versus a more traditional tournament?
TOMMY ROY: Well, more traditional stroke play event, you can bounce around the course and throw shots in the order they take place to document what’s going on the leaderboard.
And with this, it is player against player. So we stick with a show the best European shot, the best American shot from a particular match, or if it’s singles, we’ll go the two shots that the American and the European player hit from that particular match before we go off to the next match.
So it’s a different pace. Sunday will be absolutely rocking and rolling, though, with all those 12 matches out there.
And the thing that I find interesting is all the hours on the air, you know, we’re on the air for 28 hours scheduled right now over the course of these three days, and I never lose my energy in there because at the end of every session, there’s a grand conclusion to all these matches.
Whereas if you’re doing something like the U.S. Open, where you’re on the air for all those hours, at the end of Thursday, you’re pretty tired, at the end of Friday, you’re pretty tired. You finally get your energy going again late on Sunday, when there is going to be a big conclusion to the event.
But with this Ryder Cup, it’s like these matches ending session after session. It’s really awesome in the truck.
Q. Couple of questions, if I may. The first one is a general question to anybody who has something interesting to say. Can you give us an example of how Keegan has tweaked the course to benefit the Americans, be that a general approach to the course or maybe even specific holes?
TOMMY ROY: Maybe I’ll take that one. I spoke to John Wood today, and he just said, for the most part, fairways is just a little bit wider. I actually played this golf course a month or so ago. But for the most part, Bethpage is the test that doesn’t need too much tweaking. For the most part, the rough’s a little bit down compared to maybe where it would be for a big-time event. I expect the green speed to be up a little bit for the tournament. But, Paul, you were just out there. I know you got a firsthand look at it all.
PAUL McGINLEY: Yeah. I just confirmed what you said. I agree with that. The rough is not as stable as it would be in a U.S. PGA or a U.S. Open that has been played there before. The fairways are pretty generous at the moment because they’re soft. And they may firm up next week. We don’t know yet. Greens as well, are pretty soft. They may firm up next week. We don’t know yet.
Green speeds at the moment are probably running around 12, and they’ll probably move them up to about 13. And a couple of the tee boxes are moved up. 17 is moved up. It’s about 30 yards shorter than it was certainly for the U.S. Open in ’02 when I played, and the first tee box has been moved up about 35 to 40 yards in order to get the stand in behind the tee.
So all in all, it’s what we expected. It’s right out of the American playbook of what they do when they play at home. And they’ve been very successful doing it, so why change, which is generally rough, not too thick, greens quite fast, and trying to encourage a fast pace of low scoring. It’s proved to be a very successful tournament in the past when they’ve played at home.
Q. My follow-up was actually to you, Paul. Can you give us an example or examples as a former captain of how even the tiniest details can make a really, really big difference to your team?
PAUL McGINLEY: Well, yeah. I mean, the small details are big, and the captain is making decisions all the time. But like I say, we’re coming at this Ryder Cup very, very differently than any Ryder Cup we’ve come at before.
We feel that we’ve really underperformed away from home. We just haven’t lost in three of the last four times; we’ve been resoundingly beaten. And we’re trying to correct that.
So we’ve looked at the Ryder Cup through a different lens than we’ve ever looked at an away one before. I think we’ve been guilty a little bit of trying to do what we did at home so successfully on the road, and the dynamics are obviously very different, particularly when it comes to dealing -- playing in a very raucous atmosphere that’s rooting against you.
So we’ve been trying to prepare the players for that. I mean, I know it’s maybe not a small detail, but it’s something huge that we’ve never done before, which is the trip that we’ve just done, two and a half days together. We’ve never done that before. It was players, caddies, vice captains, captain, and me, and that was it. There were no wives. There was obviously some backroom team people as well, some doctors, physios, and stuff like that. But that was it.
It was a very small, tight-knit group. We had meetings. We played one and a half rounds. And we got a real good look at the golf course and shared more extensive and elaborate ideas with each player about what their potential role is for the week and potential partners as well.
They’ve all got five days off. They’ve all gone to different places, but we have asked them to stay on the Eastern Coast time, or as close to it as they can, which they’ve all done. So, in other words, nobody is returning to Europe for these five days. So we’re not having to deal with jet lag next week.
So I know it’s a bigger thing, but we’ve never done that before for an away match. We did do it going into Rome. We’ve done it before with our home matches, but we have never approached the away match with having a practice trip, an extensive practice trip like this.
I talked about rolls of the dice with a new captain in play, being one of them -- sorry, an ex-captain in play, being the first one, and obviously, this first practice trip is another roll of the dice.
BRAD FAXON: I would say one of the things that’s hugely important is the communication from the captains to all the players and how he does that. And I think a great example, I had lunch with Ben Griffin a couple of weeks ago after the selection, of course, and I asked him when he got the call from Keegan, it was Monday morning after the Tour Championship, and I asked him if he knew when he got this call that he was in or not.
He said, I didn’t know for sure. I thought I was going to be picked, but I didn’t know until I got the call.
But what he said that I thought was very interesting was that Keegan called all the boys on Sunday night. He didn’t want any media around, like what happened to Keegan at Full Swing, around the guys that he was going to tell, No, you’re not going to be part of the team this year, because of what happens at Full Swing and how that was put on camera. I think that was a big effect on Keegan, how he didn’t want that to ever happen to anyone else.
And those are certainly the smaller details that both captains are going to have to have in order to have success this week. And I think that was a great nugget from Ben Griffin to hear that, that he didn’t want to have to put a player in an uncomfortable situation like he was, and something he learned going forward.
Even Kevin Kisner would say, you know, he has to know players’ personalities when he’s out there as a vice captain. He said, Look, I need to know whether I need to put my arm around a guy’s shoulder a time or kick him in the butt a little bit. And I think that’s what makes a great captain is knowing that each player is an individual who makes up their team.
Q. Got a question for you, Dan. Being a Ryder Cup play caller, being on the mic as many times, obviously, we’ve talked about the atmosphere many times and what it’s like out on these courses, but curious your side of things on the mic. What does it feel different to you calling for the Ryder Cup than any of the other events you call throughout the year?
DAN HICKS: Yeah, this is a totally different animal, the Ryder Cup. It’s so boisterous, so electric that you probably need to say less at a Ryder Cup than at any other event that we do.
The pictures are just telling the story. The whole thing has got so much energy to it. The ebb and flow of it. I think the most important responsibility for a guy like me is to just make sure everybody knows what’s at stake. Keep the match play situation first and foremost, so people know what this means.
But then, other than that, layout because I just think the pictures that are at a Ryder Cup and the visuals are the thing. And that’s the kind of thing that when people are kind of surfing through, let’s say it’s on a Sunday, it’s an NFL Sunday and you’re -- obviously the NFL is a juggernaut, and it really is just the ratings grabber of every sporting event around the world, but if you’re cruising around, and I’ve had numerous examples of people that have told me they never watch golf events, but they see the Ryder Cup, they’re just compelled to stay there because of just the energy of it.
It’s just different. And I think that the more we can just lay out, let the pictures, let the sounds tell the story, which they will, unlike any other golf event, that will be the best way to approach it.
It’s kind of like a mini stadium for every match. You get the four matches going at one time during the first couple of days, and you get the singles going, but every single match is like a mini football stadium that breaks out, like huge cheers, like Tommy was saying. There’s an end and a result to every hole. So you get a big cheer, a big groan. You get this, you get that. It’s unlike anything we do.
TOMMY ROY: I’ll add in there is more information that you have to give out because typically in a stroke play event I’ll say in the headset over to 14, Scheffler for birdie, and now this time I have to say, over to 14, Scheffler for birdie, has already missed his birdie attempt and the two Europeans have lengthy pars. So there is a lot of extra information that has to get out there.
--NBC SPORTS--
