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The Scenes From the First Tee at the 2023 Ryder Cup Looked Absolutely Unreal

The 2023 Ryder Cup kicked off to a packed house at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome.

Jeff Ritter

The Scenes From the First Tee at the 2023 Ryder Cup Looked Absolutely Unreal
The Scenes From the First Tee at the 2023 Ryder Cup Looked Absolutely Unreal /

The 2023 Ryder Cup kicked off outside Rome on a bright, clear morning, with thousands of fans crammed into the first-tee grandstands and lining the fairway. There's really no other scene in golf quite like it.

Those opening-tee stands at Marco Simone GC reportedly hold about 5,000 fans, but the total number on Friday morning far exceeded that. The scene was loud. It was wild. It was a little rowdy. (The TV broadcast picked up a heckler yelling, “You stink Scottie!” at Scottie Scheffler.)

Scheffler hit the opening shot for the U.S. to kick things off and he pulled his tee ball into the left rough. Jon Rahm hit the opening shot for Europe, and as he stepped to the tee he was already sweating through his cap and shirt. His drive found the right side of the fairway.

“It doesn’t get any better than the first tee at a Ryder Cup for me,” said European captain Luke Donald on the USA Network broadcast. “This is what sport is about.”

“Those 30 years are the past. Every two years is a new opportunity, a new venue,” said U.S. captain Zach Johnson while referencing the U.S. team's 30-year drought in Ryder Cups on European soil. “This is a new chapter for these 12 guys.”

That new chapter couldn't have begun in a better setting. Game on in Rome.

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Jeff Ritter
JEFF RITTER

Jeff Ritter is the managing director of SI Golf. He has more than 20 years of sports media experience, and previously was the general manager at the Morning Read, where he led that business's growth and joined SI as part of an acquisition in 2022. Earlier in his career he spent more than a decade at SI and Golf Magazine, and his journalism awards include a MIN Magazine Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a master's from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

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