[PHOTO: Warren Little]
Rory McIlroy told reporters overnight at the BMW Championship that members of the European Ryder Cup team have been wearing virtual reality headsets with programmed crowd abuse to simulate the potential reception at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage.
RELATED: European Ryder Cup vice-captain outshines his own team to win BMW PGA at wet Wentworth
Eleven of the 12 European team members were at the BMW PGA Championship, the DP World Tour’s flagship tournament at the Wentworth Club in England. That number does not include vice-captain Alex Noren – who won the BMW PGA – and captain Luke Donald, who missed the cut.
Noren topped France’s Adrien Saddier with a birdie on the first playoff hole.
The 45th Ryder Cup will be held at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York, from September 26-28. Europe was triumphant in the previous edition in 2023 in Rome, although the team has not won in the US since Medinah in 2012.
Donald hosted a team dinner on Tuesday at Wentworth – the headquarters of the DP World Tour, which runs the European side of the Ryder Cup – attended by players, staff, caddies, wives and girlfriends. McIlroy revealed it was there that the 11 players were given the VR headsets.
“They said, ‘How far do you want this to go?’” McIlroy told reporters at Wentworth, after a closing eagle gave him a 65 for T-20 at 12-under-par. “And I said, ‘Go as far as you want.’ It is just to simulate the sights and sounds and noise. That’s the stuff that we are going to have to deal with. So it’s better to try to desensitise yourself as much as possible before you get in there. You can get them to say whatever you want them to say. So you can go as close to the bone as you like.”
Asked for specifics on the content, McIlroy told The Guardian: “You don’t want to know. Not for publication.”
Donald made his debut as captain at Marco Simone in Rome. The former world No.1, who won five PGA Tour titles and six on the European circuit, was praised for his attention to detail as a Ryder Cup skipper. It seems the 47-year-old will continue the scrupulousness onto Long Island for the biennial event next week.
“We are doing everything we can to best prepare ourselves for what it is going to feel like on Friday week,” McIlroy said. “But nothing can really prepare you until you’re actually in that. You can wear all the VR headsets you want and do all the different things we’ve been trying to do to get ourselves ready but once the first tee comes on Friday, it’s real and we just have to deal with whatever’s given.”
The European squad left England overnight for New York, where it was planned to play a nine-hole practice round on Monday and 18 holes on Tuesday at the course that also hosted the 2019 PGA Championship, as well as the 2002 and 2009 US Opens.
