The Ryder Cup opening ceremony might be the most unnecessary of all opening ceremonies, and this was another classic of the genre. There was some awkward presenting and bad music and, mainly, lots of applause. The players’ partners got applause. Team Europe’s traveling officials got applause, whoever they are. The Space Force even got applause.
Yet to Luke Donald, this was an opportunity. He began his ceremony speech in Rome speaking flawless Italian, stringing together several sentences to huge cheers from the home crowd. “It felt like we were already one up,” Shane Lowry later said of that moment, the day before play started at Marco Simone.
