Bob MacIntyre plans to embrace the Bethpage crowd at next month’s Ryder Cup having learned a valuable lesson in the last week.
The Scot bounced back from the disappointment of losing a lead to Scottie Scheffler at the BMW Championship on Sunday by shooting a six-under 64 to be three off the lead set by Russell Henley on the opening day of the Tour Championship at East Lake.
But what has been more valuable to the left-hander was his experience in handling being targeted by spectators in the heat of a head-to-head against an American in the United States and he feels that will pay off in what is expected to be a hostile atmosphere in New York.
“There’s things that I’m going to learn from that week or from them two days, Saturday, Sunday especially, that are going to help me,” said MacIntyre, who in his third round last week put his finger to his lips after holing a putt and then pointed with his putter to the fan who had been heckling.
“There’s a couple of things that I know that I’m going to change. It’s going to be the way I handle myself, not so much my attitude out there because I’m fiery, I’m always going to be fiery, I’m always going to swear, yell, get angry.
“But just the way I interacted with the crowd, I was trying to keep them out of the way instead of doing what I did on Saturday and bringing them into it.
“Last week it felt like it was me and Mike (Burrows, his caddie) against the whole of the area but it’s part of it and it’s going to be a great learning curve for me.”
MacIntyre carded seven birdies, with his solitary bogey coming at the 16th and he shares joint third with Ryder Cup team-mate Tommy Fleetwood, who also had seven birdies after opening with three in a row, dropping his only shot at the 10th.
Henley was in imperious form with an eagle at the sixth allowing him to turn in 31 before finishing with five birdies in seven holes, but even then world number one Scheffler is only two behind after a blemish-free 63.
Playing partner Rory McIlroy finished five off the lead after a fortuitous birdie at the last which even got Scheffler’s approval.
The world number two bladed his greenside bunker shot but it cannoned off a grandstand to within 18 feet of the pin and he holed out seconds before the siren sounded for the course to be evacuated because of approaching storms.
“If it hadn’t have come down and we had to drop, we might not have got finished,” said the Northern Irishman.
Scheffler was just as grateful avoiding having to return to putt out on Friday morning, especially as tee times have already been brought forward due to the weather forecast.
“I have never rooted so hard for somebody’s ball to come back, outside of my partner in a team event, because we’re walking to 18 and Bones (Jim McKay, former caddie now on-course television reporter) told us they were going to blow at any second,” said the reigning US PGA and Open champion.
“I’m watching his ball fly towards the grandstand and I’m like ‘Oh, my gosh, we’ve got no way of finishing this thing’, so I was relieved when I saw it come back on the green.”
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