The 2018 Ryder Cup will have a 1st tee party that golf has never seen before

There is nothing in golf that compares to the Ryder Cup. This is indisputable. The format, the team setting, the scarcity, the pressure, the celebrations, the (mild) s**t talk. We could go on and on about how Ryder Cup week is such a dramatic departure from every other golf event on the planet.

One big way it stands out is the first tee. This simply does not exist at regular PGA Tour events. It doesn’t exist in any other event, including the other team match play competitions. Players talk about the nerves of the first tee at the Ryder Cup being the most intense in the game. There’s sometimes even a tunnel you have to walk through as if you’re heading out onto a field where you might contract brain disease.

Every player will tell you it’s more pressurized than any major championship, including the majors. Some say you can’t even feel your arms and legs and just subconsciously make a swing and hope for the best. Some players — OK, usually just Bubba Watson — tell the crowd to just make as much noise as possible during the shot. That’s when you’re supposed to be a hushed and proper for this sport.

Well this year in France, the first tee amphitheater is going up a level, probably several levels beyond anything we’ve had. That’s because the capacity of the massive grandstand the European Tour built up at Le Golf National is at 6,900. Back in June during the French Open, those estimates were over 7,000. Wherever it settles, it’s going to be enormous. By comparison, the grandstands on the first tee at Hazeltine in 2016 held a capacity of 1,668.

That image above doesn’t even capture the full extent of it, because they built it out so the full complex wraps around the first tee and behind adjacent holes coming back into the clubhouse. The entire thing is a monster and here’s an overhead view:

Here’s one more from the ground, with a person standing there to give you a sense of the scale and how high this goes into the sky:

OK, I lied. One more from the top just because I can’t help looking at this thing. Who knew!? I guess I have a thing for golf grandstands.

So with 7,000 up in the stands, and then thousands more down on the ground, you’re probably looking at a gathering of 10 to 15,000 on that first tee come Friday morning. They also know how to figure out the acoustics, as Tiger Woods referenced in his press conference, citing a “shaking” he felt in Europe in 2010 when he stepped onto the first tee.

Now comes the question of whether they can actually fill this thing up for the matches. A French golf official at the Evian Championship lobbed a few quotes this month saying no one in his country really cares about golf and you’d hardly know the Ryder Cup was coming if you read the papers.

It’s true that France is not a big golf country and doesn’t produce many standout pros. That had me worried that this could look like some 2015 Noon kickoff for a Miami vs. Wake Forest game in South Florida.

But! The European Tour is reportedly expecting 270,000 people to attend this week from 90 different countries. The best part about these grandstands is you can see some eight holes from the very upper portions of them. The dirty little secret about a Ryder Cup is that it can stink to attend if you actually want to watch golf. There are only four matches and eight players on the course during the first two days, so everything bottlenecks around just four holes. Or you post up on one hole and wait for the flurry of four matches to come buzzing through. Unless you’re inside the ropes, you’re not seeing many golf shots, or at least you’re working your butt off to see them.

A grandstand that not only creates that rowdy first tee scene, but also goes high into the sky and lets you see multiple holes is a big win for the event. The French and the European Tour have outdone us on this one.