Bob MacIntyre opens up on learning valuable lesson for rowdy Ryder Cup in New York

In the third round of the PGA Tour FedEx Cup Play-Off event at Caves Valley in Maryland last Saturday, the Oban man reacted to someone giving him stick from outside the ropes as he played with Scottie Scheffler.

After holing a putt at the 14th, MacIntyre put a finger to his lips to silence the heckler before pointing in the direction of the culprit with his putter.

The incident led Luke Donald, Europe’s Ryder Cup captain, to talk about how he will be aiming to get the Scot using the fire in his belly in the “right way” in the Ryder Cup on Long Island.

And, after getting off to a strong start in the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta, MacIntytre admitted himself that last weekend had been a timely learning experience for him.

“There's things that I'm going to learn from last week that are going to help me for Bethpage,” he declared, having secured automatic qualification for the second Ryder Cup running.

“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 yell, swear, get angry.

“But just the way I interacted with the crowd, I was trying to keep them out of the way, but, instead, doing what I did on Saturday brought them into it.”

MacIntyre admitted he’d felt “p****d off” and wanted to “smash up my clubs” after squandering a four-shot lead heading into the final round last Sunday as he ended up finishing second to world No 1 Scheffler.

It was the perfect boost, therefore, when he opened with a six-under-par 64 in the searing heat in Atlanta to end the opening day sitting handily-placed in joint-third, three shots behind leader Russell Henley.

“Probably until today, until I started warming up today,” he replied to being asked how long it had taken him to get over last weekend’s ultimate disappointment, though the effort still saw him climb into the world’s top ten for the first time.

“There has been a lot of disappointment over the last few days. I didn’t want to peg it up here, to be honest with you. But the minute today I've woken up today and I'm getting ready to play golf, it's like, put that behind us for the week and let's go to town on this place and give it our best shot.

“I've not really done a full debrief on what happened. I had a talk with the guys out here on my team, four of us, me, my caddie, Mike Kanski, my putting coach, my manager. Had a half hour, 40-minute chat in the house on Monday.

“It was the first time with the lead for me in the US. The US Open this year (when he finished second behind J.J. Spaun) was obviously massive. It just didn't fall my way. It was just roll the dice and see whose number comes up.

“I'm yet to win on American soil. I'm building. I'm doing the right things. Everything I do in the game of golf just now is to get better at the game of golf. I feel like statistically across the board I'm getting better, and the way I'm handling myself, the things I do outside the golf course, I'm doing it to improve in the game of golf.”

The 29-year-old’s opening salvo at East Lake contained seven birdies, including three in a row on the back nine, with a solitary dropped shot coming at the par-4 16th.

‘I’m wearing so much sun cream that I look like Casper the Ghost’

“Drove the ball beautifully, but you've got to do that around here to be able to put a score together,” he said of matching his closing effort on his debut in the season-ending event on the PGA Tour 12 months ago. “And the putter worked again. While that's working, we'll just keep the foot down.”

MacIntyre joked that he was having to apply so much sun cream in searing heat this week that he “looks like Casper the Ghost out there” and that he had been getting “a lot of shouts about my sun cream”.

Henley, one of the six automatic qualifiers for the US Ryder Cup team, signed for an eagle and seven birdies as he set the pace in the $40 million season finale, with Scheffler already lurking ominously as his closest challenger on seven under.

In-form Tommy Fleetwood is off to another good start as he matched MacIntyre’s effort, with Rory McIlroy, who made a lucky birdie at the par-5 18th after thinning a bunker shot that hit the grandstand and rebounded on to the green, sitting on four under along with Ludvig Aberg.