Rome welcomed thousands of fans to the Ryder Cup on Friday as the 44th edition got underway for the first time in Italy, a country steeped in sporting history but a minor player in golf.
The Marco Simone Golf and Country Club, which is hosting this week's tournament, is located around nine miles (14.5 kilometres) from central Rome and offers breathtaking views of both rolling Italian countryside and Saint Peter's Basilica in the distance.
Supporters from all over the United States and Europe were already jostling at the gates with the course still enveloped in pre-dawn darkness, well over an hour before world number one Scottie Scheffler teed off at 0535 GMT.
Once a striking orange moon looming over the eternal city gave way to a baking early autumn sun, fans came sprinting up the undulating path to get into the Colosseum-inspired arena which towers over the first tee.
Opposing fans gently ribbed one another as they waited for Scheffler and his partner Sam Burns -- sporting a distinctive mullet haircut -- to enter, booing the American pair and letting rip with an enormous roar of approval for their European opponents Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton.
But hardly any Italian voices could be heard in the din, with Britons, Irish and Scandinavians the dominant groups in a colourful crowd also dotted with Stars and Stripes.
The only red, green and white tricolour in sight was flapping in the breeze atop the restored 11th century castle from which the course takes its name, the home of the Biagiotti fashion designer family since the 1970s.
Fabrizio Sacchini, who started playing golf four years ago, travelled to Rome from Ancona on Italy's Adriatic Coast to watch the Ryder Cup and was hopeful that the game can grow.
"I see a lot of enthusiasm, maybe in Italy that enthusiasm will grow as time passes... we're all hoping for a brighter future for golf here," he told AFP.
There are no Italian players in the European team and the highest-ranked player from the Mediterranean nation is 40-year-old Francesco Molinari, a non-playing vice-captain for the European team and world number 181.
- 'Minority sport' -
Ryder Cup veteran Molinari was one half of the "Moliwood" partnership with Tommy Fleetwood which won four out of four matches in Europe's 2018 triumph in Paris.
But the former Open champion's success hasn't translated into a boom for golf in Italy, which only has around 94,000 registered players and a fraction of the courses offered by most US states.
Franco Chimenti, the head of Italy's golf federation, has said that the Ryder Cup is the biggest sporting event in the country since the 1960 Olympics, and the course has undergone a massive revamp since Rome was awarded this year's tournament in 2015.
However the chatter around the 15th green on Friday was dominated by English after John Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton won the first match of the tournament, cruising to a 4 and 3 victory over world number one Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns.
And Luca Gardani, a 43-year-old who is from Milan but travelled all the way from his home in Colombia to watch the Ryder Cup, is less optimistic that Italy will catch the golf bug.
"You've managed to find some of us, I reckon there might be another three or four somewhere around here," he joked as fans cheered Viktor Hovland and Ludvig Aberg putting Europe 2-0 up on the same hole.
"It seems like we're past the Molinari wave and we're still waiting for the next generation to come through.
"But it's a niche sport and it always will be. I don't know why, but the fact is that basically no-one in Italy knew that the Ryder Cup was even happening and only found out about it because the papers started talking about it the day before.
"There aren't really any Italians here, on the course or off it. That tells you everything you need to know."
Europe are gunning to win back the Ryder Cup after being thrashed 19-9 at Whistling Straits two years ago by the Americans, who haven't on European soil since 1993.
td/gj
