Tuesday 27 September 2016 16:54, UK
James Haddock assesses the mood of USA captain Davis Love III and soaks up the pre-Ryder Cup atmosphere in Minnesota.
Davis Love III is a popular figure with his peers, who selected him again to help USA try to gain their first Ryder Cup victory since 2008, and the American public.
Saturday at Hazeltine National GC saw the captain give up an hour to have photos taken with tournament volunteers and golf fans. The long line of admirers, young and old, were keen to meet Davis and in turn he gave every single one of them the same bright smile and charm for their brief meeting.
But all the while he was keeping half an eye on a TV screen 20 yards away showing live coverage of the Tour Championship. The captain has one more wildcard to select after the conclusion of the PGA Tour's climatic event of the season on Sunday night.
The selection process was changed after Billy Horschel won the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup two years ago, he took the $10m prize but couldn't make the already completed American team. But is the new process also flawed? Does it heap even more pressure onto a late pick? Can it be a confidence knock for those not yet in, hoping to make it? Davis agrees that what seemed to be an ideal solution to the Horschel scenario is actually far from perfect.
"Obviously it's tough on a lot of people," he told Sky Sports. "It's tough on the guys playing the Tour Championship, so we'll have to sit after this Ryder Cup and think about this and whether this the best way to go.
"Sure would've been nice to have a week off from having to make the pick and the guy having to start playing."
Love is clearly delighted to see Dustin Johnson continuing his purple patch of form, but it is the question of who joins DJ and the ten others already named to complete the USA side which dominates his thoughts currently.
Davis and I were sitting on his captain's buggy to discuss the pick predicament and he told me no final decision had been made.
He said: "No, we're all watching scores and we'll try to make a decision. It's been really tough on us as assistant captains and captain. We don't know which way to go, we've never been through this before.
"If someone gets really hot this weekend then we can take him, so we've got a bunch of guys that are playing good but nobody that's standing out. We'll have to watch this weekend and see what happens.
His supporters were all offering advice in which way to go as they had their souvenir snapshot taken with him, shouting "Pick Bubba [Watson], pick Jim [Furyk], pick Justin [Thomas]!"
Minneapolis is a place which is mad about sport, from the Minnesota Vikings NFL team, baseball's Minnesota Twins or the ice hockey side Minnesota Wild.
Things will certainly be going wild at Hazeltine National later this week, when the Ryder Cup becomes the centre of the sporting focus here. Fans are expected to be noisy, passionate supporters for the home team.
A DJ will be in residence at the first tee grandstand to whip up the atmosphere and get the mood lifted, so expect Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA to get a fair bit of airtime.
The merchandise is clearly more focused this year on the on course aim. T-shirts emblazoned with "Beat Europe" are popular, as are those printed with "We are 13", a reference to the role expected of the crowd to do their bit to assist the 12 players and help team USA. Captain Love is in no doubt how important that will be.
"The home game is a huge advantage, if we get rolling the momentum stays with us,' he said.
"Just like a football match or an American Football game the fans get into it, if the fans go quiet you know the momentum's shifted to the other side. We need to keep the noise going out here and stay ahead."
There is plenty of red too. Many red shirts, jackets and hats to be worn by American fans on a course which features red grandstands, signs, banners and hoardings. It's all a psychological ploy to ensure that both sides see red everywhere they look. Europe's task will be purely to focus on turning the scoreboards blue.
USA last won the Ryder Cup eight years ago. Love experienced defeat in four of his six playing appearances in this event. He also felt the heartache of loss at Medinah four years ago. The desire to win again runs deep, but that brings its own pressure on the home side. Love believes the only way to end that run is to keep things simple and to have fun:
"This is an unbelievably good golf team that we have assembled here, if we just go play our game we're gonna be pretty good," Love added.
"If we go out and everybody try to be superhuman and everybody be perfect that's where we get in our own way I think. Our top players seem to try too hard, we don't get enough points out of them, so if Dustin Johnson just plays the way he's been playing the last month then that's good enough for us.
"If we just realise have fun, play golf, go out there and show off we'll play well."
Having fun is always easier where things are going your way though. Team USA have experience on their side, but it is largely experience of losing in Ryder Cups.
It's a bigger deal to end the losing run right now, having been victorious just twice in the past 10 editions of the Ryder Cup, although the history of this event still shows American strength having won 25 of the 40 Ryder Cups staged.
It's one of greatest head to heads in sport. A tribal battle. Red v blue. USA v Europe. What a week lies ahead!
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