All around the world, there are different types of professional tournaments that fans from all over watch every weekend during the golf season. Some of these tournaments offer a level of entertainment and excitement that is on par with other big sporting events, especially ones that involve international competition. The Ryder Cup is the biggest international tournament in the world; its most recent tourney just ended, and it had a lot of big stories behind it.

In this blog, we will break down what the Ryder Cup and other golf tournaments can bring for every kind of beginner golf fan and why they should watch them.

How Does Watching a Golf Tournament Help You?

Like most other sports, the more you watch people play, whether they are a pro or even your own golf instructor, the more you will learn in time to better help your game. For golf, it’s a sport that, more than any other one out there, you can REALLY learn a lot from the professionals.

When you’re out on the course playing, you, like the professionals, feel an immense sense of pressure to hit a shot well enough so that you will either shoot for birdie, par, or worst case scenario, bogey. Professionals are always trying to look for effective techniques to get around holes and shoot for the best scores while keeping in mind the strategic management of every new course they play by studying it in order to prepare for any shot they hit.

All of these circumstances that professionals deal with every week are not unlike what we all experience on the course! When all of that is established, that will allow you to learn the finer details of a pro’s game around their swing or warm-up process. On top of that, these tournaments (while they start on Thursdays) mainly run through into the weekends, so you can watch them if you have the time away from your regular weeks of working a job or going to school.

The Ryder Cup and The Presidents Cup

The biggest tournaments in the world, arguably, are the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup. They are annual 2-year tournaments that take place between the USA and Europe (Ryder Cup), and the USA versus the rest of the world minus Europe (Presidents Cup). These are the tournaments where the biggest sense of pressure is on your shoulders, but these tournaments also offer the greatest amount of competition. If you are a casual player and love the spirit of it with your friends and family, these two tournaments will be must-see events.

Team Europe’s 15-13 victory to retain the trophy on American soil is the biggest story out of the most recent Ryder Cup that happened at the end of September. It was a Ryder Cup that was filled with a lot of drama, controversy, and some crazy golf play that allowed Europe to hold on until the final day to win back the coveted trophy. 

So what makes these two tournaments so appealing? Aside from the glamor and excitement that these tournaments bring, whether past or future, there’s a sense of appeal through each step of the process to see this tournament play out. It doesn’t matter if it’s the recruitment process where players have to actually qualify to get in, the way matches are scored and formatted, or how the captains for each team formulate who will play on each day of the tourney through all four days.

If you want to learn more, read here – Four Things That Make the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup Different

The style of competition these players show off when they win holes is loud and proud, with a national sense of pride to play for their countries and represent them on the big stage. It’s no different than if you and your buddies go out and play an 18-hole competition to see who pays for dinner after, or if you have a nice and jovial family competition amongst the new in-laws after you just got married. There’s always a competition amongst those around you in this sport, and these two tournaments can show you what it actually looks like.

The Hardest Golf Courses in the World

Every year, the professionals play on some of the easiest golf courses, and then they play on some of the hardest. Playing on the hardest golf courses can be a real good lesson for casual players watching in, especially if you’re a casual player who tends to only ever play on 1-2 of the same courses.

When you watch professionals play on these different golf courses every week, you notice that they may not always change how they swing, but they will change how they play on the course. Each new course can present a set of challenges that is unique to each player’s style, with what part of their game they are best at or the worst at: putting, chipping, driving, and hitting out of the sand bunkers.

The PGA Tour has listed several courses, coupled with their tournaments, as the hardest ones to come by for pro players (images below in order of list):

• Oakmont Country Club (home to the U.S. Open Championship)
• Torrey Pines Golf Course (home to the Farmers Insurance Open)
• Old Course at St. Andrews (home to the British Open Championship)
• Augusta National Golf Club (home to The Masters)

Photo credit: Getty Images – https://www.golfdigest.com/gallery/oakmont-country-club-course-tour-photos

Photo credit: https://www.torreypines.com/torrey-pines-south-course/

Photo credit: https://www.graylynloomis.com/st-andrews-old-course/

Photo credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images – https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2014/04/08/player-perspectives-on-augusta-national-holes

These are some of the hardest tournaments on the planet that show golfers hitting very low scores every year. The reasons for this are due to the weather messing with the course conditions, hole formats that feature high grass roughs and fast-breaking greens (making putting impossible), and so much more.

What makes this great for casual players to watch is that there will be times when you have to go and play a course that you’re not used to. These new courses can offer a whole slew of challenges that are worth learning about.

By watching the way pros play on the hardest courses, you can take that and use it for yourself when learning about your own golf game. Your swing should stay the same no matter what, but the idea of a challenge such as that is worth taking head-on.

These tournaments and golf courses are among the few that we recommend you watch and learn from. And guess what? You can play on these courses for yourself! Thanks to our TRACKMAN Simulator Bays, you can rent out a time to play on a simulation of these courses to see just how hard they truly are. 

You can even book a time for a golf lesson with any of our PGA associate golf instructors, they give the best golf lessons in Buffalo, NY and they can run you through these courses on the simulator. We can’t wait to see if you’ve got what it takes to play on these courses like the pros do!