European Ryder Cup team heads to New York with captain Luke Donald 

Team Europe has begun its final preparations for the 45th Ryder Cup, with captain Luke Donald and 11 players boarding a flight from London to New York on Sunday after the BMW PGA Championship. The team will spend the next few days on the U.S. East Coast to get used to the five-hour time difference before the matches start at Bethpage Black on September 26.

Ryder Cup Europe marked the moment on Instagram, posting a carousel of photos from Heathrow Airport with the caption,

“All smiles on route to New York 😎.”

Donald said some players will stay together and practice in the New York area, while others will work with their coaches or take short breaks. The key, he explained, is to remain in the U.S. and avoid another long flight before the Ryder Cup week.

“It's one thing that I think worked very well for us in Rome. We had never really had an organized practice trip before,” Donald said. (via Golfweek)

“Sort of the building of a unified team really started again on that -- I think it was a Monday between Irish and Wentworth, so the Monday of Wentworth we went over and we sort of started to form as a team then.”

Donald said a similar trip helped Europe’s 16½–11½ win in Rome two years ago. He’s using the same plan at Bethpage, aiming for early team bonding and less last-minute travel. Some players are expected to play practice rounds together in New York this week, while others will ease into preparations at their own pace.

European Ryder Cup Team uses VR to prepare for hostile crowds at Bethpage

Rory McIlroy revealed that the European Ryder Cup team has been using virtual reality headsets to prepare for the intense crowd reactions they might face at Bethpage Black next week. The idea came during a team dinner on Tuesday at Wentworth, hosted by captain Luke Donald, where McIlroy said all 11 team members received VR headsets.

“They asked how far we wanted it to go, and I said, ‘go as far as you want.’ It is just to simulate the sights and sounds and noise. That’s the stuff that we are going to have to deal with. So it’s better to try to desensitize yourself as much as possible before you get in there. You can get them to say whatever you want them to say. So you can go as close to the bone as you like.”

McIlroy added that while the VR sessions help, nothing truly prepares players for the real experience.

“You can wear all the VR headsets you want and do all the different things we’ve been trying to do to get ourselves ready but once the first tee comes on Friday it’s real and we just have to deal with whatever’s given,” he said.

The team is now in New York for practice rounds at Bethpage Black, playing nine holes on Monday and 18 on Tuesday. The course hosted the 2019 PGA Championship and the U.S. Opens in 2002 and 2009.