You think you sometimes feel nervous on the 1st tee when you're playing in a match? Consider the feelings of the four men from Europe and then the four from the US who will lead the way in the first morning's foursomes in the Ryder Cup. As many as 20,000 people will be pressed around the tee.

Think of this daunting shot this way. If you're a man you will certainly be more nervous than if you were on your first date with Britney Spears. A woman? Imagine George Clooney is arriving to take you out to dinner in 15 minutes and you are nowhere near ready.

If neither of those get your imagination overheating then consider how you would feel if you had won a competition to play a round with Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones and Old Tom Morris and Bobby Jones, ever the gracious Southerner, had asked you to tee off first.

The 12-yard square green rectangle that is the 1st tee will look smaller than an old halfpenny. As you take your first step on to it you will feel as secure underfoot as if you were standing on a log in a river in full flood. Just for a few minutes you and just you, will be the person everyone is looking at.

"There is no way you can possibly imagine what it will be like" Nick Faldo told his men on Monday evening. "I am big on visualisation so on Tuesday, just before we had the team photos taken, we all went down to the tee and I said a few things. I felt that if the guys knew a little about what it was going to be like they could begin to deal with it in their minds."

Westwood recalled his feelings at Valderrama eleven years ago. "It was very much a case of do what I say not what I do because I was so nervous in 1997 I could not get my ball to stay on the tee. It's quite funny watching it now. I look quite calm and collected and I almost look as though I know what I am doing. But my hands were shaking and my eyes glazed over a little bit and it was obviously a completely different experience to the one I had been used to."

In the 1997 Walker Cup in the US, Justin Rose was only ten days past his 17th birthday. He hit the first shot and even 11 years later he squirms with something approaching embarrassment at the memory of it. "I think it went a bit right" he said, blushing slightly. "My partner had to reload and he was more nervous than I was. He duck hooked and took the heads off off the crowd to the left of us."

On the eve of the 2004 Ryder Cup Bernhard Langer told his men "stick to your routine. Don't do anything different." He made all the men who were not playing the first day stand on the 1st tee to experience the pressure.

Faldo had one more tip, which is applicable to any golfer feeling stress. "Take deep breaths. And picture the shot." He might have added: "and pray you don't miss the bloody thing."

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There were more than 1,000 invitees to the eve of Ryder Cup gala dinner in Louisville on Wednesday night and not all of them were impressed with the casual, buffet-style dinner that preceded the presentation of the teams and the entertainment by Carrie Underwood, a winner of the US tv's talent show.

Conversation was carried out to the background of 1930s musical hits and after enduring an hour or so of this one distinguished member of the Europe party had had enough: "Where's the golf in all this, the Ryder Cup atmosphere, the conversation. I've had enough. I'm off back to the hotel for a drink." Gesticulating at the band, he said: "I might as well have spent an evening at the Hammersmith Palais."