There was a moment last week that symbolized R-rated heckling from US fans at Beth Page Black’s Ryder Cup, and came early Saturday morning with the first tee where comedian and podcaster Heather McMahan played the role of host and party starter. In her duties, she was involved with the fans of the 1st Tee and the giant grandstand behind the 18th Green, trying to cheer and try.
McMahan’s cheerleading, led to the first foursome match that morning, included encouragement to Bryson Deccanbaugh, who was preparing to bring the tee along with his partner Scotty Schaeffler in a match between Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood.
“Dee Shambow!” McMahan began screaming through her microphone. “D-Shambow!”
The crowd took part: “Dee Shambow! Dee Shambow!”
A few modestly, a cluster of fans owned the Deccanbeau chant.
McMahan had not started provoking him, but she joined.
When the moment’s video began making rounds on social media, it was a tough look for both McMahan and the American PGA, the organizer of the event. On Saturday night, the association issued a 26-word statement. “Heather McMahan has stepped down from holding the first tee of the Ryder Cup, expanding his apology to Rory McCluroy and Ryder Cup Europe.”
McMahan himself did not make public comments about the incident. That changed Wednesday afternoon when she detailed her description of what went down in the latest episode of her “Absolutely Not” podcast.
McMahon said Friday’s First Tee Energy (first day of the match) was relatively tame as she and her team still felt the microphones and how they would generally work the crowd.
“Then it came Saturday,” she said. “The words I got from the team were that we need to hype everyone. Team America needs to come out. We get full throttle with cheers and hymns and everyone really pumps up the team and get the energy.”
When fans began applying just after 5am, McMahon said he had started “crowd jobs.” “We’ve started to raise our energy.”
As a stand-up comic, McMahan has experience entertaining a large crowd. She has appeared in Netflix and Hulu comedy specials and also played a role in the 2021 romantic comedy Love Hard. However, she said that Ryder Cup Hosting Job Rarely did not call for those skill sets.
“The job I was hired was annoyed because I thought it wasn’t what ended up being, in the sense that we were all trying to grasp together as a team,” she said. “I definitely thought I was going to do more celebrity interviews because the celebrities showed up on the first tee. At one point, I thought it would be airing. That didn’t happen.
Ryder Cup host apologizes for holding back Rory McIlroy and won’t return to Sunday
McMahon tried to lead some chants in our player’s name, but those efforts didn’t work, she said. “We’re just getting booed,” she said. “These people don’t want anything with it. …The crowd really got crazy, they started to get really intense, and I don’t want to talk for everyone in the crowd. But unfortunately, the energy that the crowd moved and the way the crowd moved, uh, that wasn’t the case. atmosphere. ”
And then came her decanbo cheers. It was entrusted to McIlroy’s hymn in colour that led to McMahon’s gaffe.
“I made the absolute, horrifying mistake of telling them once,” she said. “When I watch the video, I’m like laughing at myself. And like a question mark like, ‘F-You, Rory?’
She added: “I take full responsibility and I sincerely apologize to Rory Team Europe for saying that. It was so stupid to me. I didn’t start hymns. I was like that story that came out there.”
After McIlroy’s hymn, McMahon said he felt the change in energy from the fans “to be fun and funny” to “somehow toxic,” and that he felt overwhelmed by “controlling 4,000 men at 5am and screaming like crazy.” She told her producer and husband Jeff Daniels at that point that it would be best if she returned from the lawsuit and took over the DJ. She also stated that the DP World Tour’s representative tour is approaching her and that negative chants to European players are unacceptable, a sentiment she agreed to.
She said she contacted the DP World Tour shortly after her failure and apologized to both McIlroy and the European team. She thought she had solved the case until she woke up on Sunday morning to spot a torrent of media coverage of a particular Ryder Cup host. “It really was blown away by an unbalanced way,” she said. “I just want to clear up the air that it wouldn’t be my intention to even put that kind of energy there.”
She added: “You say as soon as I come out of my mouth, when I close the chant, I have a lot of power over a group of men at a 5am sporting event. Draw a line, hey, that doesn’t make sense to me.”
On Sunday, McMahon said she and her husband were taken to the airport with official Ryder Cup courtesy cars wielding the Ryder Cup logo.
“Jeff and I had to laugh about it,” McMahon said. “We seemed crazy. So we took lessons in the media. We learned communication lessons. We learned lessons that move forward with the task of moving forward as certain parameters were needed.
