The Ryder Cup is almost here, and anticipation is growing by the minute on both sides of the Atlantic. After both teams participated in preparatory tournaments last weekend, the curtain is about to rise — and fans can hardly wait.

Naturally, this excitement is no coincidence. The confluence of several circumstances has led to this year’s Ryder Cup being projected as a turning point in the history of the event, and possibly in professional golf.

Renowned golf insiders Rex Hoggard and Ryan Lavner, hosts of the popular “Golf Channel Podcast With Rex & Lav,” see it exactly that way. Both agreed in predicting that the Bethpage Black event will be something never seen before.

“This is going to be unlike anything that we’ve ever experienced in golf before,” Hoggard said in the latest edition of the show. “This is going to be mainstream sports and there’s going to be really, really cool parts of it where the American team’s probably going to enjoy a lot of support and almost feel like the home crowd is lifting you on its shoulders and then there’s going to be some really bad ugly parts of it and I just think we should all brace for that because these are New York fans.

” … I anticipate a lot of things being said that pro golfers aren’t used to being said.”

The event’s hosting in New York, the global reach it has achieved, especially in recent years, and individual storylines like those of Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler are among the elements that can take the Ryder Cup to unprecedented levels.

“It certainly just feels like we’re in store for an all-timer,” Lavner added. “Like something that we haven’t seen before, not just because of the New York crowds, but I think the anticipation.”

“You have a player on the US side and Scottie Scheffler, uh, who is by all accounts doing Tiger Woods-esque things. He’s going to have such a target on his back and if he falters, if he does not play well, if he in the partnership with either Russell Henley or Sam Burns or someone else sort of backfires and gives a European side a shot, like, “If not now, when?'”

McIlroy arrives at Bethpage Black having completed the career grand slam this season with four wins worldwide. The Northern Irishman has stated that winning an away Ryder Cup is among his goals for the remainder of his career.

As for Scheffler, he is in the midst of one of the most spectacular stretches of the last 20 years, with 15 worldwide victories, including three major championships, in the last two seasons. He has six PGA Tour titles so far this year alone.

The last time a team won the Ryder Cup on away soil was in Medinah 2012, with a spectacular victory for the Europeans. The American team has not won on the other side of the Atlantic since 1993.

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