By Amy Tennery
FARMINGDALE, New York (Reuters) -Golf fans might experience a sense of deja vu when Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard makes his Ryder Cup debut this week at Bethpage Black, two years after twin brother Nicolai was part of the victorious Europe team.
Hojgaard is the only Ryder Cup rookie with the away team but comes with a familiar face and name in Farmingdale, New York – so much so that even his teammates have been seeing double.
“Shane (Lowry) sometimes just calls me ‘Nicolai’. And then he’s like, ‘Oh, Rasmus is here’,” he said.
“It’s all right. It is what it is. I’m used to it. I’ve been used to it for 20 years now. So it doesn’t really bother me.”
The brothers, who became the first twins to compete at the same Masters this year, bear such a close resemblance that they were able to prank their teachers as schoolboys, by switching classes.
“The teacher wouldn’t notice for an hour and a half,” he told reporters.
The 24-year-old, a qualifier after beating his team’s best Rory McIlroy at the Irish Open last year, dreamed of making a Ryder Cup since 2012, when the Europeans became the last away team to win in what has been dubbed the “Miracle at Medinah.”
He has an advantage over the average rookie, having gotten a peek behind the Ryder Cup curtain as he cheered on his brother in 2023.
“Just to see how everything runs, how the days are built, how the team room functions. As a whole, it was nice to see how all the days just go by, how they all prepare,” said Hojgaard, shooting down rumors that he had sat in on team meetings in Rome.
“I wasn’t in all that because I wasn’t a player. I was driving buggies that week.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
Comments