US Ryder Cup course moans debunked as golf nut proves scare story is a work of fantasy

A video which claimed to show nightmare rough at the venue of the Ryder Cup has been brutally debunked by a course expert.

All eyes will be fixed on the Marco Simone Country Club in Rome at the end of September when the world's greatest team event heads to Italy for the first time. And Team USA took to social media to offer up a nightmare in the long grass lurking for them on foreign soil. But the claims of rough up to the kneecaps for Zach Johnson's A-listers has been sensationally slammed as the work of pure fiction by one insider who moved to set the record straight.

Golf Digest's Jamie Kennedy was left stunned by the claim from the official account of Team USA and had to set clear up the scaremongering. He pulled no punches and said: "You've gotta love that this video was taken 160 yards out, second cut, on a hole that measures 303 yards. To end up here you'd need to hit a 140 yard tee shot that misses the centre of the fairway by roughly 35 yards....?"

It's not quite the unsavoury scenes which followed Team USA's improbable win in Brookline back in 1999, however, it's the first sign the gloves could be off as the great rivals duke off in the Eternal City. Team Europe vs USA's rivalry doesn't take much to bubble over from man-child Boo Weekley riding his golf club like a horse in 2008 to Rory McIlroy trolling the Hazeltine crowd in 2016 – the blue touch paper can be lit by a mere gesture.

And Luke Donald will be hoping a partisan crowd in Rome is the trigger to maintain the underdog's 30-year undefeated record on home soil as Scotland’s Bob MacIntyre and Co lead the charge.