YES, no, mibbes aye, mibbes naw?
Stephen Gallacher was put on the spot at Gleneagles yesterday but the Scot was keeping his cards, or should that be his polling card, close to his chest. "Did you vote last week?" asked one intrigued reporter from Germany. "Yes," said Gallacher as he braced himself for the inevitable follow up. "Will you tell us how you voted?" came the response. "No," he replied with a smile.
Here in pleasant Perthshire, Gallacher's focus is on getting a little dimpled ball into a hole, not sticking an X in a box. "Politics is politics; this is golf," the 39-year-old added.
There may be plenty of political pontifications about coming out of the EU these days but golf's own European Union is as strong as the grout on the Channel Tunnel. "It's the European flag, that's what we are playing under," said the all embracing Gallacher.
"The great thing about the European Tour is that we have friends from all different countries who come together as one. It's a unique week. Since it went from GB&I to Europe, and Seve created that European thing, we have been galvanized as a unit."
In this unit, Gallacher is fitting in nicely even if a bounce game with team-mates Ian Poulter and Justin Rose left him out of pocket. "It cost me 150 quid," noted the Scot. He can always stick it through the European Tour's expenses.
He may be a rookie in the Ryder Cup but, at nearly 40, Gallacher has been around the golfing block. He knows his way around the PGA Centenary course too, with a string of top-10 finishes here on European Tour duty, and he is relishing the prospect of getting out and at it.
The build up to this biennial battle seems to go on for an eternity - the sight of frazzled golf writers crawling round the media centre on all fours bears testimony to that - and Gallacher just wants the whole thing to get underway. Like the name of the host venue's 17th hole, Gallacher is trying to ca' canny.
"The hard thing, I think, is to conserve energy," said Gallacher, who has been tapping into the vast Ryder Cup knowledge of his uncle Bernard. "You are here for quite a long time before a Friday start. My uncle sort of told me that.
"I spent a week with him recently when my gran was ill in hospital and we were just chatting away. He was saying that the Ryder Cup is a long week, early mornings and late nights. You just have to rest when you can, get your game plan and just be ready for the three days. Playing and getting a full round under my belt was good for me."
It wasn't a normal practice round. The crowds were sizeable as the fever continues to build and it provided a hint of what is to come.
As the sole Scottish player in a Scottish Ryder Cup, there will be plenty of focus on Gallacher but the Bathgate man knows he has plenty of colleagues to shoulder the burden.
Asked if he felt under more pressure, Gallacher nonchalantly shrugged and said: "No, not really. I've got 11 other team-mates. It's a team game and it's not about me."
The stadium that has been created around the first tee, a kind of colosseum of noise for these golfing gladiators, will be rocking come Friday and Gallacher is confident he will take it in his stride.
"You come under the tunnel and the last person you see is Seve," he said. "You see all the greats on both sides, European and American. You come out of the tunnel, up the hill and it's like walking into a football stadium. It was full yesterday, with people, 10 deep, down the side.
"I actually hit a good drive so hopefully when I tee off I can just imagine it as Tuesday.
"The good thing for me is that I've never experienced it for real so the nerves are what you make them. The first tee at the Masters was good. So too is the first tee at St Andrews. I know this will be tougher but hopefully I'll enjoy it."
Everybody, it seems, is getting caught up in the Ryder Cup hoopla. Sir Alex Ferguson rallied the European troops on Tuesday night and Gallacher revealed he had received his own little personal message from the footballing world. "I had one from Martin O'Neill, which was nice," said this Celtic fan of a former Celtic manager. "He just said to me 'well done for getting in, you'll love the team environment and it will probably be one of the best weeks of your life'. And he's right, it will be." There was no need to take a vote on that one.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article