FARMINGDALE, N.Y. (AP) — Rory McIlroy understood all that the Ryder Cup means three days before he ever hit a shot. As a 21-year-old rookie in 2010, he was in the team room at Celtic Manor in Wales with the rest of the Europeans. On the phone was Seve Ballesteros, the soul of Team Europe, dying from a brain tumor.

“I look around and the majority of the team is crying as Seve is talking to us,” McIlroy recalled Wednesday ahead of a soggy day of practice at Bethpage Black.

“And I’m like, that’s it. That’s the embodiment of what the European Ryder Cup team is,” he said. “That conference call with Seve in 2010 was the moment for me.”

The player who once referred to the Ryder Cup as an exhibition, as “not that important an event for me,” as a competition that wouldn’t make him run around thr

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