Sepp Straka reckons it’d be a local letdown if he takes the Scottish Open title away from Bob MacIntyre. But the Austrian star admits a Rome reunion with the “hilarious” home hero and the rest of his heroic Ryder Cup pals helped spark the Renaissance charge. Straka made a terrific start to smash a six-under 64 in East Lothian and the 32-year-old was invigorated by a return to his home continent and joining Luke Donald’s gang for a summit prior to the tournament just fuelled the fires. He was amongst established members and team hopefuls invited to the stately Gilmerton House on Tuesday evening for a gathering ahead of September's New York crunch. Heroes were able to relive memories of the Italian job and plot the next mission together in the Bethpage bearpit and it cemented desire to seal his team place. The two-time winner this term said: “It’s always fun to get together with all the guys. The food was great, the company was better and that definitely was a nice tone-setter for the week. It’s always fun to reminisce and also look forward. I think most of it comes through stories, just sharing stories of what happened in Rome. “You would think it [playing in Ryder Cup] is like checking off a box, but you just want to do it all the more because it just exceeds expectations that you had going into it. So that’s obviously a huge goal. It’s been the No.1 goal all year to be on that team and I’ve put myself in a pretty good position. Hopefully, I can just keep playing some good golf. “I think it’ll be a very different environment in New York. We’ll probably have to lean on a lot of guys that played away in Ryder Cups. It’s going to be pretty rowdy. It’s going to be pretty crazy. I don’t think I can even prepare for that. So we’ll just see when we get there how crazy it’s going to be, but it’s nice to have had the one and be able to kind of tell stories from it. Straka, MacIntyre and Nicolai Hojgaard were Donald's rookies in Rome and, speaking about the Scotsman, he said: “Bob’s been great. He’s a beauty to be around. He’s hilarious and being able to go through Rome as rookies together was pretty special. To celebrate that one together was a lot of fun.” Winning in Scotland would make his Ryder Cup slot certain, but Straka smiled: “It’d be maybe a little bit of a letdown from Bob winning last year! But I think everything would be. That was fun to watch and it would be incredible to try to get a win here. That’d be amazing. But it’s only Thursday, so I’ll just keep trying to play some good golf and, hopefully, put myself in a position.” Straka has already shown this term that he has the game to get the job done in East Lothian having won both the American Express and Truist Championships across the Atlantic. he successes acted as a double-edged sword to expectation levels through a punishing first-half of the year on the schedule as he explained: “It was pretty nice to get two wins for the first time in a year, but expectations are funny. You hit one bad shot and all of a sudden you think you’re terrible. And then you hit a good one and you think you can’t be stopped. So I try to temper my expectations throughout the year. “Beat up [at US Open]. That place was hard. But I thought it was great. That was my favourite US Open I’ve been a part of, even though obviously I played terrible. I would say the game is a little bit different when you come here, but I feel like every tournament is a little bit of a reset. You have to take every week as it comes. It’s a lot of golf. It’s kind of turned into a sprint now, more so than a whole year. Which is nice, though, if you play well. You can take something to fall off and have a little slower time if you want to.”