It looks like the European WAGs aren’t about to spend the Ryder Cup in the shadows despite a warning they should avoid the potential hostile crowds ready to get loud and rowdy at Long Island’s Bethpage Black golf course when the matches begin on Friday.

The wives and girlfriends of Europe’s Ryder Cup team wore sequined gowns and dazzling dresses during a Welcome Dinner on Tuesday night and dazzled again on Wednesday, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their partners during the opening ceremonies at Farmingdale, New York.

When the competition begins on Friday, the gowns and high heels will be swapped for sneakers when they cheer for Team Europe on the golf course — despite a former European star, Andrew Coltart, suggesting they shelter themselves from potential verbal abuse.

“It might not be a great idea to go out there and they can watch it from a room where it’s safe and secure,” Mr. Coltart said recently. “I know that’s not what they want. They’ll want to be there with their man or their son to give them support. But it potentially can be an atmosphere they’ll never ever be used to and it could be quite upsetting and challenging for them.”

The crowds, anticipated to be about 50,000 daily, are expected to be loud and raucous and sometimes cruel. Partners and family members of competing players normally dress in team colors and are allowed to view the action from inside the ropes, a courtesy extended only in the Ryder Cup. While it gives them an excellent vantage point, it also puts them in front of the gallery where they are easy targets for hecklers.

Mr. Coltart competed in the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline, where the Americans staged a furious Sunday comeback to win 14 ½ to 13 ½.  The gallery’s hostility toward the Europeans during the tournament became a story of its own. Although his wife didn’t attend the event because she had just given birth to their first child, Mr. Coltart, who lost a critical singles match to Tiger Woods, said he heard about the heckling the European wives endured.

“Some of the other wives and girlfriends had been getting abuse from the crowd,” he said. “It was just normal derogatory things that, unfortunately, you would expect from a group of blokes that probably had too much to drink. As a player you deal with these things, but nobody wants their wife or partner to be abused and there’s no way the crowd and the stewards are going to be able to stop that.”

A vocal partisan crowd at Bethpage, one of America’s most notoriously rowdy golf venues, is expected to give the Americans an advantage as they try to recapture the Cup lost two years ago at Rome. Unlike a regular PGA Tour event where the galleries are encouraged to be polite and not a distraction while the competition is under way, the Ryder Cup is a different animal where players uncharacteristically urge on the crowd to have as big an impact as possible with chants, singing, and words of either encouragement or discouragement. 

Justin Thomas, playing in his fourth Ryder Cup for the Americans, admitted there can be a fine line between being encouraging and abusive when the competition gets heated. “At the Ryder Cup, you kind of know what you’re going to get,” he said during his press conference on Tuesday. “If we’re not playing well and you’re talking trash about us, we probably deserve it. But if you start getting into the loved ones, that’s when everybody starts to get a little bit chippy.

“I go back and forth,” he added. “There’s never in any sport a time to get personal or disrespectful, but at the same time it is the Ryder Cup, and it’s a home game for a reason. There’s been plenty of good, plenty of bad on both ends, and you hope to give them reason to cheer for the good.”

The Europeans, who last won on American soil in 2012, have prepared for the noise at Bethpage Black by using virtual reality headsets to replicate the heckling they might endure. Players had the option of adjusting the harshness of the abuse.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve spent more than five minutes using them, if I’m honest,” Justin Rose, representing Europe in his seventh Ryder Cup, said during his press conference. “I think it was interesting to put them on and get the feeling of what it was going to look like. I had more fun showing my family and some people who aren’t going to be here what the first tee is going to feel like. That was really cool.”

Some of the European WAGs have been in the spotlight before and may be more comfortable than most entering the lion’s den. Justin Rose’s wife, Kate Phillips, is a former international gymnast. Olivia Peet, girlfriend of Ludvig Aberg, was a collegiate tennis player. Jon Rahm’s wife, Kelley Cahill, is a former javelin thrower, while Katherin Gaal, wife of Matt Fitzpatrick, is a former Miss New Jersey runner-up and tennis professional.

Whatever barbs they might endure, they are dressed and ready to support their partners in one of the most emotionally charged sporting events in the world.