The points race for the 2025 European Ryder Cup team starts at the Belfry on Thursday. There will be some kind of fanfare later in the week, and they will try to tell you that it matters. It never mattered less.
With the new qualification system heavily weighted towards the Majors and the biggest events on the PGA Tour, and an unprecedented six captain’s picks for Luke Donald, the European captain, you could speculate on 10 of the 12 names now and be confident about nine of them. The prickly variables are Jon Rahm and Tyrell Hatton.
Do they matter? When Europe routed the USA in Rome, 11 months ago, Rory McIlroy led the European scoring with four points, but Hatton was joint second on 3½ points and Rahm was next on three. The impressive subtext of Rahm’s performance, though, was that he was undefeated in three matches against Scottie Scheffler, the best player in the world.
The problem is that, in the meantime, Rahm and Hatton have sold their souls to the biggest sportswashing project in the history of sport. None of the other defectors to LIV were selected for Europe at the last Ryder Cup, but that wasn’t an agonised call: all of them were busted flushes at that level and none of them was missed.
Three Irish players gain full status on Ladies European Tour next year
Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year Awards: ‘The greatest collection of women in Irish sport in one place ever assembled’
Two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington named Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman of the Year 2024
PGA decision to pay US Ryder Cup players a fatal blow for the competition’s old ethos
So, what happens with Rahm and Hatton? Will they be accommodated? Are they prepared to toe the line and lose some face in the process? Should we care? Should they just be abandoned?
In the bigger picture, nothing is settled. After the emergence of LIV, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour tried to stand their ground until they realised that, in elite sport, principles are expensive, and, ultimately, they couldn’t afford all of them.
Some kind of post-Cold War reunification of golf is moving slowly, or not at all. It is more than two years since the PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Saudi Investment Fund governor Yasir Al Rumayyan blindsided everyone with a Framework Agreement, designed to bring the game back together.
But no developments are expected before the end of this year, and it is accepted that the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and LIV Golf will continue with their current schedules next season.
As the game splintered the DP World Tour, though, stood its ground on the issue of eligibility. Some of the early defectors wanted the option of playing on the DP World Tour during the frequent breaks in LIV’s schedule, while also being free to play a LIV event – with impunity – in the case of a scheduling clash.
This dispute ended up in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled in favour of the DP World Tour. Any player who wanted to maintain their membership of the DP World Tour would need permission to play in clashing events on the LIV schedule. Failure to secure that permission would lead to fines and suspensions.
In terms of the Ryder Cup this has relevance now for Rahm and Hatton. To play for Europe you must be a member of DP World Tour; to maintain that membership you must play at least four DP World Tour events, outside of the Majors.
It is a token commitment originally designed to facilitate Europe’s elite players, all of whom have decamped to America. In practical terms it usually means turning up at the co-sanctioned Scottish Open in midsummer, followed by an assortment of late-season appearances after the FedEx Cup has concluded.
That option is still available to Rahm and Hatton, if they pay their fines and serve their suspensions. In both cases, it is believed the fines run into seven figures. There is an unconfirmed suggestion that LIV would stump up but, either way, Rahm and Hatton are not short of a bob.
Serving the suspensions would be an exercise in optics. With the LIV season nearing a close, there are plenty of blank weeks in the coming months where Rahm and Hatton could be seen to be sitting out DP World Tour events, having already paid their fines.
The indications are that Hatton is prepared to play this game and he is entered in the British Masters at the Belfry this week. Rahm, though, is a different story. It is understood that he has no desire to pay any fines and has not indicated a desire to appear in DP World Tour events in the coming months.
With the first wave of LIV defectors, it was easy to dismiss their relevance to the European team. Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood had reached a point in their careers where their only future in the event was as potential captains and vice-captains.
Garcia campaigned for a captain’s pick last year but, like Rahm, it is understood that he had no desire to pay the required fines either. On top of that, he publicly thrashed the DP World Tour as he was leaving. In the team room and elsewhere there was no sympathy for his plea.
As soon as Rahm left for LIV Rory McIlroy said that the “rules would have to be changed” to ensure that Rahm was available for the matches at Bethpage next year. Before last year’s Ryder Cup, McIlroy’s attitude to the LIV defectors and their availability was pointedly different. In Rahm’s case, McIlroy was thinking about Europe’s chances of winning. In the event, no rules have been changed: the conditions for eligibility remain the same.
How much does it matter? The Rahm that turned up at the Majors this year – his competitive edge dulled from 54-hole tournaments against shallow fields – would be of little use to Europe. He was tied 45th at the Masters, missed the cut at the US PGA Championship, withdrew from the US Open and managed a backdoor top 10 at the Open with a good final round.
Anyway, it shouldn’t come down to that. Hatton and Rahm aligned themselves with a repulsive regime in a project designed to buffer its reputation. Could you root for them?
For the Ryder Cup, they should be cut adrift.
