The weight of Ryder Cup history is against Luke Donald’s European team as they prepare to defend the trophy against Keegan Bradley’s USA at Bethpage Black this week, with the challenge reflected in the odds that bookmakers have set with the hosts priced at 4/6 and the visitors rated 7/4 outsiders.
Those odds are hard to argue with, given how the Ryder Cup has turned into a biennial match that, for many reasons, among them a partisan home support and also how the courses are set up, tend to make it more difficult for away teams to win.
Indeed, the last time that an away team won was at Medinah in 2012 when the José María Olazábal captained Europe side staged the remarkable final day’s singles fightback that was so unlikely that it was ranked as miraculous, hence the moniker of the “Miracle at Medinah” which somehow explained what had happened in front of our eyes that day.
There was also a link with a higher being, in some way that day: Seve Ballesteros had died from brain cancer the previous year and, in his honour and memory, the European team that Sunday was kitted out in the navy and blue which the Spanish maestro traditionally wore in the final round while a silhouette of the great man, that iconic image of his famous win in the 1984 Open at St Andrews, was also part of the apparel.
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Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose are the only players from either team who played in Medinah who are playing this time round, although there are extended links for this year’s teams’ with Donald now playing the role of captain and Francesco Molinari a vice-captain while Bradley – one of those Americans to lose their singles, in his case to McIlroy – is captain with Jim Furyk and Webb Simpson, two other casualties of that singles rout, among his vice-captains.
While Medinah serves as a touching distance memory of Europe’s last win on US soil, the stretch back to the United States’ last win away goes all the way back to The Belfry in the English midlands in 1993, a barely believable 32 years, to a USA team captained by Tom Watson.
So, Donald’s task in Bethpage is to find a strategy to defy the weight of Ryder Cup history, with an away win now considered one of the toughest challenges in golf.
“We understand what’s going to happen to us. It’s our reaction to that that’s really important. We all have fears. We all have anxieties and we all find Ryder Cups pressurised. But these are top athletes that understand how to walk towards that fear,” remarked Donald of that challenge, adding: “But, again, you want to embrace what a Ryder Cup represents and then part of that is embracing the crowd and embracing that atmosphere, and I think certainly these guys will be ready for that.”
Matt Fitzpatrick, one of 11 players who were part of the hugely impressive win at Marco Simone in Rome two years ago that again plays this time around in Bethpage, has been one who has had to look in the mirror longer and harder than anyone with a poor personal Ryder Cup record: the Englishman has played eight matches, losing seven and winning just one (when partnering McIlroy to a 5 and 3 win over Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay in the opening day’s fourballs in Rome).
In fairness to Fitzpatrick, he showed his mettle in the closing weeks of the qualifying campaign to justify a wild card pick from Donald for what will be his fourth Ryder Cup appearance and second in the USA, having also played on the losing team at Whistling Straits in 2021.
“I think the circumstances are different (from Whistling Straits). I think obviously the team is different. It’s a team that’s already played a home Ryder Cup together which is huge, I think, from a team chemistry standpoint. I think the other thing is, if I’m being completely honest, guys have just got to play well,” said Fitzpatrick.
Getting the players “to play well,” as Fitzpatrick puts it, comes down to themselves ... and the captain.
As Donald remarked: “When I took this role on two years ago again, I knew I had to come at it from a different angle. This wasn’t going to be the same challenge that it was in Rome.
“Different challenges require different strategies, and certainly this has been in the back of my mind for the whole captaincy since being appointed for a second time.”
The grand plan will reveal itself this week, with the days of practice usually proving to be some kind of a phoney war before the match itself kicks off on Friday.
