We Are Due for a Close Ryder Cup

The top 10 players in the world will all play in Rome, where the U.S. is defending the Ryder Cup but the European Team is much improved.

The understandable takeaway from the last Ryder Cup suggested that the European Team was in transition and the United States had an opportunity to put a run of victories together—something that hasn’t occurred in three decades.

The final score at Whistling Straits was but one indication: the U.S. won in a rout, 19-9.

Europe managed just three singles victories and two of them were from aging stars Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood.

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Only Sergio Garcia and Jon Rahm had winning records, and while Rory McIlroy’s 1-3 mark (0-3 with a partner) was certainly an aberration, what to make of other top players such as Tommy Fleetwood (1-2), Tyrrell Hatton (1-2-1), Viktor Hovland (0-3-2) and Shane Lowry (1-2)?

While a good bit can be put on the fact that it’s simply one week, that the Europeans ran into a strong American team and that there was plenty of time to regroup and rebuild, there certainly had to be some concern on the European side.

Rory McIlroy and the European Team figure to be much stronger than 2021 when they were routed at Whistling Straits :: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

Especially when you could look to the other team room and see a solid core of Americans that included Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka.

A considerable amount, obviously, has changed.

And now less than three weeks from the Ryder Cup, you’d be hard-pressed to consider the U.S. team the overwhelming favorites they were once believed to be—or even the favorites at all.

"I think Europe is very strong this year; I think we’re back," said 2021 European captain Padraig Harrington last week at the Irish Open the day after captain Luke Donald's at-large picks were announced.

The top 10 players in the world will all be competing in the Ryder Cup—with four from Europe and six from the United States.

World (and SI World Golf Rankings) No. 1 Scheffler is followed by McIlroy, Rahm and Hovland, all three of whom have had solid years. Matt Fitzpatrick is the other top-10 player. The U.S. has Cantlay, Schauffele, Max Homa, Brian Harman and Wyndham Clark.

The latter three have never played in the Ryder Cup and Harman and Clark have not competed in a Presidents Cup, either. Does it matter?

"I think we just caught it on our turndown, their upturn," Harrington said of the 2021 Ryder Cup that was postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. "That one extra year of COVID, our team went from peaking to slightly off and never could come back, and I said at the end of that Ryder Cup, I said in numerous interviews, many of these players are going to go on to play their best golf going forward, and they have.

"You look at Tommy Fleetwood's playing, you look at Matt Fitz won a major, you look at Tyrrell Hatton playing great, Viktor Hovland.

"The U.S. team were peaking. That extra year got them into a great place. Many of the players were probably at their very peak in the U.S. at that stage. If you start looking at the names now with two years of hindsight, they were at the top of their game and the Europeans are only coming into that now.

"Europe has gotten a lot stronger in those two years, and the U.S.—I don't want to say that they're weakening in any shape or form, but certainly there's a number of players that were at their peak at that moment. It's just ebbs and flows in the game of golf."

The last U.S. Ryder Cup player to win this year was Harman at the British Open. Prior to that it was Rickie Fowler at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and Clark at the U.S. Open. During that time, Sepp Straka, McIlroy and Hovland have won on the PGA Tour, with Ludvig Aberg—whose never played in a major championship and was picked last week—having won the European Masters.

Perhaps what this all means is we’re due for a tight Ryder Cup. As competitive as the competition has been over the years, there has not been a result closer than five points since 2012, when Europe stormed back from a 10-6 final day to win a dramatic competition.

That is also the last time a road team won. The U.S. has not won in Europe since 1993—before several players on the current team were born.