Sent to clubgowi subscribers on September 12th and to 2,000 + followers in our database the following week ......
It is a match play event, with each match worth one point (half point awarded for a draw/tie).
- Day 1 (Friday) – 4 foursome (alternate shot) matches and 4 fourball (better ball) matches
- Day 2 (Saturday) – 4 foursome matches and 4 fourball matches
- Day 3 (Sunday) – 12 singles matches
On the first two days there are 4 foursome matches and 4 fourball matches with the home captain choosing which are played in the morning and which in the afternoon (this is a big advantage IMO).
With a total of 28 points available, 141⁄2 points are required to win the Cup, and 14 points are required for the defending champion to retain the Cup. All matches are played to a maximum of 18 holes.
The US are the holders after a 19-9 victory on home soil at Whistling Straits in 2021, the largest margin of victory since 1967. Europe had won 7/9 of the Ryder Cups prior to that and have not lost in Europe since 1993, winning the last six as host in Spain, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and France. This year Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy applied to host and the latter won out, being nominated in 2015, so eight years in the planning, with the Marco Simione Golf and Country Club , just outside Rome, being the lucky venue. Part of the reason was down to the important part played in the development of golf in Italy by the Molinari brothers, Edorado and Francesco. More of both golfers, especially Edorado, and the venue, later.
Captains
Both team captains were announced in early 2022; Zach Johnson was named as the U.S. team captain on 28 February, and Henrik Stenson as the European team captain on 15 March. Stenson was removed from the role in July 2022 due to his decision to join LIV Golf. On 1 August 2022, Luke Donald was announced as the new captain of the European team.
Vice captains
For the European team, Thomas Bjørn and Edoardo Molinari were named by Stenson as vice captains. They were retained as vice-captains by Donald. In November 2022, Donald named Nicolas Colsaerts as the team's third vice-captain. On 2 August 2023, José María Olazábal was named the fourth vice-captain. On 16 August 2023, Francesco Molinari was named the fifth and final vice-captain.
For the U.S. team, Steve Stricker was named as the first vice-captain. On 17 January 2023, Davis Love III was named as the second vice-captain. On 8 May 2023, Jim Furyk was named as the third vice-captain. On 10 May 2023, Fred Couples was named as the fourth vice-captain. On 31 July 2023, Stewart Cink was named the fifth and final vice-captain.
Bjorn and Olazabal both captained winning Ryder Cup
The Venue and who has played here..........
The venue has been carefully chosen to play to the strengths of the European golfer, it was rebuilt over an almost three year period with the focus on creating a course specifically with match play golf in mind and to provide numerous risk and reward holes on a naturally rolling countryside terrain. Since the redesign was completed, it has hosted three Italian Opens and not one of the US players took the opportunity to play, they would have been given an invitation if one has been requested. Half of the European team played and that required a commitment and big change in schedule for McIlroy, Fleetwood and Fitzpatrick. Ryder Cup players won in two years, Robert MacIntyre in 2022, with Fitzpatrick 2nd and Rory 4th and Nicolai Hojgaard in 2021, with Fleetwood runner up and vice captain Molinari the elder (Edoardo) 5th. Edoardo played all three years, his brother twice, as did Bjorn, whilst Colsaerts and captain Donald each played once, so, apart from Olazabal and you just know that he would have visited anyway, have played the course in competition and all did so pretty well. This is a huge edge for my money , with players and coaches who competed, all thriving and, in addition to his win, Hojgaard also has a course 5th place to his name.
The players.
Team Europe
- Rory McIlroy (Q)
- Jon Rahm (Q)
- Viktor Hovland (Q)
- Tyrrell Hatton (Q)
- Matt Fitzpatrick (Q)
- Robert MacIntyre (Q)
- Shane Lowry (WC)
- Tommy Fleetwood (WC)
- Justin Rose (WC)
- Sepp Straka (WC)
- Nicolai Hojgaard (WC)
- Ludvig Aberg (WC)
Team US
- Scottie Scheffler (Q)
- Wyndham Clark (Q)
- Brian Harman (Q)
- Patrick Cantlay (Q)
- Max Homa (Q)
- Xander Schauffele (Q)
- Justin Thomas (WC)
- Brooks Koepka (WC)
- Jordan Spieth (WC)
- Collin Morikawa (WC)
- Sam Burns (WC)
- Rickie Fowler (WC)
WC denotes a captain's pick.
More "names" in the US team, but this is a unique event and their group contains four debutants and four others who just played in that team that ran away with things in 2021, that must be a good thing I hear you say, but this is not at Whistling Straits, it is almost 8,000km away and things are very different when your back is against the wall, your team is not well clear (pressure is on) and the crowd are baying for blood. It is fitting we are in Rome as the Ryder Cup has a feel of the gladiatorial arena about it and only the strong survive. Koepka, Spieth and Fowler have played between 3-4 Ryder Cups and have the most experience, but the last named player has a poor record, winning just 3 of his 15 matches. Justin Thomas is the only other with more than a single appearance and he likes the format, but is coming off the worst year of his career. Scottie Sheffler is the greatest player on the planet tee to green, but right now and well documented by me, he couldn't beat Jimmy Carter (oldest famous living person I could think of off the top of my head!) at putting!
In Team Europe there are also four debutants including one in Ludvig Aberg who only turned professional this summer! However, half the group have played 2+ Cups and McIIroy and Rose a respective six and five, with the Ulsterman losing just 4 of 28 matches and the Englishman just 2 of 23. The duo grew up playing and were born to play matchplay golf . They do lack the star quality in the group as a whole, but it includes five major winners, two world number 1 players, the current Tour Championship winner and Europe always feels more of a "team" and one better suited to the format and they have waited two years for some revenge.
All the small advantages they hold, which hopefully I have outlined add up and the additional unknown factor is Edoardo Molinari and his analytics programme which is being used with huge success by a handful of top names, including Viktor Hovland and which Team Europe is giving great credence to. Tom Kershaw of the Sunday Times wrote the following article at the weekend which was forwarded to me by Ed (not Edoardo) my son-in-law.........
The old adage goes that the secret to Europe’s success at the Ryder Cup was the intangible that American egos couldn’t muster: collective spirit. The United States were a team of immensely-talented individuals, led by domineering, duelling personalities such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, while the Europeans were the perceived underdogs for whom camaraderie became the winning edge. It is a conventional wisdom rooted in truth — albeit one Sir Nick Faldo’s former team-mates might attest is hardly infallible — but, after supposedly marking a new era at Whistling Straits, the US are now the one bearing accusations of becoming a boy’s club.
Whether those bonds withstand scrutiny on foreign soil remains to be seen but, in the meantime, perhaps the most discreet of Luke Donald’s vice-captains has gleaned another advantage measured in cold facts. It has been more than a decade since Edoardo Molinari made his sole Ryder Cup appearance and peaked at No 14 in the world rankings in 2010, yet the Italian’s role in Rome is far from a sentimental gesture. Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick both independently describe him as a “genius”, while Donald gave Molinari a crucial say when selecting his six captain’s picks because of the goldmine of granular detail he has unearthed using his self-built statistics platform.
“Luke was a vice-captain a couple of times before and he said ‘I think what you’re doing is well ahead of what we’ve had before’. I also spoke with Thomas [Bjorn, Europe’s winning captain in 2018 and a vice-captain again in Rome] and said he wished he’d had something similar because it makes the decisions as black and white as possible,” Molinari says. “I like to think we’re a few years ahead of the curve and the competition to keep our edge.”
“I know the USA has a company that helped them at Whistling Straits that did a great job. I’m looking forward to meeting them in Rome, but I’ll hide the computer behind my back.”
Molinari’s programme, StatisticGolf, is now being used by more than 30 players on the PGA and DP World Tours, including Hovland, Fitzpatrick and Nicolai Hojgaard; the latter being one of Donald’s less obvious captain’s picks. Ludvig Aberg is not a client but was being championed by Molinari as a serious candidate for selection from as early as January when the Swede was still an amateur. It has put Molinari at the vanguard of golf’s somewhat belated data revolution within the space of just three years, having only started building the programme as a project during the Covid pandemic. “I did it pretty much from a blank piece of paper,” he says. “I worked on it every day for three months, a lot of hours reading books and watching tutorials, because I thought it was important that whoever made it understands the game as well, otherwise you can fall into some traps or stupid ideas.”
Molinari graduated in engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin before turning professional in 2006 and his fascination with statistics has always carried over into golf, recording data on each shot in an Excel spreadsheet. The approach bears many similarities to Fitzpatrick’s and Molinari showed him the first prototype of the programme not long after the tours resumed. “He was very impressed and said he’d like to become a client, so that’s where it all started,” Molinari says. “He was the best player I could’ve worked with because he already understood the numbers, we exchanged a lot of ideas and, even now, we chat two or three times a week, sometimes about his own game or sometimes because I have an idea to make it better and we test it.”
As Fitzpatrick’s form consistently improved, culminating in his victory at the US Open last year, Molinari started receiving texts from other players inquisitive as to how the programme works. The programme is designed so players are essentially free to delve as deep into the minutiae as they would like, taking data from the PGA and DP World Tours and combining it with numerous variables only they can input such as the perceived quality of strike; intended target line and shot shape; and the read of a putt. The algorithm then generates reports using data gathered from several tournaments that identify weaker areas or unusual tendencies that Molinari relays to the player themselves or a member of their team. The data is also applied to individually tailored strategies for particular courses, be it a club selection that suits them on certain holes or where to leave the ball on the greens.
The reports on Fitzpatrick, for example, showed a tendency to under-hit putts that broke from left-to-right and miss them low. For Hovland, it was a case of being too aggressive with his approach play at difficult courses that ultimately cost him shots. Molinari used to tease the Norwegian that was the reason his previous victories on the PGA Tour had come at so-called resort courses and explained as much in-person at the RBC Heritage event in April, where Fitzpatrick prevailed in a dramatic three-hole play-off against Jordan Spieth. Hovland tweaked his approach afterwards and produced the best stretch of form of his career, capping three victories with the FedEx Cup title last month. “He’s an unbelievable guy and an unbelievable asset to the team,” Hovland said of Molinari
Despite still playing a full schedule himself on the DP World Tour, Molinari has spent much of the past year studying data on every Ryder Cup candidate, comparing hundreds of possible pairings and their suitability to Marco Simone Golf Club. “My job is to make sure we don’t make any silly mistakes,” he says. “You have to go with gut feeling too and Luke will always make the final decision, but the numbers are a guide. Sometimes two personalities can work great but, when you look at the numbers, it’s the worst possible route.”
The simulations are so detailed Molinari is able to predict a probable score for each potential pairing in foursomes and fourballs, taking into account every available variable, many of which venture beyond the realms of reason for the amateur mind. “It only takes a couple of bad holes and the pairing goes out of the window and so you keep cutting down until you’re left with what’s best. Then you have a Plan B in case a player isn’t performing, who you replace them with,” he says. “It’s complex but it’s a lot of fun, and even if it makes just half a point difference, I’ll take it, because sometimes that’s all you win a Ryder Cup by.”
Molinari jokingly describes the programme as a “well-paid hobby and a pension fund”, although it has been rewarding in terms of his own game too, with clients and interested players alike seeking him out for practice rounds when they come to Europe.
“The best way to improve is to play with someone better than you, and I feel like tee-to-green I’m playing as well now as I was in my good years, it’s just a shame I’ve been putting poorly,” he says. “I still really enjoy playing each week but I’m 42, so I know I’m in the latter stages of my career. If you had told me when I turned pro that I’d have three wins on the European Tour, have played in a Ryder Cup and won the World Cup with Francesco, I probably would have signed for just one of them, and so now to find this way to still be involved at the top of the game at my age is very satisfying.”
I have highlighted several lines which I feel are noteworthy and the last of those might make the difference between winning and losing. I also know that (Edoardo) Molinari was basically bashing on Donald's door week after week telling him why a 23yo amateur college golfer should be in the Ryder Cup team. "Ludde" is being spoken of as a once in a generation talent and that ability was jumping off the Molinari laptop! Aberg is the only golfer apart from Jon Rahm to win the Ben Hogan Award (best collegiate golfer) in back to back years and that alone says plenty. In an attempt to qualify for the 2023 Ryder Cup team and as advised by Luke Donald, Åberg traveled to Europe in August to compete in the last two European Tour events before the deadline of the selection in early September. At the D+D Real Czech Masters, he finished in a tie for fourth place after a final-round 66. The following week at the Omega European Masters, his ninth tournament as a professional, Åberg recorded his first win, he birdied four of the closing five holes in his final round of 64 to finish two strokes ahead of fellow countryman Alexander Björk.
He became the first player to be selected for a Ryder Cup before having played a major championship. He is also only the second player, after Sergio García, to make a Ryder Cup team within the same year he turned professional.
I have some other data/information we can use for the opening pairings for the Friday and might look at the individual player markets at that time too, but for now feel Team Europe offer good value to reclaim the Cup.
3 units Team Europe to win the Ryder Cup @ 2.25 general quote/2.30 in a place or two.