Post Game

Did Luke Donald play his trump card in the Euros’ landslide Ryder Cup win?

BY TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR

There are plenty of plausible reasons why Europe won this year’s Ryder Cup so convincingly. Could they all be distilled into one overwhelming advantage, though?

“Strong U.S. Team Set to Dominate Next 10 Years” is a headline I wrote in this magazine following America’s record-breaking win at Whistling Straits in 2021. Oops! To be fair, I wasn’t the only one suggesting America would be very hard to beat for the foreseeable future.

But here we are, just a few weeks on from Europe’s win in Rome, where the home team’s victory margin may not have been as great as that of its opponent’s two years previously — or even as great as Europe’s victory in Paris in 2018 or the U.S.’s win at Hazeltine in 2016 — but where they outplayed the visitors so convincingly, there were times when you genuinely wondered where the next American point was coming from.

How did the Blue and Yellows turn it around so quickly? What happened to the Red, White and Blue team that won the last Ryder Cup by more points than any other team since Continental Europeans were first added to the Great Britain/Ireland team in 1979?

Europe’s three best players — Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and Viktor Hovland — showed up for Donald big time, and his rookies performed magnificently. Plus, he had a very partisan crowd on his side, which Padraig Harrington didn’t have at Whistling Straits because of COVID-related restrictions.

Where to start? Was it naming Zach Johnson as Captain? The 47-year-old Iowan, now a resident of Georgia, is a popular figure on the PGA Tour. And with a much better professional record than most people might guess — two majors (2007 Masters and 2015 Open Championship), 12 PGA Tour wins, and five Ryder Cup appearances — there was little doubt he deserved the call.

But was he the sort of no-nonsense leader American players would line up behind and fight tooth and nail for? In an interview with The Athletic’s Brendan Quinn just one week before leaving for Rome, Johnson himself appeared to question the decision. “I thought I might (potentially) be in line for a President’s Cup a few years down the road,” he said. “But not this.”

He might have avoided accusations of keeping it in the “boys club” had he picked form players like Keegan Bradley and Lucas Glover, rather than Sam Burns and Justin Thomas, who had missed 10 cuts and had just four top-10s between them since April.

He probably should have done more to ensure his team arrived in Italy better prepared. Only three players –Max Homa, Brooks Koepka, and Thomas – had played in the five weeks since the end of the FedEx Cup playoffs.

One suspects a stronger, more resolute, character, might have done a better job of downplaying Patrick Cantlay’s “Hatgate” nonsense, thus preventing Joe La Cava’s unseemly spat with Rory McIlroy on Saturday evening. Keeping Xander (and his father, Stefan) Schauffele’s dispute with the PGA of America under wraps might also have avoided further bad press and blood.

The departures of 2021 team members Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau to LIV didn’t help either. Koepka, another LIV player, had earned his spot by winning the PGA Championship in May.

By contrast, Luke Donald’s handling of the European team seemed exemplary. The Englishman — who replaced Henrik Stenson as Captain in July of last year after the Swede signed with the LIV Tour — certainly copped his share of criticism after leaving Poland’s inform Adrain Meronk out of his captain’s picks, but thereafter, enjoyed a smooth ride without ever seeming to put a foot wrong.

Donald leaned heavily on the ghost of Seve Ballesteros. The talismanic Spaniard, who died in 2011 after doing so much to revive interest in the Ryder Cup, had long been a source of inspiration for Team Europe. Donald knew even his rookies and youngest team members were well aware of Ballesteros’s impact on European golf, so he commissioned students at the Rome University of Fine Arts to design a huge banner to be unveiled on the 1st tee before the first day’s play.

There for the unveiling (next to Donald in the crowded stands) were Seve’s son, Javier, and his frequent Ryder Cup partner Jose Maria Olazabal, a vice captain for the match in Rome. Olazabal, according to fellow vice captain Edoardo Molinari who related the story on the “No Laying Up” podcast, told the players he’d happily give back one of his two Masters victories to play in one more Ryder Cup.

That’s what this event, and Ballesteros’s contributions, means to European golfers. Donald’s masterstroke was plugging into that unified passion, not only by creating the banner, but also by reserving a 13th locker in the European team room for Seve, a five-time major champion who played in eight Ryder Cups (non-playing Captain in 1997) finishing with a 20-12-5 record.

Europe’s three best players — Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and Viktor Hovland — showed up for Donald big time, and his rookies performed magnificently. Plus, he had a very partisan crowd on his side, which Padraig Harrington didn’t have at Whistling Straits because of COVID-related restrictions.

Rousing speeches and his heavy Ballesteros play might well have been Donald’s most potent ammunition, however.

As this generation of players passes the baton to the next, and so on, fewer players will have any connection to Seve. He’ll never be forgotten, of course, but captains will be able to leverage the influence he still has less and less. In Rome, the memories were still vivid, however, and Donald used them to perfection.

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