Slaughtered by the Wisconsin water two years ago, some of Europe’s biggest stars were left in tears.
Rory McIlroy broke down during his post-play interview, powerless but to watch Team USA put the finishing touches on a 19-9 Ryder Cup trouncing.
“I love being a part of this team, I love my teammates so much. I should have done more for them this week,” he said.
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“There is nothing better than being part of a team, especially the bond we have in Europe.”
McIlroy wasn’t the only one left shattered. Europe legends Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter were also reduced to tears by the US destruction.
“If you haven’t got pride and passion, (the Ryder Cup is) not for you,” Westwood said. “Don’t bother turning up”.
Meanwhile, the Americans turned Whistling Straits into a giant frat party, going wild and savouring every moment of an iconic triumph.
Hard to believe following that passionate aftermath, but just one year later, the biennial grudge match was said to be on the verge of ruin.
Backed by virtually bottomless Saudi funding, LIV Golf successfully went after big-name European stars, wiping multiple generations of future captains from the team.
Despite their love for Europe, Westwood and Poulter defected for big-money sign-on fees, as did Sergio Garcia and Europe’s would-be 2023 captain, Henrik Stenson.
Having just been annihilated by arguably the greatest team in Ryder Cup history, only for Europe to be made even weaker just 12 months on, the Ryder Cup tumbled from being deeply revered to the brink of one-sided irrelevancy.
“I don’t see the Ryder Cup ever being the same again,” two-time winning European captain Tony Jacklin wrote in The Telegraph at the time, saying that this year’s event in Rome would “be a nonsense”.
South Africa great Ernie Els described the situation as a “shame”, while The Telegraph’s chief sports writer Oliver Brown wrote: “… the rise of LIV Golf has bred such greed that even this glorious biennial scrap is looking threadbare.”
What has followed since those forecasts of doom, however, has been nothing short of miraculous for both the Ryder Cup, and Team Europe.
The Ryder Cup has not lost its sheen, but instead will be contested this week in Rome in one of the tournament’s most eagerly-anticipated iterations.
It’s a remarkable U-turn in the fortunes of one of golf’s most celebrated events, giving cause for widespread optimism in a sport that’s been shrouded in doubt and controversy for nearly two years.
The Ryder Cup has bounced back to life just in time. Here’s how it happened.
LIV IMPACT FADES OUT
The Ryder Cup panic in mid-2022 felt well-placed at the time.
LIV Golf was piecing together a roster that exceeded the expectations of most – and there was no knowing when the poaching would end given the vast wealth at its disposal.
Most concerning, however, was the transparent targeting of Europe’s Ryder Cup team.
LIV Golf was struggling to carve its way through the US – with a couple exceptions, such as Dustin Johnson – but was having success in picking off Europe’s heavyweights.
And then it all stopped.
LIV Golf dramatically stalled in season two. Cameron Smith remains its last major coup – and he signed up more than a year ago.
Nonetheless, LIV Golf’s inability to make further recruitment inroads became irrelevant in June when a shock merger between its paymasters – the Public Investment Fund – and the PGA and DP World Tours was announced.
Whether the merger becomes official is still up in the air as a US senate subcommittee investigates the motivation behind large-scale investment from Saudi Arabia. A new-look, player-dominated PGA Tour board will also need to ratify the deal.
Even so, tensions between LIV Golf and the PGA and DP World Tours has somewhat dissipated given all players could be unified from next year.
What the merger means exactly for the Ryder Cup is unclear outside the fact that the vast majority of the world’s best players will be eligible to feature in it.
As such, crisis has been averted for the team event.
USA LULL
There’s no denying that the Americans still boast a formidable side, but the gulf in class between the two teams has dramatically closed.
Players from Team Europe have struck form at the right time, while the Americans have cooled after dominating earlier in the year.
A player from Team USA hasn’t won on either the PGA or DP World circuits since Brian Harman lifted the Claret Jug in late July.
Before that win, you have to go back to Ricky Fowler claiming the Rocket Mortgage Classic in the last week of June.
By comparison, four players from Team Europe have claimed five professional wins since: Sepp Straka (John Deere Classic), Rory McIlroy (Scottish Open), Viktor Hovland (BMW and Tour Championships) and Ludvig Aberg (European Masters).
The shift in power reflects in the world rankings as well.
Three of the world’s top-four golfers are from Europe with McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Hovland trailing No.1 Scottie Scheffler. Europe has a total of six players in the world’s top 15, close to America’s eight.
The US might’ve beaten Europe to a pulp in 2021 with a vastly superior side, but riding on the coat-tails of that historic success will prove difficult.
Dustin Johnson went 5-0 in that tournament, but hasn’t been picked after defecting to LIV along with the red-hot Bryson DeChambeau, who took 2.5 points from a possible three.
Justin Thomas also claimed 2.5 points from four matches, but enters this year’s Ryder Cup woefully out of form, and under immense pressure having been selected as a captain’s pick.
The two-time major winner arrives in Rome without a single win last season, in which he also missed six cuts – including three at the majors – and had just four top-10 finishes from 21 tournaments.
Scheffler will be expected to do much of the heavy lifting, but he hasn’t won since the Players Championship in March – a criminal under production given the unrivalled quality of his play from tee-to-green this year.
On the greens, however, spells a Ryder Cup cautionary tale for the 27-year-old, and America.
Scheffler was ranked a lowly 151st for putting last season, which is why he hasn’t won for months, and was pipped at the post in the FedEx Cup by Hovland.
The Ryder Cup is no place to bring your putting demons – especially when away from home.
Meanwhile, Team USA members had 10 wins on the PGA Tour this year, shared between Scheffler (two), Max Homa (two), Wyndham Clark (two), and one each for Fowler, Harman, Brooks Koepka and Sam Burns.
That leaves Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Thomas as winless players for the Americans.
HOME ADVANTAGE
Also staring the Americans in the face is its daunting history of failure at the Ryder Cup when away from home.
The coldest of hard facts is this: No American team has won the Ryder Cup in Europe since 1993.
More daunting still is the recent trend of bloodbaths for the visiting team.
America has lost by seven and five points in its past two trips across the Atlantic, while Europe lost by 10 in 2021, and six in 2016.
The Europeans aren’t planning on letting their home advantage slip this time, either.
Rome’s Marco Simone Golf Course was specifically redeveloped with this year’s Ryder Cup in mind, while European captain Luke Donald has the biggest say on how the course will be set-up this week.
Earlier this year, Donald flagged narrower fairways and thicker rough to reward better drivers of the golf ball – which he believes Europe has – and to nullify the trademark bomb-and-gauge approach of the Americans.
Greens are also expected to play slow, which the Europeans will be more familiar with compared to the Americans, who are accustomed to playing on lightning fast surfaces in the US.
THE WORLD’S HOTTEST TALENT
It’s impossible to acknowledge Europe’s revival without discussing its central figure, 26-year-old Norwegian Viktor Hovland.
Hovland is undoubtedly the world’s most in-form player, winning both the BMW and Tour Championships during the FedEx Cup playoffs to clinch the season’s top US$18 million prize.
Adding to his big-tournament resume was a close call at this year’s PGA Championship, where he came second, while he also finished inside the top-10 at the Masters, and top-10 at the US Open and Open Championship.
In the process, Hovland launched himself to fourth on the world rankings, and marked himself as the USA’s biggest threat.
“Hovland is a killer,” wrote CBS Sports’ Kyle Porter after Hovland won the Tour Championship.
PGA Tour insider Dan Rapaport wrote: “He’s going to be a problem at the Ryder Cup. A big, big problem.”
Hovland will also be motivated by a score to settle, having been one of the 12 tortured Europeans at Whistling Straits two years ago.
That year, it’s said that when Europe captain Padraig Harrington asked his players to write on a piece of paper who they wanted to play with, they all wrote ‘Viktor Hovland’.
Hovland ended up playing with three different partners and only claimed a half-point in four matches, before tying his singles match against that year’s Open Championship winner, Morikawa.
McIlroy, Poulter, Westwood and Tommy Fleetwood were the only other Europeans to not lose in their singles matches that year.
Hovland is now a different player having just enjoyed his true breakout year, which will undoubtedly make him popular within Team Europe once more.
“Put it this way, if anyone was asked by Luke (Donald) to play with Viktor they aren’t exactly going to say no, are they?” McIlroy said.
“Not in this form.”
EUROPE’S FORGOTTEN STRENGTH
Boosting Europe’s chances further is the fact that Hovland is far from being the Europeans’ only in-form player.
America will still have to go through world No.2 McIlroy, who won three times across the PGA and DP World Tours this season, while he has claimed three-straight top-10 finishes at the majors.
The tears from 2021 will no doubt act as an extra source of motivation for the Northern Irishman who, for all his near-misses at the majors, remains one of the most consistently strong performers in men’s golf over a decade.
Meanwhile, world No.3 Rahm won a whopping four times last season, catching fire in early 2023 with wins at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, American Express, Genesis Invitational and the Masters.
Rahm faded out in during the FedEx Cup playoffs, but he came second at the Open Championship and T10 at the US Open.
The Spaniard was also a rare shining light for the Europeans in 2021, taking 3.5 points from five matches.
Hovland was the only other player last season on the PGA Tour to claim more than two wins, while Matt Fitzpatrick, Sepp Straka and Justin Rose were also victorious.
Added to the mix is 23-year-old European Masters champion Aberg, who has made the quickest transition from the amateur ranks to the Ryder Cup in the contest’s history. He’s also the first player to ever feature in a Ryder Cup before a major.
His selection is seen as a gamble by Donald, who said he was “blown away” while playing with Aberg earlier this year.
“He was a cool nine-under through 16 holes like it was nothing. He was calm, collected, he made everything look very simple,” Donald said.
“I haven’t played a lot with Jon Rahm, but when Rory was breaking out I thought ‘this kid is special’ and Ludvig fits in that.”
What is also a sign of Europe’s sudden health is the fact that all 12 players just made the cut at the DP World Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship.
As such, Europe has drastically closed the gap to the US to become only a narrow outsider, according to the bookies.
Many would argue that it’s in fact the Europeans who should be seen as the favourites given the home advantage, and results from the past two months.
Regardless, it speaks to the strength of the Ryder Cup, which flirted with a sudden demise before reclaiming its prestige – all without a ball being hit.
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