It had been quite a widespread belief (OK, well I thought it might be the case) that the European Ryder Cup captain, Luke Donald, would be tempted to ride his big names hard at Marco Simone next week, playing the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick (who are all in the top-10 on the Official World Golf Ranking) in each of the four series of matches ahead of Sunday’s singles. Apparently not.
“You want some freshness and it’s going to be a tiring course [it’s very hilly] and warm [about 28 degrees],” explained Donald. “It’s a possibility that some guys who you would think might play five [matches] might not play five. We’ve discussed it with a few players… if you asked them to play they would want to, but you’ve got to think about Sunday and the singles.” In the demolition of the European cause at Whistling Straits two years ago, Rahm and Hovland were the only players to play four times before Sunday. Neither won their singles. In Paris in 2018, McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari played five times in the week, but only Molinari won his singles. (In fact, he won five from five at Golf National.)
From the time that Europe became a winning force in the Ryder Cup, beginning at The Belfry in 1985 under the captaincy of Tony Jacklin, there has been a tradition of relying on the top names to set things up so that come Sunday morning Europe had ideally earned a significant advantage. The starriest of European star names at that time was Seve Ballesteros. In 1985 he won three points from four in team play; it was the same again in 1987; in 1989 it was 31/2 from four; 1991 saw a repeat of that; in 1993 he won two points out of three before telling the then captain, Bernard Gallacher, that his game was too off for him to compete in the second series of fourballs. His record in the five singles matches during that stretch was half-win-loss-win-loss. (He was right about his game being off; he lost by 4&3 to Jim Gallagher Jnr and would not have broken 80.) Nick Faldo, an exact contemporary and ultimately the winner of six major championships to Seve’s five, was also flogged hard by his captains. From 1985 to 1997 (and remember he helped Europe to win four of those matches and tie another), his singles record read loss-loss-loss-win-half-win-loss. Yes, the foursomes and fourballs can indeed take it out of a player before Sunday takes its toll.
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The matter was surely never better illustrated than in 1999 at Brookline. Europe led 10-6 going into the singles but the captain, Mark James, had left three players – Andrew Coltart, Jarmo Sandelin and Jean Van de Velde – on the bench for all of both Friday and Saturday. Given that they had not played the course in competitive conditions, it was no shock that all three lost their singles: respectively, to Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love. The likes of Darren Clarke, Sergio Garcia, Jesper Parnevik and Lee Westwood, who had played four times, had nothing left to give. The USA won by a point, an outcome the Europeans managed to precisely reverse at Medinah 13 years later.
So I do get the sense behind what Donald seems to be thinking. As always, though, it will come down to this: if he wins he’ll be regarded as right, and if he loses he won’t.
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