On a warm clear morning in Dubai, Luke Donald had just finished attending to some Ryder Cup business in his capacity as Europe’s captain. He was wearing an open-neck shirt, and as he turned to welcome a visitor with a quiet smile and an outstretched hand, it was noticeable that there is a little more heft to him than there once was. “Lovely day,” the visitor said. “Yes,” he replied with a wistful look out of the window. “I wish I was playing (golf).”
Donald, 45, has less time to play these days as he masterminds the composition of Europe’s team against the U.S. in Rome in September. He was at Marco Simone, the Ryder Cup course outside the Eternal City, for last week’s Italian Open and to run an eye over the course, check out arrangements and watch potential team members.
Though he was given the captaincy of Europe in August 2022 only after Henrik Stenson went to LIV Golf, Donald seems booted and spurred for the job. World No. 1 for 56 weeks from May 2011 to August 2012, he has never been on a losing team in two Walker Cups (winning seven points of eight) and in four Ryder Cups (10-4-1 record). That’s a total of 17½ points out of a possible 23 in the leading amateur and professional team competitions against the U.S. Could the man have done any more for his country and his continent?
If it is posited that a man plays golf according to his personality, then Donald is a prime example. His far-from-thunderous golf game and quiet-yet-thoughtful personality chimed as smoothly as the cogs on a watch. “I think I have a very smart brain about how to manage, where to miss it, where not to, where to be aggressive, where not,” he told Global Golf Post that day in Dubai. “If you gave me the worst caddie in the world, I think I’d be fine because I know my game. I know how to get around a golf course. I have this awareness: This is where I am, and this is the shot to play, and this is how to play it. That came pretty naturally to me. I have an active mind. There is a lot of thinking going on.”
“Luke is very calm and placid. He doesn’t seem to get very worked up. That is a very good characteristic to have as a Ryder Cup captain.”
Matt Fitzpatrick
In personality, Donald is quiet and pensive. He studied art theory and practice at Northwestern University near Chicago. That and his penchant for painting in oils mark him out as more rounded than many of his peers. Jim Fanning, the late performance coach who played and managed in Major League Baseball, once said of him: “Luke has the ability to use both sides of his brain. He is highly creative, but there is a discipline about him that most creative people do not have.” When Donald heard that, he said: “I agree. I have always been very structured, very detail-orientated. That’s what the art work gave me.”
There is an X factor about Donald. He is more cultured than most, more inquisitive than many, a deep thinker who has approached his task as captain of Europe’s Ryder Cup with thoroughness and thoughtfulness. Daniel Coyle’s book “The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups” was his nighttime reading a few months ago, as was James Kerr’s “Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life,” a study of the successful New Zealand rugby team.
Diane, his vivacious, Greek-born wife who studied psychology at Northwestern, is the yin to his yang. “She likes to talk and to use her hands,” Donald said. “I always say she talks so I don’t have to. I am more of a quiet sitter and listener. She can make friends very easily. Lady captain, being social and outgoing, is a perfect role for her. I can’t think of anyone she doesn’t get along with.” They have three daughters, Elle, Sophia and Georgina. “I’m outnumbered at home,” Donald said with a smile. “We have a male dog now. I have to have someone to hang out with.”
Donald lives on the same street in Florida as Rory McIlroy. “I have seen first-hand how good he is with his three girls and what a wonderful father he is,” McIlroy said of his Ryder Cup captain. “He is sneakily funny, a thinker. He will listen a lot. He is a man of very few words, but when he does speak, everything that comes out of his mouth makes a lot of sense. I would say you wouldn’t find a player on tour who has a bad word to say about him. He is plugged into the role, and since he took it over, he has been great.”
To know a person well, it helps if you know his parents. “Mine were slightly hippy, not your typical parents,” Donald said. “They weren’t those parents who would travel and watch tournaments incessantly. They wanted me to be successful and do well, but my score wasn’t of huge importance. They were more worried about me becoming a good person and not being centred on any one thing.
“I remember I won the NCAA individual championship in 1999, and Pat Goss, my coach then, said: ‘Are you going to call your parents and tell them?’
“‘I guess I could,’ I replied. I called them and told my dad, and he was like, ‘That’s great. Well done. How are the girls treating you at college?’ Straightaway something different.
“Dad was interested in gardening, the joy of flying, French wine. He smoked Gauloises, a strong French cigarette. When I was growing up, he liked to put us into uncomfortable situations. For example, he made me go to the shop with him when he was wearing his dressing gown. Or going up to people with a dog and saying ‘That’s a nice dog you have.’ A kid might find that difficult, but he wanted to push you.
“I was a singer, too (a boy treble with a piercing and clarion-clear voice that earned him victory in one or two competitions), and I remember once he made me wear bright green trousers to a competition. They were baggy and didn’t look good. I didn’t want to wear them. But I think any time you do stuff like that, you get better. It’s like nerves on the first tee. No point in shying away from it.”
“People who don’t really watch golf tune in to the Ryder Cup because it has meaning. We are playing for pride, for our countries, our continents. It’s true sport.”
Luke donald
As a player, Donald was renowned for his Stakhanovite appetite toward work. “I don’t see anyone working harder than Luke Donald,” Jack Nicklaus said. You don’t disagree when a compliment is lobbed your way by someone such as Nicklaus, and Donald didn’t. “I think it’s from being very competitive, from having a very strong desire to win,” Donald said. “I never felt like I had the most talent in golf. I felt the only way for me to excel was to work hard.
“College helped, too. Northwestern was very academic. You couldn’t be half-hearted with your studies. You had to put in the time and to manage that time. We had classes in the morning, and then would practice until the sun went down. There were times when I had to say, ‘No, I can’t go to this party. I’ve been practising all day, and I’ve got homework to do and a tournament to go to.’ That taught me discipline right there.”
Matthew Fitzpatrick has been a member of two Ryder Cup teams, in 2016 and 2021, and thus knows at least two types of captaincy. “Luke is very calm and placid,” the 2022 U.S. Open champion said. “He doesn’t seem to get very worked up. That is a very good characteristic to have as a Ryder Cup captain.
“One thing I noticed when he was a vice captain at the last Ryder Cup was he was taking plenty of notes. I thought that was impressive. His communication has been fantastic. I know that previous captains I have played under have been good communicators, but he has been brilliant with me. No secrets. Just keep playing well.”
Ryder Cup captains are assigned a place in history that is usually determined by whether they have won or lost. In the 1980s, Tony Jacklin (1983, 1985, 1987, 1989) was inspirational, brilliant even, considering that the strength of his teams tailed off dramatically. He was arguably the best Europe captain of all time, though Paul McGinley (2014) runs him close while Colin Montgomerie (2010), José María Olazábal (2012, the “Miracle at Medinah”), Ian Woosnam (2006), Sam Torrance (2002) and Bernard Gallacher (1995) all secured victories. Thomas Bjørn (2018) was also good. Bernhard Langer (2004) was Teutonic, well-organised, and fortunate that he was opposed by one of the least-effective U.S. captains in Hal Sutton, who paired Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, two men who did not like each other then, not once but twice on the same day, and they lost both matches.
Seve Ballesteros (1997) was a startlingly individualistic captain at Valderrama and no one, not Tom Kite nor, arguably, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan combined, could have defeated the King of Spain in his own country. Tom Lehman (2006) had two, possibly three, players in his U.S. team who weren’t of sufficient standard. Darren Clarke (2016) was dealt a blow by having to alter his pairings on the first morning because of an anti-American article by Danny Willett’s brother. Nick Faldo (2008) was simply poor, though the dismal form of Lee Westwood, Pádraig Harrington and Sergio García, none of whom won a match, didn’t help the team’s cause. Harrington (2021) faced the perfect storm of a brilliant U.S. team, many playing near their best, who putted beautifully on an American-prepared course in front of a patriotic home crowd.
How will Donald do? Victory is important for the DP World Tour’s finances and to maintain a record of being unbeaten at home since losing the 1993 match. “People who don’t really watch golf tune in to the Ryder Cup because it has meaning,” Donald said. “We are playing for pride, for our countries, our continents. It’s true sport.”
He could have added “I love it,” but such was the tone of his voice and the look on his face that those words would have been superfluous. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, what Donald left unsaid was as important as what he said.
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