BY SCOTT MICHAUX
After failing to win a single match on Friday and falling seven points behind through three Ryder Cup sessions, the U.S. franchise found itself facing the worst season yet – American Horror Show: Roman Ruins.
But thanks to clutch Saturday and Sunday efforts from Patrick Cantlay and Max Homa – the hatless and nicest assassins, respectively – the U.S. managed to reach and maintain an actual path to retaining the cup in Sunday’s singles. The biggest rally in Ryder Cup history proved too big an ask and evaporated like a mirage when Rickie Fowler splashed it in the water on 16 and Tommy Fleetwood secured a guaranteed half to clinch the cup, but at least there was reason to wake up early and tune in Sunday morning in the States.
In the end, Team USA’s losing streak on foreign soil enters its fourth decade and will be 34 winless years overseas the next time Europe plays host, in 2027 at Ireland’s Adare Manor. The Roman edition extended a streak of five consecutive lopsided results and eight of the last 10 biennial showdowns decided by five points or more. The Solheim Cup is your best bet.
There was a lot to unpack from an event that etches reputations into golf’s historic ledger:
BIRDIE: Jon Rahm and Viktor Hovland. The leading Continentals were absolute killers on the opening day, kicking things off with electric chip-ins in respective wins during the morning foursomes sweep and then dousing flickering U.S. hope with 18th-hole bombs to steal four-ball halves. The Americans had not enough answers for them.
BOGEY: Brooks Koepka. The LIV lightning rod sparked controversy by taking an unprompted jab labeling Rahm “a child” after a spirited four-balls tie Friday. The next morning, the five-time major winner and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler imploded to the worst defeat in Ryder Cup history (9 and 7 in only 2 hours, 19 minutes) to Hovland and actual college kid Ludvig Åberg. Koepka did beat Åberg in singles.
PAR: Justin Thomas. The controversial captain’s pick shouldered a heavy burden and pretty much single-handedly put the first half point on the board for the U.S. in his “three-ball” match Friday against Hovland and Tyrrell Hatton. While he couldn’t carry his struggling partner Jordan Spieth, JT displayed a fighting heart when Americans needed a pulse.
BOGEY: Scottie Scheffler. The first world No. 1 not to win a single match in the Ryder Cup (0-2-2), losing two half points to Rahm on the 18th hole. The Ryder Cup is a tough place to introduce putting fixes, and short misses haunted Scheffler again. He showed flashes in four-balls with Koepka, but the foursomes exposed him. The fiasco annihilation with a disengaged Koepka left him in tears.
BIRDIE: Rory McIlroy. He vowed through tears at Whistling Straits that he’d do better in Rome, and he fulfilled that mission with three partnership wins and a singles triumph that helped build and hold Europe’s commanding lead. He backed up big words when he said the former Euro icons on LIV would miss last week more than Team Europe would miss them.
BIRDIE: Patrick Cantlay. The world No. 5 labeled a British media report as “lies” that he fractured the U.S. locker room by refusing to wear a hat because players don’t get paid. “It’s just about Team USA and representing our country,” Cantlay said after tipping his invisible cap to the jeering crowds after using taunts as fuel for his late putting “hat trick” heroics that kept the U.S. from losing further ground Saturday and left his teammates a puncher’s chance to produce a miracle comeback Sunday.
BIRDIE: Max Homa. The world No. 7 doesn’t project the same aura as his peers, but he quietly and meticulously produces. A pair of partnership wins on Saturday with Brian Harman were critical to the U.S. team’s life support. Homa made six birdies and a tap-in eagle in four-balls, and the duo compiled five birdies and two eagles in alternate shot. And Homa extended hope with a clutch putt at 18 in a singles win. He’s now 7-1-1 in international team play.
BIRDIE: DP World Tour. The Euro circuit has been forced to make a lot of adjustments to accommodate the scheduling whims of its strategic U.S. partner, but the post-Tour Championship run-up from Switzerland to Ireland to Wentworth proved very productive in prepping its roster while the Yanks mostly enjoyed five weeks off getting rusty.
BIRDIE: Luke Donald. From his opening-ceremony words in perfect Italian to his emotional reclamation of the trophy, Donald never missed a step. He wasn’t Europe’s first choice for captain, but there’s no way Henrik Stenson could have done a better job of presentation and team management in keeping Europe’s home streak alive. They should give him another crack in two years at Bethpage Black.
BOGEY: Buddy system. The Americans undercut themselves by letting players make too many calls and riding the friendship pairings too long. These weren’t geezers or overmatched Internationals they were playing this time. Picking Sam Burns and sending him out first with his world No. 1 friend backfired bigtime, and it only got worse from there.
BIRDIE: Justin Rose. The old man delivered critical 1½ points in four-balls for Europe. At 43, he was far and away the oldest participant (by seven years), but he putted like the younger version of himself in the clutch.
DOUBLE BOGEY: Joe LaCava. Cantlay’s caddie (longtime bagman for Fred Couples and Tiger Woods) got into verbal exchanges with Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry on the 18th green (and Justin Thomas’ caddie Bones Mackay’s peacekeeping efforts drew a hostile encounter with a furious McIlroy at the valet stand). LaCava doffed his cap demonstrably after his man buried a huge birdie putt but then jawed with McIlroy as he tried to read one of the Euros’ two chances to halve a key match. Caddies can’t act like that. Just do your job.
BOGEY: Zach Johnson. Maybe some mysterious illness played a factor, but the U.S. captain made it easy to question his deployment by sitting four major champs in the crucial opening foursomes and instead sending out Burns first in absolutely the wrong format for his skills. That devastating start just snowballed and proved decisive.
BOGEY: U.S. captain’s picks. Keegan Bradley, Cam Young and Lucas Glover must be seething at home after seeing ZJ’s wild-card choices go a collective 4-12-4. Fowler went 0-2 to push his career RC record to 3-9-5. Collin Morikawa went 1-3. Spieth 0-2-2. And they were the non-controversial picks. Europe’s wild cards went a collective 8-9-3.
BIRDIE: Matt Fitzpatrick. Mr. Career 0-5 wasted no time shutting down that narrative by making literally every putt he looked at on the first six holes Friday to race to an insurmountable lead that won the session with McIlroy largely along for the ride.
DOUBLE BOGEY: No-show socks. A formal complaint: while no-show or ankle socks are perfectly acceptable and even preferred on golf courses (aside from old-fogey British clubs that require knee socks), there is absolutely no acceptable reason for them to be worn with a suit and tie … ESPECIALLY WITH TAN LINES. Cease and desist.
BIRDIE: Euro tour productions. Whether it’s motivational hype films for the team room or the whimsical videos delivered on social media, the DP World Tour team of content creators is unrivaled in golf circles. Don’t question them or Director Monty about this. And the way they embrace Seve and history in the team room embeds passion in their players in ways Americans don’t even try to match. They get it.
BIRDIE: Seve Ballesteros. No player holds such a revered place in Ryder Cup annals than the late Spaniard. His ghost inspires Euros and haunts Americans. From his sweater in a 13th locker in the dressing room to his face being the last one players see when they head to the course, his presence remains tangible. Fans even unfurled a giant banner covering an entire section of the massive first-tee bleachers: “Per sempre nei nostri cuori” – forever in our hearts.
BOGEY: Red. It took more than 6½ hours after Scheffler’s opening tee shot for the first flicker of American color to show up on the leaderboard. By the end of Friday, it was all washed out. It reappeared Saturday too little, too late.
BIRDIE: Hovland. It’s impossible not to like the gregarious Norwegian. His good-sport spirit was showcased right off the bat when the only unaccompanied bachelor among the player couples at the Ryder Cup gala walked cheekily down the Spanish Steps hand-in-hand with vice captain José María Olazábal.
BOGEY: Italian shuttles. All roads in Rome lead to traffic, which has often turned just getting to and from major golf venues into uncertain and nightmarish experiences. But Rome warrants a special place in commuter hell. “The 6am bus turned up at 7 … the 7:30 bus left at 7:15 and the 8am one didn’t appear at all,” one scribe wrote. One day, service simply stopped “because the drivers felt like taking the rest of the morning off.” Other shuttles reportedly stopped for smoking breaks or to fight with motorists who cut them off. Perfetto!
BOGEY: Joint marketing. With the Solheim Cup and Ryder Cup staged in consecutive weeks less than 1,000 miles apart in Europe, nothing was done in advance to jointly hype that once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. “I thought this could have been marketed together as two weeks in Europe, two cups for play,” U.S. Solheim captain Stacy Lewis said. “I think it was a missed opportunity for the sport of golf.”
BIRDIE: Å-plus support. Ludvig Åberg came up through the same Swedish national program with Linn Grant and Maja Stark. His caddie, Jack Clarke, is engaged to Madelene Sagström. So naturally they went to Spain to support all three Team Europe players at the Solheim Cup and get a taste of the international team atmosphere that awaited his debut in Rome. He went 2-2 but will likely haunt Americans for years.
BOGEY: Mullets. American Sam Burns showed up in Rome with a reasonable facsimile of Cam Smith’s “party in the back,” and in a show of solidarity Koepka wouldn’t let him go it alone and arrived with what he dubbed “a mini Kentucky waterfall” on the back of his head. It only reminds us all of the sad fact that John Daly never graced a Ryder Cup.
BIRDIE: Garlic. Luckily for the American side, Tiger Woods wasn’t involved as either a player or captain this year. Woods is reportedly allergic to garlic, and the aromatic bulb was banned from the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah to accommodate the GOAT. A week in Italy without garlic would be unsavory and hardly worth the airfare.
PAR: Fans. The partisan crowds in Italy were loud and disrespectful in most of the right ways (playful taunts, cheering U.S. misses, etc.). But they did adhere to basic decorum and got quiet when players hit. It would be nice if the crowds that will flock to Bethpage can return the favor, but there is no historical evidence to support that notion.
BIRDIE: European juniors. Talk about snapping a drought in style. The European Junior Ryder Cup team ended a six-event losing streak with a 20½-9½ rout of the American boys and girls. As he accepted the congratulations from fans, Europe captain Stephen Gallacher revealed what Guy Kinnings, the Ryder Cup director for the DP World Tour, had said to him when he was chosen captain: “It would nice to get proceedings off to a good start.” Gallacher did just that, extending the Euro sweep in the Solheim and Junior Solheim events the week before.
BIRDIE: Hunter Mahan. The former American Ryder Cupper worked in the media for Ryder Cup Radio during the event. Said GGP’s John Hopkins: “His voice was clear, firm and informative. Most of all, he was concise.”
BOGEY: Captain Cam. The only thing on TV worse than the incessant commercial breaks (or Paul Azinger saying for the 100th time that the setup took wedges out of the world’s greatest wedge-playing Americans’ hands) were the dozens of in-cart camera looks at Zach Johnson’s chin. Show golf shots! All of them!
WD: All square. The graceful phrase that indicates even matches at some point in recent years got unceremoniously replaced by the graceless word “tied.” Yet they keep using the vastly more confusing terms “foursomes” and “four-balls” instead of the more explanatory “alternate shot” and “better ball.” Go figure.
BIRDIE: Marco Simone. The host course proved to be a compelling venue for match play and provided a great atmosphere. But the three-time Italian Open venue is not going on anyone's bucket list when traveling to Rome.
BOGEY: Tom Grennan? The British pop singer was a curious choice to perform at the opening ceremony. The cringeworthy body language of the Euros when he sat among them and put Rory and BMac on the spot said it all. Would have been more inspired if Italian band Måneskin rocked Eurovision Song Contest 2021 winner “Zitte e buoni.”