It is not much of a stretch to say the only real difference between the European Ryder Cup team that captain Luke Donald will take to Bethpage Black later this month and the one that dominated the Americans two years ago at Rome will be the team outfits (assuming those don’t get run back as well).
With the announcement last week of Donald’s six captain’s picks – Shane Lowry, Jon Rahm, Sepp Straka, Ludvig Åberg, Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick – joining the six automatic qualifiers led by Rory McIlroy, there was no real drama. The only roster difference from two years ago is switching out Højgaards, Rasmus replacing twin brother Nicolai this time.
Eleven of the 12 players on the European side will be in the field this week for the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship – Sepp Straka, whose wife recently gave birth, will be the lone absence. Following that tournament at the Wentworth Club outside London, the entire squad will embark on a two-day scouting trip to Bethpage Black, after which they will remain in the United States until the Sept. 26-28 matches.
Meanwhile, 10 of the 12 members of the U.S. team will tune up for the matches this week at the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship in Napa, California. Only Xander Schauffele and LIV Golf competitor Bryson DeChambeau will not play. READ MORE
The 1987 U.S. Ryder Cup team: (Standing from left) Jack Nicklaus (captain), Larry Nelson, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange, Lanny Wadkins, Hal Sutton, Tom Kite; (Front row L-R): Mark Calcavecchia, Payne Stewart, Andy Bean, Scott Simpson, Dan Pohl and Larry Mize.
David Cannon, Getty Images
Though ranked a lowly 140th in the final European Ryder Cup standings, Sergio García was apparently holding out hope that his body of work as the all-time leading Ryder Cup points earner (28½) might persuade Donald to add him to the European side.
Although García won a LIV Golf event in March, his recent play was not enough to convince Donald. After receiving the news, the 45-year-old Spaniard withdrew from the DP World Tour’s Amgen Irish Open, revealing in an interview with GolfMagic that his mental state after not being picked prompted the decision.
“I felt like I was so looking forward to being a part of that team, and so I felt like mentally, you know, mentally it was kind of tough,” García told the website. “I didn’t want to go there and not be fully engaged in the tournament and stuff, so I just decided to take a little bit of time off and spend it with the family and do a couple of things, you know, some things outside of golf and just kind of reboot a little bit, recharge the batteries.”
Instead of competing at the K Club, García was in New York for the U.S. Open tennis tournament, where he watched compatriot Carlos Alcaraz and played in a friendly golf match that included Alcaraz last Wednesday. READ MORE
The Plantation Course at Hawaii’s Kapalua Resort, site of the PGA Tour’s season-opening Sentry tournament, was on its seventh day without irrigation water last Thursday, the result of an ongoing dispute with Maui Land & Pineapple over its century-old water system that has thrown the status of the January tournament into serious question.
Kapalua decided to close the course on Sept. 2 for two months to use the water it was allowed to protect the turf, including verticut mowing to thin out dead grass, and allow it to better absorb water and a slow-releasing fertilizer. But then a tough situation got worse when Maui Land & Pineapple went from a Tier 2 restriction (60 percent of normal irrigation) to Tier 4 (no irrigation).
Alex Nakajima, the general manager of Kapalua Golf and Tennis, said plans to verticut and other measures were put on hold. “We have all the plans to act,” Nakajima said Thursday. “But without water, we can’t do anything. It’s tough.” READ MORE
Tap-Ins
Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy will headline a new competition put on by Versant, the company made up of NBCUniversal cable networks spun off by Comcast confirmed in a Wednesday news release. Dubbed the Golf Channel Games, the Dec. 17 competition at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter in Florida will feature Scheffler and McIlroy captaining four-player teams in a live, prime-time event comprising a series of timed and strategy-focused challenges. The event will air on Golf Channel and USA Network. READ MORE
European captain Luke Donald named Alex Norén his fifth and final vice captain for the 2025 Ryder Cup. The 43-year-old Swede joins brothers Francesco and Edoardo Molinari, Thomas Bjørn and José María Olazábal in Donald’s backroom team. READ MORE
The LPGA’s T-Mobile Match Play tournament at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas will not be on the tour’s schedule in 2026, Golfweek reported. READ MORE
Compiled by Mike Cullity