Given the 30-year losing streak by the United States on foreign soil for the Ryder Cup, you would think that picking Team Europe in this week’s event at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome, Italy is a stone-cold lock.
I mean, the last time the U.S. team won on foreign soil was in 1993 at The Belfry in England. That is a huge and undeniable trend.
But it will end this year. I predict Team USA will win by a 17-11 margin. Team USA is coming off a 19-9 victory in 2021 at Whistling Straights in Wisconsin that was the biggest victory since the competition expanded in 1979 to include all of Europe instead of just Great Britain and Ireland.
The European side simply doesn’t have the manpower to cope with Team USA this year.
All 12 players of Team USA are ranked within the top 25 of the Official World Golf Rankings. Team Europe includes three of the top four players in the world, Rory McIlroy (No. 2), Jon Rahm (No. 3) and Viktor Hovland (No. 4). But it also includes five players ranked outside of the top 25, including Shane Lowry (No. 34), Justin Rose (No. 37), Robert Mcintyre (No. 55), Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg (No. 80) and Denmark’s Nicolai Hojgaard (No. 82). Aberg is 23 years old and Hojgaard is only 22, but European captain Luke Donald obviously believes in their talent.
The remaining members of Team Europe include Tyrell Hatton (No. 11), Matt Fitzpatrick (No. 8), Tommy Fleetwood (No. 14) and Sepp Straka (No. 22). McIlroy, Hovland and Rahm all have been hot recently, but three players aren’t enough to get it done in the Ryder Cup.
Let’s look at Team USA. It includes world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark is ranked 10th, and Patrick Cantlay is ranked fifth in the world. Clark is a Ryder Cup rookie and so is Brian Harman, who is ninth in the world, but he is the British Open champ. Then you have Max Homa, who is seventh in the world rankings, and Xander Schauffele, who is sixth. Those are the automatic qualifiers.
Captain Zach Johnson then picked Sam Burns, a Ryder Cup rookie who is 20th in the world ranking, Rickie Fowler, who is 25th and had a comeback season, and PGA champion Brooks Koepka, who is the only LIV golfer on the team. The last three captain’s picks are Collin Morikawa, who is 19th in the world ranking, Jordan Spieth, who is 12th, and Justin Thomas, who is 24th, Spieth and Thomas have proven to be a great pairing in the past.
It’s easy to argue with Johnson’s picks. He could have included LIV golfers Bryson DeChambeau, who shot 61-58 in the final two rounds of a recent win on that tour, and Dustin Johnson, a veteran star who moved to LIV Golf. Those two could have replaced Fowler and Burns. DeChambeau is one of the longest hitters in the game, and he won again last week after the Ryder Cup team was selected. Johnson has been one of the top players in the world for a long time. But Zach Johnson only chose Koepka from the LIV players, so politics were involved.
In any case, the 12 U.S. players include four rookies and the eight players with Ryder Cup experience have a combined 34-22-13 record. Fowler is the only player with a losing Ryder Cup record.
Bottom line is that Team USA should win easily.
