It\u2019s impressive enough that Team Europe went into New York and emerged with the Ryder Cup on foreign soil.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that much more impressive considering they were missing one of their hottest eligible players.<\/p>\n
In fairness, they weren\u2019t actually missing him. Alex Noren was at Bethpage Black. He was even in uniform. But his role wasn\u2019t as player but instead as vice captain to Luke Donald, supporting the players he\u2019d just beaten at the BMW PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
And now he\u2019s beating just about everybody else, again.<\/p>\n
Some backstory: Noren was on exactly nobody\u2019s Ryder Cup radar midway through the 2025 season. Because he was coming off an injury<\/a>, he didn\u2019t make a start until May \u2014\u00a0and recorded just one top 20 in his first seven starts of the season.<\/p>\n But then he caught fire.<\/p>\n Noren finished T7 at the 3M Open. He followed that with a T3 at the Wyndham Championship. He still missed the FedEx Cup playoffs, so he headed overseas to fill in his schedule with some DP World Tour events \u2014\u00a0and a couple weeks later, in his very next start, he won the Betfred British Masters, his first pro win since 2018. He was already in position as a vice captain at this point, so it was particularly noteworthy when he served as spoiler at the BMW PGA Championship<\/a>, effectively Europe\u2019s training camp two weeks before the Ryder Cup, where he triumphed in a playoff.<\/p>\n That win vaulted him to No. 18 in the Official World Golf Ranking, impressive given his limited starts. It also put him inside the top 20 in DataGolf\u2019s rankings. In both cases that put him well ahead of several players on Team Europe\u2019s roster. It was a particular oddity at this Ryder Cup given the fact that their opposing captain, Keegan Bradley, was in a similar situation; after his most recent start, the Tour Championship, he was up to No. 11 in the world and easily could have made his own team.<\/p>\n For his part, Noren shrugged it off, dismissing his performance as too little, too late and expressing his excitement for his role.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the guys on the team are going to be fantastic,\u201d he told Sky Sports. \u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to the match more than anything in a long time.\u201d He described his role as \u201can extra set of eyes over a few players\u201d and volunteered for anything and everything.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll do whatever they ask me to do,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n The system to which he contributed worked like magic for the first four sessions of the Cup, with Europe dominating team play and opening an 11.5-4.5 lead that they took to Sunday\u2019s singles matches. That\u2019s where the U.S. roared back, nearly pulling off an all-time comeback before Europe ultimately prevailed 15-13.<\/p>\n As for Noren? He hasn\u2019t played a tournament since his BMW PGA win but when he returned to action at this week\u2019s Baycurrent Classic \u2014\u00a0a PGA Tour event in Japan \u2014\u00a0he didn\u2019t appear to have skipped a beat. After rounds of 69-65 he sits T2 at the halfway mark, four shots off leader Max Greyserman.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a little rusty after pretty much two weeks off after Wentworth and then it was good to get a few days last week,\u201d Noren said, speaking to his recovery from Ryder Cup festivities. \u201cAnd then coming here, it was tough with the jet lag but my coach is here, which helps a lot. And me and my coach and my caddie is a good team, they keep me in line, in check. So whenever I get a good few days with him it seems to do the trick and like, just getting back to golf.\u201d<\/p>\n Noren described himself as wowed by just how far playing partners Wyndham Clark and Xander Schauffele hit it off the tee \u2014\u00a0\u201cstick to your own game and get inspired to work hard in the gym,\u201d he said \u2014\u00a0but hit 27 of 30 fairways through two rounds, best in the field, and showed off an increasingly stellar irons game. He also has the confidence of a recent multiple winner on this tour.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think the biggest lessons from those [wins] is you don\u2019t have to hit every shot good, you just have to stick with it, stick with your practice, your routines and the good play will come. If you start kind of like going more through your motions, emotions and not stick to your game plan, then it\u2019s tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n