What’s the secret of a great Ryder Cup pairing? Justin Rose pondered this question and came up with a line that sounded like an amended version of the famous tagline from 1970s weepie Love Story. “To not feel like you have to say sorry,” he said.
Sometimes the captains are baffled by this everlasting conundrum. In 2012 Davis Love III left out the winning combo of Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley on the Saturday afternoon and momentum shifted from an annus mirabilis for the USA to the “Miracle of Medinah”. To borrow from that Seventies romance again, Love was not having to say sorry, but it was a costly mistake.
In the old days you could go with your gut. Sometimes this worked, as when Tony Jacklin paired Seve Ballesteros with 20-year-old Paul Way in 1983. Ballesteros was unimpressed. “This boy, I have to tell him everything,” he complained. “I feel like his father.” Jacklin replied: “That’s why you’re bloody well playing with him. Is it a problem?”
Luke Donald stands at the front as his Europe team pose for a photo before the opening ceremony for the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black. He will announce his opening pairings for the event on Thursday evening
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The penny dropped and after losing their opening match, they went unbeaten for another three matches as well as their singles.
“What Seve did not realise is he was intimidating to his own team members, but Paul Way did not care about that,” Jacklin told me. “He was young and fearless and probably thought he could kick Seve’s arse.”
The flipside was Hal Sutton’s spectacularly ill-judged oil-and-water pairing of Mickelson and Tiger Woods.
These days it is easier, but more complex. For Europe vice-captain Edoardo Molinari’s algorithms provide data on which players complement each other, which players should play the odd-numbered holes in foursomes, and which players can play with unfamiliar balls. The last of those can be a significant issue in the alternate shot format where players use their partner’s ball.
Molinari explained: “Some players say, ‘Give me any ball,’ hit ten shots on the range, and they’re good to go. Other players can’t. That’s one of the things we learnt from last time. We had a pairing in mind [for Rome], and with two weeks to go we had to change because both players didn’t like each other’s ball.”
Which duo was he talking about? “Maybe I can tell you on my deathbed.”
Mickelson and Woods were an excellent pairing on paper … but it didn’t always translate on the course
AL MESSERSCHMIDT/WIREIMAGE
Two years beforehand, on the eve of the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, Padraig Harrington also had to rip up his plans to pair Viktor Hovland with Matt Fitzpatrick because they used different balls. That mess ended in a record-equalling defeat.
At Bethpage Black, a long, arduous toil, the theory is that the even-numbered holes are best for those who favour a draw. Think Rory McIlroy. Overall, the approaches on the even holes will also be shorter. It means Luke Donald, aided by Molinari, will think about matching the data to individual strengths.
“I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of great partners over the years,” said Rose, who forged another decent one with Bob MacIntyre in Rome. “Either great friendships, or similar golf games, or taking on a different role within pairings. Ultimately, having the comfort level where if things go wrong there’s not that moment where heads go down and you feel like you’re letting one another down. That’s the line you can’t cross.”
So what can we expect from Europe in Friday morning’s foursomes? Given that a near identical team swept that session in Rome, it is easy to predict the same line-up. Certainly, it would be a surprise if the McIlroy-Tommy Fleetwood and Jon Rahm-Tyrrell Hatton combinations were mothballed. And as Ludvig Aberg and Viktor Hovland pulled off a record 9&7 humbling of Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka in Rome, that also seems a given. However, the Scandinavians have not practised together here. It could be that Hovland is paired with MacIntyre, a stronger player than in 2023, and Aberg partners Fitzpatrick, his playing partner for two rounds at the recent BMW PGA Championship. Those pairings also use the same brand and model of ball.
Rose and MacIntyre, left, knitted perfectly together in Rome
RICHARD PELHAM / THE SUN
That would mean Shane Lowry and Sepp Straka, winners on Friday morning in 2023, would sit out the first session. After the premature birth of his son, Straka’s only appearance in the past seven weeks was in the Tour Championship, and he finished last. Data Golf, an analytics hub run by brothers Matt and Will Courchene in Toronto, has run the numbers on European foursomes, and ranked Lowry and Straka as 129th best of 132 potential pairings. Intriguingly, Data Golf also gives Europe only a 33.5 per cent chance of winning.
Rose’s role as the team’s elder statesman — he is six years older than America’s captain — may be significant in the intense heat of a New York Ryder Cup. At the last one, he was the world No36 and you might have expected him to begin the old golfer’s slow fade. Instead, he finished runner-up at last year’s Open, lost a play-off to McIlroy at this year’s Masters, and has risen to 14th in the world on the back of winning in Memphis last month.
He is expected to captain the Europe team in 2027 in Ireland. “I don’t see myself as the elder statesman,” he insisted. “I’m still enthusiastic about my game and I still want to be a contributing member of the team in the greatest way possible which is earning points, not just be here for wisdom and things like that.”
Rose and his team-mates have been on something of a charm offensive here, deliberately copying Bernhard Langer’s method from 2004, the last, convincing win in the United States. Hence, there have been long and smiling autograph sessions, and obviously not a single negative word about President Trump, who is coming for Friday’s afternoon session.
Tossed the hospital pass of a question about whether he would welcome the voraciously attention-hungry amateur on the victory rostrum, Rose said: “We would love to have that opportunity [but] I’m not sure he’s going to want to be on the stage congratulating the team that wins in his own backyard.”
There is still some peripheral stuff to wade through before the golf starts. John McEnroe sliced his tee shot in the celebrity match on Wednesday and a wag yelled: “You cannot be serious!”
Rose said he had been star-struck by the presence of Gianfranco Zola, the former Chelsea footballer, and suggested he could “relay a really powerful message” about pressure, momentum or locker-room mentality.
That sounds like a stretch. The VR headsets to simulate the first-tee frenzy have now been ditched — Rose said he used his for five minutes — and reality is preparing to bite. The pairings will be unveiled on Thursday evening, and if this is Rose’s last act as a Ryder Cup player in his seventh appearance, he will want to bow out with no quarter given — and no apologies.
Ryder Cup
From Friday, midday
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