{"id":447599,"date":"2025-09-24T05:28:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T05:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/447599\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T05:28:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T05:28:18","slug":"luke-donald-leans-on-friendship-with-michael-jordan-to-inspire-team-europe-at-ryder-cup-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/447599\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Donald leans on friendship with Michael Jordan to inspire Team Europe at Ryder Cup \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The charm offensive is a necessary part of playing the diplomat. For European Ryder Cup<\/a> captain Luke Donald<\/a>, the days building up to Friday\u2019s big tee-off have provided an opportunity to demonstrate his prudency with words.<\/p>\n

If fighting words are confined to the team room, the public utterings from Donald \u2013 as usual \u2013 have been polite and gracious.<\/p>\n

At some point during this weekend\u2019s Ryder Cup, US president Donald Trump<\/a> will make an appearance. Whether it proves a distraction \u2013 as happened when he turned up recently at the US Open men\u2019s singles final at Flushing Meadows \u2013 or an inspiration to the home team (and supporters), remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

For Luke Donald, though, there is the bigger picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think any time a sitting president wants to come to an event, it just shows how big the Ryder Cup is,\u201c he said. \u201dYou\u2019ve got to see that as a mark of respect. President Trump is obviously a big supporter of golf and he knows a lot of the players this week and has met them before. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think you see it as that, as a mark of respect, that a sitting president wants to support an event when he has a very busy schedule. To find time for that shows something.”<\/p>\n

Another big presence expected on Long Island through the three competition days is former basketball star Michael Jordan<\/a>, who developed a friendship with Donald when the Englishman attended college in Chicago. Donald, though, is under no doubts which side MJ will be cheering on.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael is someone I\u2019ve been very fortunate to get access to and pick his brain occasionally about what made him tick, what motivated him, how he was able to get the best out of himself,\u201d he said. \u201cMichael is also very close to Keegan [Bradley] and I\u2019m sure Keegan has maybe leaned on MJ a little bit as well over the last year. He\u2019s not going to specifically give me advice this time around, but certainly [through] my friendship over the years, I\u2019ve picked up many things. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to have someone that is a legend of their sport, arguably the greatest ever, to sit down occasionally and pick their brains . . . but I think he will have a USA hat on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald believes he has been able to touch on elements of Jordan\u2019s career to help his team in their quest for Ryder Cup victory on US soil. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing I learned about MJ, and I think it came through in the [Last Dance] documentary<\/a>, is that he was never going to do anything he didn\u2019t ask his teammates to do. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe set the example. He led from the front. You need your teammates around you. You can be a team of champions but not a championship team. You always need the people around you. You\u2019re always stronger being a collective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charm offensive is a necessary part of playing the diplomat. For European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,83846,4321],"class_list":{"0":"post-447599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-luke-donald","12":"tag-ryder-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115257626290777100","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}