{"id":253506,"date":"2025-09-25T11:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253506\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T11:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:44:11","slug":"ryder-cups-foursome-start-will-set-the-tone-for-high-stakes-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253506\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryder Cup’s foursome start will set the tone for high-stakes weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you tune into the Ryder Cup\u2019s opening session Friday morning at Bethpage Black, you\u2019ll be watching the players competing in a format that\u2019s not very commonplace.<\/p>\n

The first session of the Friday and Saturday competition days are foursomes, which is alternate shot, with one player teeing off, the next hitting the second shot and so on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an intricate format that\u2019s rarely played in professional golf and it makes for complicated pairings, because both players are using the same ball. And, in the world of professional golf, that\u2019s a big deal with some players using higher spin-rate balls, some less, etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cFoursomes is obviously the tougher format to pair because there\u2019s so many more factors,\u201d U.S. captain Keegan Bradley said. \u201cThere\u2019s the golf ball, [and] you really want to match up the personalities with foursomes because it is a way tougher format.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

In each of the past five Ryder Cups, the team that won the most points in foursomes won the overall competition.<\/p>\n

Foursomes have been the tone-setter in recent Ryder Cups. Two years ago in Rome, the Europeans wiped out the U.S. 4-0 in the opening session, and the Americans never recovered. Europe went 7-1 overall in the foursomes in Rome and won the Ryder Cup by five points.<\/p>\n

Dating back to the 2012 Ryder Cup, a period of six competitions, the home team has a remarkable advantage in foursomes of 36\u00bd points to 11\u00bd.<\/p>\n

In this Ryder Cup, based on career records, the European players are much better and more experienced in foursomes than the U.S.<\/p>\n

Among the 10 European players who\u2019ve played Ryder Cup foursomes, they have a combined record of 30-15-2. Among the seven Americans who\u2019ve played foursomes in the Ryder Cup, they have a combined record of 8-13 with only one player (Collin Morikawa at 2-1) having a winning record.<\/p>\n

\"LudvigLudvig Aberg (l.) and Rasmus Hojgaard walk the course during a practice day for the Ryder Cup. for the NY POST<\/p>\n

Conversely, Europe has some players who\u2019ve been rock stars in foursomes with Justin Rose carrying a 7-2-1 career record, Rory McIlroy 7-5-1, Jon Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood both 4-0.<\/p>\n

So, how the foursomes play out on Friday morning will provide a compelling \u201ctell\u2019\u2019 on how the rest of the 45th Ryder Cup will go.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much strategy involved in not only the pairings, but setting up the order in which the players hit.<\/p>\n

\"TeamCaptain Keegan Bradley, Ben Griffin, vice captain Gary Woodland, Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Young of Team United States walk the 17th hole prior to the Ryder Cup 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n

In foursomes, teammates alternate hitting tee shots, so Player A would have all the odd-numbered holes and Player B all the even-numbered holes. The two players then alternate from there until the ball is holed, with the low score among the teams counting toward the match play total.<\/p>\n

So, for example, the Americans would want to make it so that Bryson DeChambeau, one of the long bombers on the U.S. team, is hitting the tee shot on the longer holes, like the par-5s. Same for Europe and McIlroy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to trust your partner,\u201d Gary Woodland, one of Bradley\u2019s vice captains who\u2019s played the format in Presidents Cups, said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to put your partner in bad positions. You\u2019re going to hit bad shots all the time like we do all the time. But it\u2019s different when it\u2019s just you. It\u2019s letting that go and figuring it out together. There\u2019s way more pressure than four-ball where you can play your own ball and do your own thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

For Europe, it seems unlikely that captain Luke Donald would change much (if anything) from what he did with the foursomes pairings in Rome. He has 11 players back from his 2023 team, including all of those who competed at foursomes.<\/p>\n

On the Friday morning session in Rome, Rahm and Hatton paired, Ludvig \u00c5berg and Viktor Hovland paired, Shane Lowry and Sepp Straka paired and McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood paired en route to that 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Donald called this Ryder Cup on the road \u201ca different animal\u2019\u2019 from Rome.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously having the chance to do it again doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re going to do the same things we did in Rome,\u2019\u2019 Donald said. \u201cIt\u2019s about implementing new techniques. I\u2019ve really tried to look hard at exactly what this will require.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you tune into the Ryder Cup\u2019s opening session Friday morning at Bethpage Black, you\u2019ll be watching the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":253507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[29108,1430,8656,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-253506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-bethpage-black","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-ryder-cup","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115264767072463995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}