The Five: Biggest Ryder Cup questions two months out

Anticipation for the Ryder Cup is a year-long event. Standings update weekly as players jockey for automatic qualifying spots. Players’ minds drift to the first-tee atmosphere and the opportunity to play for their country as the event nears. Now, with only 10 weeks left until the world of professional golf descends on Rome, Italy for the 42nd Ryder Cup, several questions linger: What might the teams look like? How will the course play? Can the U.S. Team snap a three-decade skid overseas?

With each week’s results carrying increased importance as captains Zach Johnson and Luke Donald attempt to capitalize off strong play and position their teams for success, plenty is subject to change. This week presents a prime opportunity to make a statement, with several players on the Ryder Cup bubble competing at the Genesis Scottish Open.

With much still up in the air, The Five this week explores the biggest unanswered questions.

Who will fill out the end of the U.S. Team roster?

As the U.S. Team left Whistling Straits, the site of its Ryder Cup romp over the European Team in 2021, there was a sense of inevitability. If that version of the team could be transported two years later to Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, it would be a shoo-in to avenge the many U.S. losses on European turf.

“This is the greatest team of all-time, right here,” U.S. Captain Steve Stricker said on the evening of the victory.

Two years later, that still may be the case. The dominant 19-9 victory over the Europeans was the U.S. Team’s largest winning margin since 1975, and it could certainly duplicate the effort in Rome. But it won’t be the same team that heads to Italy this September.

As is always the case, some players lose form while others rise to prominence. What at the time seemed like the team in perpetuity will have a bevy of new faces. Max Homa wasn’t on that team. Daniel Berger was.

It extends past more than those two names, of course. The current Ryder Cup standings present an intriguing thought exercise on how the team will fill out.

Currently, the six automatic qualifiers (the top six in the Ryder Cup Points List) are Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay and Homa.

The first five players are relative locks for the team based on their point accruals, while Homa’s spot on the team is safely assumed, be it as an automatic qualifier or a captain’s pick. He has won twice on TOUR already this season and went 4-0 in his first taste of team golf at the Presidents Cup last year.

U.S. Captain Zach Johnson will select the final six team members. He has a long list of potential selections.

Johnson could easily run down Nos. 7-12 on the Ryder Cup Points List and form his team that way. Those players, in order, are Keegan Bradley, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Cameron Young, Sam Burns and Rickie Fowler.

It also omits one key figure of recent Ryder Cups: Justin Thomas. The 15-time TOUR winner ranks 13th in points and has a 6-2-1 career record in the Ryder Cup. He’s widely considered one of the leaders of the U.S. side, instrumental in the construction of past teams and the on-site planning and strategy.

The only thing keeping him from the team might be a sustained run of poor play, which Thomas happens to be battling now. Using Strokes Gained: Total data over the last three months, Thomas ranks as the 52nd-best eligible American, per DataGolf. Expanded a bit, Thomas ranks as the 24th-best American over the last six months.

If Thomas’ play, which includes three missed cuts in his last four events, doesn’t improve, will he still get a captain’s pick?

That’s just one of several tough decisions for Johnson. Several other Ryder Cup veterans are also outside the top-12 in points, including Tony Finau (18th) and Dustin Johnson (34th).

Young is another slumping star that will be under consideration. After a solid start to his season that culminated in a runner-up at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and a T7 at the Masters, the 26-year-old reigning Rookie of the Year has amassed only one top-30 finish, which came last week at the John Deere Classic.

Going just off recent play, newcomers Denny McCarthy and Russell Henley should also be considered. McCarthy ranks 14th in points and is sixth among TOUR members in SG: Total over the last three months. He’s carded seven top-25s in that time frame, including three top-10 finishes over his last four starts.

Henley, meanwhile, has sustained an adequate level of play since the last Ryder Cup. His SG: Total over the last two seasons is among the top-12 eligible Americans and better than hopefuls in Spieth, Young, Bradley, McCarthy, Fowler and Clark.

The U.S. Team is poised to have some of the best talent in recent history regardless of who is picked. Henley is the lowest ranked among the players previously listed in the OWGR, currently No. 35.

Will Team Europe look to the youngsters?

Depth is a luxury for the U.S. Team. The same cannot be said for the European Team regarding proven Ryder Cup players.

The top of Europe’s team projects every bit as good as the U.S. Team, with Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Tyrrell Hatton and Matt Fitzpatrick among the automatic qualifiers. Major champions Shane Lowry and Justin Rose are likely captain’s picks, as is Tommy Fleetwood, who is 4-2-2 in his Ryder Cup career.

The questions begin after that group. Four more spots are up for grabs on the European Team. Yannik Paul, currently third on the European Points List, maintains the sixth automatic qualifying spot. If that holds, captain Luke Donald will have three captain’s picks to work with among a group that includes John Deere Classic winner Sepp Straka, Adrian Meronk, Seamus Power, Alex Noren and Victor Perez.

Those are the names near the top of the standings (the European Team takes three automatic qualifiers from each of the European Points List and World Points List), but equally as intriguing are some of the younger players further down the rankings.

Ludvig Aberg has impressed with four consecutive made cuts to start his PGA TOUR career. The top player in this year’s PGA TOUR University Ranking has improved week after week since earning his TOUR card just before the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. He was in contention through two days at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and followed it up with a career-best T4 at last week’s John Deere Classic. He ranks fourth in driving distance, averaging just over 316 yards off the tee, and fifth in SG: Off-the-Tee.

"If you would have asked me a few weeks ago if Ryder Cup was on my mind, no, absolutely not because I was still in college and I didn't think about it,” Aberg, 23, said at TPC Deere Run last week.

It certainly could be a reality, particularly if Aberg can add to his resume over the last month of the FedExCup Regular Season. Aberg is competing at this week’s Genesis Scottish Open, hoping to play his way into The Open Championship. He’s also committed to playing the 3M Open and Wyndham Championship. He’s currently ranked 76th on the World Points List, meaning he will almost certainly need a captain’s pick to make the team.

Donald could also infuse some youth into the team with twin brothers Nicolai and Rasmus Hojgaard.

Rasmus, 22, is less than a week removed from winning the DP World Tour’s Made in HimmerLand. It jumped him nine spots in the European Points List, but he remains outside the automatic qualifiers. Rasmus is projected to earn his PGA TOUR card for next year via a top-10 finish on the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai. In that instance, he would have dual membership on both circuits.

His brother Nicolai, 22, has Special Temporary Membership on TOUR; his best finish was a solo second at the Corales Puntacana Championship earlier this year. He finished T21 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic two weeks ago.

The argument for the Hojgaards may have more to do with the future than the present. While the likes of Straka, Meronk and Power have much more success and experience on the PGA TOUR, the Hojgaard twins and Aberg offer the opportunity to give some much-needed experience to the next generation of Europeans. All three figure to be part of future teams, so why not have their debut in front of a European crowd and let them develop, just as Matt Fitzpatrick once did as a 2016 Ryder Cup team member?

How will Marco Simone play?

A central component of every Ryder Cup is the course. The host team has control over the golf course, and how is it configured to fit the team’s strengths has become one of the most critical parts of the competition.

For European-hosted Ryder Cups, that has often meant narrow fairways, more rough and slower greens. That’s the expectation at Marco Simone, too. Donald said as much ahead of the Italian Open in May, which was hosted at the course.

It may not be as drastic as in previous years, though. With more and more Europeans playing full-time on the PGA TOUR, the skillsets between the Europeans and Americans expected to be on the team have become much more similar.

“The standard of play is very close these days,” Donald said. “It's hard to gain a big advantage."

That doesn’t mean the European Team won’t try. Donald said several fairway bunkers have been added to create opportunities for better drivers of the golf ball like McIlroy and Rahm. He admitted they’ve also tightened several fairways.

But it’s also in Donald’s best interest not to broadcast all the expected changes. How the course will play will remain a curiosity until play begins.

Can the U.S. Team change its fortune?

It’s been 30 years since the U.S. Team last won the Ryder Cup on European soil. The team, captained by Tom Watson, trailed by a point entering Sunday Singles and won six matches and halved two more to make up the deficit and win 15-13. The team was led by rookie Davis Love III and veteran Chip Beck, with Raymond Floyd delivering the clinching point.

Not since that win at The Belfry in England has the red, white and blue triumphed away from home. The string of losses includes an 18.5 – 9.5 drubbing in 2006, a heartbreaking 14.5 – 13.5 defeat in 2010 and another blowout loss in 2018.

The U.S. Team has worked diligently to catch up to the European Team when it comes to its use of data and prioritizing a pleasant atmosphere in the team room. It translated to a U.S. Team scoring record at Whistling Straits in 2019, but will it translate across the pond?

The Americans will almost certainly enter the Ryder Cup with more top 30-ranked players than the other side, but that’s been the case before and led to little success.

A flaw of the Americans’ 2018 attempt at Le Golf National in France was that much of the roster had not seen the course. Only Thomas had made the trek over for the DP World Tour’s Open de France to get a sneak peek at the course in a competitive environment.

That will again be a characteristic of this year’s U.S. Team. No American in contention for a Ryder Cup spot traveled to Italy in May for the Italian Open at Marco Simone. Meanwhile, McIlroy, Fitzpatrick and Hovland all played in the event in 2022. Meronk won the 2023 edition of the event, with Perez, Paul and the Hojgaard twins also in the field.

However, Johnson, the U.S. captain, says there are plans to take the entire team overseas for a scouting trip of Marco Simone in mid-September, about a week after the TOUR Championship.

“They get their feet on the ground, experience Marco Simone firsthand, and then when we leave and come back home for two weeks, they’ll have a pretty realistic expectations as to what is required,” Johnson said in May. The U.S. Team hasn’t had an official team scouting trip ahead of an away Ryder Cup since 2006 at the K Club in Ireland.

Will that be enough to reverse the U.S. team’s bad fortunes? It sure couldn’t hurt.

What will change before September?

With The Open Championship and the FedExCup Playoffs still on the schedule before the Ryder Cup, the door is wide-open for last-minute changes.

Both captains have indicated recent form will factor into their captain’s picks, so a late-season charge could undoubtedly shake things up. At this point a year ago, Tom Kim wasn’t close to his PGA TOUR card. By the time the Presidents Cup rolled around, he had won twice on TOUR and was an easy selection for the International Team. The Ryder Cup timeline is shorter, but the possibility of a surge over the final 10 weeks remains very much in play. Two months ago, Wyndham Clark was only a fringe candidate for the team. Now he is expected to be an automatic qualifier.

Can Aberg fully lock up a spot? Could current Korn Ferry Tour player Adrien Dumont de Chassart elevate his game further and garner European Team consideration? Will Thomas get back on track, or can Finau repeat at the 3M Open and make a case for a captain’s pick? Is there another longshot that could parlay a strong two weeks in Europe for a return trip later this fall?

With 10 weeks left, much is still to be decided.