RYDER CUP 2023: USA looks to end 30 years of losing on European soil
The Americans have never felt more certain. Europeans were rarely that irritated.
A two-year wait might feel even longer regarding the pride and emotion only the Ryder Cup can provide in golf. Both teams were looking forward to the next Ryder Cup outside of Rome for various reasons.
Team USA was fresh off its most lopsided victory over Europe at Whistling Straits and had reason to hope that with such a youthful, talented roster, they might tilt the series back in their favor. Jordan Spieth was already thinking ahead to that October evening in Wisconsin.
“If we play like we did this week, the score will look the same over there,” he said.
Tommy Fleetwood of England recounted how much it hurt to see the Americans celebrating, as though he could still smell the smoke from Xander Schauffele’s winning cigar mingled with champagne spray.
“We all stood there thinking, ‘We want our chance back,'” Fleetwood recalled. “We were all a little tender and hungover on the flight home, but we were already planning what we could do better at the next Ryder Cup to bring it back.”
The 45th Ryder Cup begins on September 29 at Marco Simone with two teams different from what they were two years ago.
Some of this is due to age – Europe has four players in their forties. Much resulted from eight Ryder Cup players defecting to Saudi-funded LIV Golf, which kept Europeans off their squad and set the bar incredibly high for any Americans to rejoin.
Brooks Koepka is the only LIV Golf player to return, and it required a PGA Championship triumph and a runner-up finish at the Masters.
What has yet to change is the history of anti-American sentiment.
Five members of the American squad, including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, were not even alive when the Americans last won the Ryder Cup on European territory. Davis Love III, a Ryder Cup rookie then, hit the cup-clinching putt at The Belfry in 1993. Love, 59, is now an assistant captain.
“It’s wild,” Scheffler said of the six straight road losses against teams that included Hall of Famers Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, as well as major champions like Love, Spieth, and Dustin Johnson. “What fantastic players! It only goes to show how difficult it is. However, we have a lot of new faces on the squad this year. Only a few men have played over there. I believe in our prospects. “Bliss is ignorance.”
Even still, 30 years of history show this is more than a coincidence or one side making a few extra putts.
The Americans are anxious to end it, hoping to regain momentum from a Ryder Cup in Wisconsin two years ago.
