10 red-hot Ryder Cup storylines — and whether they’re real

It’s officially Ryder Cup Week. That means one massive, end-of-summer golf extravaganza before the top pros in the world (mostly) put their clubs away for the season and we (mostly) do too. It means golf fans’ biggest, best chance to lean into match play, team play and team match play. And it means overanalyzing everything, from golf-ball type to rough length to the composition of each side’s rain suit.

So what are this year’s biggest storylines — and are they real?! Or pure tabloid fodder? Let’s dive in and judge for ourselves.

1. Keegan didn’t pick himself.

The storyline: U.S. captain Keegan Bradley played well enough this season that he could have reasonably picked himself for the 12-man American roster. He ended qualifying at No. 11 in points and advanced metrics had him around there, too; appointing himself to his own squad would have been justified and it would have fulfilled his career dream to return to Ryder Cup competition. Instead Keegan passed on Keegan; he selected six other captain’s picks with relatively comparable resumes and turned his focus to captaining full time.

Is this real? Yeah, this is real. 10 out of 10 real. Bradley would have been the first player-captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963; it’s essentially not supposed to happen in the modern era, given the demands of the job. So if he’d played his way onto the team — or chosen himself — it would have been a big, big deal. Especially because nobody loves the Ryder Cup more than Bradley. Double especially because nobody loves Bethpage more than Bradley. He earned some serious respect from his team by making this sacrifice. But he also acknowledged on Monday that he can’t quite kick that alternate reality, even though he believes he made the only choice:

“I’ve thought about it every second,” Bradley said. “But I’ve also thought about how impossible it would be. I was picked to do this job as captain, and there’s been certain things that I’ve done during the week or lead-up that if I was playing, I don’t think I could have done at the level that I needed to do them at.

“I catch myself every now and then looking down the fairway, seeing the guys walk down the fairway and think how badly I’d like to do that, and how badly I’d want to be in the group with Scottie Scheffler and seeing him play and being his teammate. But I feel like I’ve been called for a bigger cause here, to help our guys get ready to play and play at the highest level.

“But in the back of my mind, I’m always thinking, ‘I could have been out there.’

“But ultimately, I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed being the captain and how I’ve enjoyed not having to worry about getting to sleep and getting my rest or how I haven’t had to think about what time I’m going to go practice or meet my coach and then meet the guys. It simplified things a lot for me.”

One particularly interesting piece of potential second-guessing: Will the Americans miss Bradley the player? Speaking of which…

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2. Your team will lose because your captain does something questionable and/or stupid.

The storyline: This isn’t specific to this year’s Cup — it’s just a time-honored Ryder Cup classic. After all, there’s little that sports fans love more than blaming coaches, and in golf we very rarely get that opportunity. At the Ryder Cup, though? It’s unusual that the losing captain escapes unscathed — triply true if that losing captain is at home. Hal Sutton is still well known for his Tiger-Phil pairing debacle. Tom Watson is still well known for his press-conference dressing-down at the hands of Phil Mickelson

Is this real? Unlikely. Let’s call it 3 out of 10. Monday’s opening press conference was a reminder of what Bradley and European captain Luke Donald have in common: competence. Each is earnest, thoughtful and seems fully committed to the task at hand. Simply put, we’re unlikely to get the dose of complete buffoonery that we traditionally get from leadership on at least one side. With that said, this is more than 1 out of 10 because if the Americans lose, it’ll still be open season on their chaotic process. Speaking of which…

3. Your team will lose because your captain’s picks were all wrong.

The storyline: There are three main categories of Ryder Cup second-guessing: pairings, picks and general vibes. Picks make the easiest marks, especially with the power of hindsight: you picked that bum?! He didn’t score a point!

Is this real? Usually? Yes. This year? Unlikely. Let’s call it another 3 out of 10.

Europe’s captain’s picks were chalk in several different ways:

1. Donald recreated his exact team from 2023, swapping one twin for another and keeping all other things equal.

2. After the six automatic picks he chose Nos. 7-11 on the points list, plus Jon Rahm, who’s inarguably one of the best players in the world.

And

3. It would have been genuinely difficult to figure out who to boot from the list; in addition to Rahm, Nos. 9-11 on the points list (Aberg, Hovland, Fitzpatrick) are playing some of Europe’s best golf.

On the American side, Bradley avoided the most obvious bit of second-guessing by passing on himself. (Maverick McNealy made a reasonable case for his inclusion, but hardly enough to get out your pitchforks.) If the U.S. team comes out flat, perhaps they’ll wish they could tap Bradley in for Friday four-ball. But I don’t foresee much grousing here.

4. The Americans are greedy; they only care about money.

The storyline: The U.S. team is getting paid more this year than they ever have — and with more freedom to spend it as they wish. The PGA of America is giving each player $500,000, of which $300,000 is designated for charity and $200,000 is for their personal use. Eleven of the 12 guys on the team made at least $6.8 million this season (we can talk on the side about starting a GoFundMe for Xander Schauffele, who hauled in just $3.4 mil), so this stipend is unlikely to be make-or-break for their personal finances. But it’s exactly the sort of thing fans and tabloids will jump on because the Europeans get no comparable personal financial reward.

Is this real? Yes and no. Let’s call it 7 out of 10. Is it reasonable that the U.S. players are getting paid? Hell yeah. If I were a player asked about it I would tell a reporter to Google the PGA of America’s $10,000 VIP tickets, which have nearly sold out. I would gesture in the direction of the tournament’s over-the-top corporate hospitality setups. Clearly somebody’s making money on this — shouldn’t the players everybody’s coming to see cash in, too?

On the other hand, Europe can claim a level of purity, superiority and selflessness by staying out of the paid-to-play controversy. European reporters will eagerly write home about the greedy Americans and their fans can seize on this exact topic — even if the end result is just that American players are mostly going to just give a little more money to charity. In summary, whether or not this should be real, it will feel very real. And Luke Donald isn’t exactly leaning away from that storyline, either. Here’s what he had to say about asking his players on the subject:

“This came up and I wanted to get ahead of it. I talked to the 12 guys in Rome when it looked like the U.S. were going to do something different with payments and every one of them was like, ‘We don’t want to. This isn’t a week to get paid.’ We have such a strong purpose in this team in what we play for,” he said. “And to be honest we reinvest some of that money back into the experience of these guys. I feel like if you have those experiences that you remember for the rest of your life, that’s worth more than a couple hundred thousand dollars in the back of your pocket. So for me I was very proud of the guys. The ideals of how this Ryder Cup was set up back in the ’20s by Samuel Ryder, I think he would have been proud too.”

5. New York fans are going to make this a disaster.

The storyline: It’s Long Island, baby! This is just down the road from where Greg Norman challenged a heckler to a fight. This is the golf course where Sergio Garcia took plenty of fan abuse — for his waggles, for his complaints, for his challenge to Tiger Woods — and lashed back. And those were just at little old major championships; at the Ryder Cup, fans always turn things up to 11. This year things are expected to go much further.

Is this real? Yeah, probably. Let’s go 7 out of 10. The atmosphere should be insane, there’s no sport where so many people are quite as close to the players as in golf, and the difference between a typical PGA Tour event to the Ryder Cup will make it especially jarring for competitors. Counterpoint, though: the visiting Euros are an especially likable bunch. The Garcia-Poulter-Westwood squads of yesteryear were ripe targets for American fans. I don’t see things getting personal with Viktor Hovland in the same way.

6. Patrick Cantlay’s hat controversy returns.

The storyline: The fact that Cantlay didn’t wear a hat ended up at the center of the competitive story of the 2023 Ryder Cup — even if it arguably should have failed the “is-this-real” storyline test.

Is this real? I’m guessing this will dissipate early. Let’s guess 2 out of 10. I’d bet No-Hat Pat goes lid on this time just to avoid any sort of sideshow. But if the U.S. team needs a rally, maybe he’ll turn back the clock with a rally no-cap of sorts.

7. The Ryder Cup is broken.

The storyline: For the last several decades, home teams have dominated the Ryder Cup. That’s especially true these last five Cups; the home team has won comfortably each time. Sure, the Americans blew a big lead in Sunday singles in 2012, but since then the Europeans won by five points in 2014, the Americans won by six in 2016, the Europeans won by seven in 2018 and the Americans throttled Europe by 10 in 2021 before Europe backed things down to a more reasonable five-point win in 2023.

Is this real? No. It’s not! Zero out of 10. Sure, the dynamics seem to have shifted. The home team keeps winning. Sunday singles could use a closer contest. But it’s also interesting in a different way now that winning on the road is such a tough challenge. The pressure is on the Americans to hold serve given they’ve lost on home soil three times (2012, 2004, 1995) since their most recent road win (1993). Put another way: the U.S is 3-2 on home soil this century; that’s hardly a guarantee. The Ryder Cup lives on.

8. We’re getting Rory vs. Bryson on another massive stage.

The storyline: We had the 2024 U.S. Open, which ended in heroics for DeChambeau and heartbreak for McIlroy. We had the 2025 Masters, where McIlroy walked away with the Grand Slam and DeChambeau left miffed. (We also had that Crypto Showdown which has largely faded into the ether.) Now we’ve got some Bryson-Rory trash talk heading into what promises to be a mega-charged environment? Hell yeah.

Is this real? It could be! Let’s go an optimistic 8 out of 10. These are two of the best five or so golfers in the world and they’re likely the two most polarizing, too — we promise to get fireworks on both sides. On the other hand, the unknowns of the Ryder Cup mean we can’t guarantee that they’ll end up opposite each other in any sessions, never mind Sunday singles.

9. Foursomes is everything.

The storyline: That home-team advantage thing? It’s mostly due to one format. In foursomes, which you may know as “alternate shot,” the home team has a preposterous 36.5 to 11.5 advantage. In four-ball and singles, on the other hand? Just 63.5 to 56.5.

Is this real? It sure has been. Does that mean it will continue to be? I have no idea. The closest thing I have to an explanation is that alternate shot is the trickiest and most awkward of the formats, and the discomfort of playing in front of a hostile crowd would exacerbate that. But it also seems unlikely that the home team will keep winning at this rate. I have no idea how to score this under the real-o-meter I invented, but foursomes is by far the most fun format of the Cup so let’s call it a 6 out of 10.

10. This is inexperience vs. camaraderie.

The storyline: Keegan Bradley has done what appears to be an admirable job of rallying his troops. He got them to Napa and showed up as support staff and dinner host. He even got them to the Bethpage first tee on Monday for what was essentially a start-of-week team huddle, where they listened to the national anthem and saw through what has been his vision for a year-plus. This team seems to be coming together.

With that said, the U.S. team still faces an uphill battle to match the Europeans in team chemistry. In 2023 they attributed their success in large part to their closeness, and now they’re two years closer.

“It’s a very similar team, which is unusual, never happened in the history of our Ryder Cup teams in Europe, to have 11 come back. So we have a lot of cohesion,” Donald said.

The U.S., on the other hand, has the on-paper strokes-gained advantage but also has just six returning players from 2023 and four Ryder Cup rookies.

Is this real? It’s definitely real. 8 out of 10 real. We just don’t know what it means yet. The U.S. has the best player in the world in Scottie Scheffler. It has a better team, top to bottom, based on stroke-play success this season. It also has a newer, less experienced team with guys like J.J. Spaun and Ben Griffin about to step into big-time spots. And there’s no faking what Europe has put together. This is a real and very interesting dynamic.

But here’s the thing: camaraderie doesn’t always beat inexperience. The 2021 European team at Whistling Straits was tight-knit, too, and they got drubbed. Bradley chose this team on its merits; if they play to their potential and lean on a friendly home crowd this could be yet another dominant home victory.

Next Monday, we’ll have a much better sense.

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