Luke Donald has given an indication of how he will set-up the course for this year’s Ryder Cup in order to give Europe the best possible chance of regaining the trophy from Team USA.
The Europeans took a savage beating with a record defeat at Whistling Straits in 2021, but now they’re back on home soil – where the USA haven’t won for 30 years.
While all the talk has been about team selection and the future of the Ryder Cup with Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia resigning their DP World Tour membership – the course was the focus for Donald in Rome.
And just as Thomas Bjorn did at Le Golf National in 2018, Donald is looking at course set-up to play a big part in a European victory.
With Donald and several European team hopefuls playing the Italian Open at Marco Simone Golf Club this week, the captain says that he’ll be looking to tighten up the fairways for the Ryder Cup match and put a premium on accuracy – which worked well in Paris last time.
"Since playing it last year, we looked at a few different fairway lines, bringing in a few fairways a little bit tighter," said Donald.
"The template for European golf is to have a slightly narrower golf course, a little bit more rough, not greens that get too fast because that's obviously what the US guys are always used to.
"There's not a whole lot we have changed but we have added a couple of bunkers to create opportunities for better driving. I feel like Europe has good drivers of the golf ball.”
Donald added that with two or three of the par fours possibly being drivable, that will also help Europe – but warned that setting-up the course could only help so much with the teams evenly matched.
"I think it's a fun golf course in terms of there's potentially two or three driveable par fours,” he added. “Statistically, driving is a good part of our games so to have those in there could give us a slight advantage.
“But there's only so much you can do. The players are very evenly matched when it comes to statistics.
"You're just trying to find little potential differences that you can capitalise on but the standard of play is very close these days. It's hard to gain a big advantage."
Just exactly who will be in those teams is still a mystery. We know that LIV Golf players will not be allowed to play for Europe, but technically the likes of Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau remain eligible for Team USA.
Johnson and Keopka have already said they’d like to play in the Ryder Cup and Zach Johnson has previously revealed that LIV players were still eligible for Team USA, whether he’d select them or not remains to be seen.
