Ryder Cup: After three sessions, Europe has broken the United States
- - Ryder Cup: After three sessions, Europe has broken the United States
Jay Busbee September 28, 2025 at 12:38 AM
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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — As Bryson DeChambeau and Cam Young approached the 13th green, the chant started up in the nearby grandstand — “U-S-A! U-S-A!” And yet, even with the United States’ strongest pairing of the morning striding up with a 3-up lead, the chant died after just a few low-effort repetitions.
“That’s it?” someone groaned in disbelief.
That’s it. For both the chant and the team it’s failing to inspire.
For the third straight session in the 2025 Ryder Cup, Europe mollywhomped the Americans, taking three of four matches and establishing a pretty-much-impregnable 8½ - 3½ lead. This was devastation, pure and simple, a ransacking that will leave the United States searching for answers in the last two sessions, and for a long time after that, too.
There will be analyses — autopsies, really — of this Ryder Cup in the hours, days and months ahead. To many observers, though, this Ryder Cup might have been lost before it even began … or, certainly, on Friday night. That was when American captain Keegan Bradley revealed that he had a “plan” in place for the day’s pairings … and that he wouldn’t be deviating from the plan, even though his pairings got absolutely boat-raced on Friday.
The most debatable of Bradley’s decisions: pairing Harris English and Collin Morikawa. DataGolf analysis suggested prior to this Ryder Cup that English/Morikawa was the 132nd best pairing of 132 possible pairings — in other words, the worst possible. Technically, DataGolf measured the players’ individual performance, not how they would play together, but the point remains: this wasn’t an ideal statistical pairing.
Proving the stat nerds right, Europe — in the form of Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood — elbow-dropped English/Morikawa 5&4 in Friday morning foursomes. And then Bradley turned around and ran out the exact same pairing against — as it turned out — the exact same European pairing.
“We have a plan of what we're going to do,” Bradley said Friday night. “We're really comfortable with our plan. We're really comfortable with those two players.”
Perhaps so. But English and Morikawa didn’t look particularly comfortable themselves, and quickly went four down in eight holes. English and Morikawa didn’t win a single hole until the 14th, and by then it was far too late.
Jon Rahm and the rest of Europe have stomped Team USA so far, leaving many questions for USA captain Keegan Bradley. (Carl Recine/Getty Images) (Carl Recine via Getty Images)
Elsewhere on the course, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton jumped out early, let Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay back into the match by the 7th, and then inexorably strangled the life out of the American side. In the final match, Scottie Scheffler and Russell Henley tied the match as late as the 13th hole, but missed opportunity after opportunity to pull ahead. And since Europe doesn’t miss opportunities, Robert MacIntyre and Viktor Hovland eked out a one-hole win.
Europe’s five-point lead matches the largest-ever lead by a road team in the modern Ryder Cup era. Europe also held that lead in 1987, and went on to win 15-13. The grim math of Ryder Cup scoreboards means that it’s miles easier to defend a huge lead than to close one.
Being realistic, the only real way the United States can get back into this is with a 4-0 sweep of the afternoon matches. Virtually anything less — Europe needs just 5½ points to retain the Cup — and the gap remains massive heading into Sunday singles. And given how poorly most of the U.S. team has performed in team match play, is there any reason to believe they’ll do any better riding solo?
All that’s left now are the European chants of joy. And those aren’t going to die out, not the rest of this weekend and not for years to come.
Source: “AOL Sports”
