The Americans never felt more confident. The Europeans rarely felt so annoyed.
A two-year wait can feel even longer when it comes to the pride and passion only the Ryder Cup can deliver in golf. Both sides were eager for the next Ryder Cup outside Rome, for different reasons.
Team USA was fresh off its most lopsided victory over Europe at Whistling Straits and had reason to believe they would turn the series back in their favor with such a young, powerful squad. Jordan Spieth already was looking ahead as he celebrated that autumn 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 recalled how much it burned to see the Americans celebrate, speaking as if he could still smell the smoke from Xander Schauffele’s victory cigar mixed with the spray of champagne.
“All of us stood there and thought, ‘We want to get our chance back,’” Fleetwood said. “The flight on the way home, we were all a little tender and hungover, but we were already planning what we can do better at the next Ryder Cup to bring it back.”
The 45th Ryder Cup starts Sept. 29 at Marco Simone between two teams that don’t look the same from two years ago.
Some of that is a product of age — Europe had four players in their 40s. A lot of it is a product of eight players from the last Ryder Cup who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf, which kept Europeans off their team and set the bar extremely high for any Americans to return.
Brooks Koepka is the only LIV Golf player to make it back, and it took a PGA Championship title and a runner-up in the Masters for that to happen.
What hasn’t changed is the history against the Americans.
Five players on the U.S. team, including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, were not even born the last time the Americans won a Ryder Cup on European soil. That was in 1993 at The Belfry, when Ryder Cup rookie Davis Love III made the cup-clinching putt. Love is now a 59-year-old assistant captain.
“It’s really wild,” Scheffler said of the six straight road losses with teams that were stacked with Hall of Fame players like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, major champions like Love, Spieth and Dustin Johnson. “Such great players. Just proves how difficult it is. But we’ve got a lot of fresh blood on the team this year. Only a handful of guys have played over there. I like our chances. Ignorance is bliss.”
Even so, it’s tough to ignore 30 years of history, which suggests this is more than a coincidence or one team making a few more putts.
Europe prefers to set up the golf course to their strengths — thick rough to put a premium on accuracy, slightly slower greens to allow for more aggressive putts.
And then there’s the small matter of fans. The gallery was one-sided at Whistling Straits because of travel restrictions still in place from the COVID-19 pandemic. The volume at the Ryder Cup is unlike anything in golf, from the first tee to the 18th green, from the opening match on Friday morning to the final singles match on Sunday afternoon. It never ends.
