![Luke Donald, Captain of Team Europe poses for a photo during the Luke Donald Ryder Cup Wildcard Announcement at Sky Sports Studios on September 04, 2023 in Isleworth, England](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/golf/2023/09/04/TELEMMGLPICT000347995915_16938595847160_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqklT3uhIaDSau8Rr7wdouwgUQhaLMKe12MY16mJWO-qI.jpeg?imwidth=680)
![Luke Donald, Captain of Team Europe poses for a photo during the Luke Donald Ryder Cup Wildcard Announcement at Sky Sports Studios on September 04, 2023 in Isleworth, England](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/golf/2023/09/04/TELEMMGLPICT000347995915_16938595847160_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqklT3uhIaDSau8Rr7wdouwgUQhaLMKe12MY16mJWO-qI.jpeg?imwidth=680)
“Twelve strong.” Luke Donald used this curious expression three times in one 30-second TV segment to describe his Ryder Cup team, leaving little doubt as to how often we would be hearing it over the next month. It was a gung-ho slogan better attuned to an American audience, well-versed in such war cries as Army Strong, Livestrong, Boston Strong. Sometimes we forget that Europe’s Ryder Cup captain has, despite his Home Counties upbringing, spent more than half his life in the United States.
Donald was an outstanding college golfer in his four years at Northwestern University, surpassing the national record for stroke average once held by Tiger Woods. And in Ludvig Aberg, the strutting Swede called up for his Ryder Cup debut in only his fourth month as a professional, the leader sees a competitor forged in his own precocious image. Hot-housed at Texas Tech, Aberg is, at 23, the first player since Jon Rahm to be declared the finest collegiate player twice, prompting Donald to herald him as a “generational talent”.
But while his selection for Rome is a striking endorsement of youth, it is also a scalding letdown for one man who believed he had fulfilled every precondition for a pick. Adrian Meronk has won three tour events in 10 months: one in Australia, one in Ireland, and a third on the same Marco Simone Country Club course where Europe seek to wrest the trophy out of American hands. The Pole is also a master in the Ryder Cup artform of frantically plundering birdies, having made 20 at last weekend’s European Masters alone. How does snubbing somebody who sits third in the DP World Tour standings square with Donald’s earlier insistence that form would be his guiding concern?
Aberg represents a gamble. He is so young that he says his earliest Ryder Cup recollections are those of Medinah in 2012. He is so inexperienced that he has yet to line up in a major. Nobody in the modern era – not Rory McIlroy, not Sergio García, not Sir Nick Faldo – has graduated from the amateur ranks to golf’s most daunting matchplay examination so quickly. There are limits, though, to begrudging a young man who has timed his run to perfection, winning his first professional title in Crans-sur-Sierre mere hours before Donald’s announcement. The more perplexing question is why the captain has felt duty-bound to include Shane Lowry.
Donald, who seemed far more comfortable discussing Lowry’s credentials than the sidelining of Meronk, insisted that the Irishman was a “big-time player – we saw that two years ago at Whistling Straits”. Did we? Lowry won one point out of three in Wisconsin en route to a 19-9 shellacking, the most brutal beatdown the Europeans had ever suffered. If Donald is serious about winning in Italy, he should be looking at expunging all memory of the performance at Whistling Straits, not at emulating it. One narrow fourball victory in a losing cause hardly suggests he has a talismanic role to play in Rome.
Lowry’s more recent results bring no greater encouragement. He failed to reach the FedEx Cup play-offs and missed the cut at the Open. He took a diversion to last month’s Czech Masters to try to shore up his Ryder Cup chances and did not make the weekend there either. So on what basis does Donald calculate that Lowry, a shadow of the dominant figure who lifted the Claret Jug in 2019, can turn the corner?
The most plausible answer lies in a phenomenon known as the “team-room effect”. The vagaries of the Ryder Cup are such that a small band of golfers ascend to the status of untouchables, the deficiencies in their game offset by the exuberance of their character. We saw this principle in action with Zach Johnson’s bizarre vote of confidence in Justin Thomas, a two-time major champion whose touch on the grandest stage has so deserted him that he shot two major rounds in the 80s this year. None of it mattered in the end, with US captain Johnson calling him the “heart and soul of our team”.
It is a similar logic that has come to Lowry’s rescue. With his comfortably upholstered physique, the 36-year-old does not conform to anyone’s idea of a gym-honed athlete, a factor that only heightens his popularity. He is likeable, clubbable, a force of nature with whom many fans can picture themselves sharing a pint. And in the strange dynamics of a Ryder Cup, where players are gauged not just by the results they produce but by the rhetoric they deliver behind closed doors, this counts for much.
But with the balance of power in Rome more finely poised than ever, Donald can ill afford to be taking anybody along for the jollity and japes. His favouring of Lowry at Meronk’s expense is already raising eyebrows, with Richard Bland arguing the Pole should have been picked ahead of an “out-of-form” rival. Donald could legitimately claim that Bland, as a spokesman for his fellow Ryder Cup pariahs at LIV, has an axe to grind. And yet when it comes to this team, even the verdict of a disaffected rebel contains a kernel of truth.
Luke Donald’s Ryder Cup picks undermine his assurances that form trumps all else
With the balance of power in Rome more finely poised than ever, Donald can ill afford to be taking anybody along for the jollity and japes