Ryder Cup 2021 – Highlights
Photo courtesy of Your Golf Travel
The sun has set on the Ryder Cup and Whistling Straits Golf Course, and Team United States won in historic fashion!
The final score: U.S. 19 – Europe 9
This was historic for two reasons. Since 1977 when the competition expanded to include continental Europe, the largest margin of victory was 9.5 points (with a total score of 18.5 to 9.5) up until this year’s dominant victory by the United States. In addition to now holding the largest margin of victory at 10 points, Team USA’s final 19 points won also represents the scoring record for the Cup as well!
Tournament Recap
Friday
Team USA jumped out to a commanding lead on Friday morning’s Foursome’s session, winning 3 of 4 available points. The formidable duo of Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa won their first point in what would become a steamrolling pairing for U.S. captain Steve Stricker.
In Friday’s afternoon session, Dustin Thomas was paired with Xander Schauffele, and the two got the team off to a good start as they won two of the afternoon’s Four-Ball sessions and halved the other two matches. Their play gave the U.S. Team a commanding 6-2 lead at the end of the first day.
Friday’s shot of the day belonged to Jordan Spieth who almost fell into Lake Michigan after hitting this shot from a vertical railroad tie to about 4 feet!
Saturday
The U.S. continued dominating Saturday with the morning Foursome’s matches. Again, they won 3 of 4 available points, including Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa taking down Paul Casey and Tyrell Hatton. The score at the end of the morning session was 9 – 3 in U.S.’s favor. Jon Rahm of the European team had accounted for 2.5 points, and the other eleven players on Team Europe had tallied just 0.5 points up to this point.
Europe did claw their way back into the match a bit in Saturday afternoon’s session when Shane Lowry made a clutch par putt on the 18th hole to secure a full point. Rahm again won his match with Sergio Garcia in the afternoon session, defeating Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth 2 up with one hole to go. At the end of Saturday’s team session, the score was 11 – 5 in favor of the United States.
The shot of the day Saturday belonged to Shane Lowry; you can really tell by his reaction here how much this event means to the participants.
Sunday
The U.S. only needed 3.5 points out of a possible 12 from Sunday’s singles matches to secure the Cup. That meant that Europe needed to win nine of twelve matches—no team in Ryder Cup history has ever won that many matches in Sunday’s singles sessions. It was a tall feat to say the least, however, Team Europe was up to the challenge. Their players rallied around the cause.
Padraig Harrington cheered on his teammates, “It’s a comeback never been done before. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. One guy can’t win nine points, but 12 can each win one.
Shane Lowry added, “And it was like, ‘If you’ve got a 1 percent chance, you have to have 100 percent faith.‘ And I just think that we really need to live by that tonight and tomorrow and go out and give it our best.”
However, it was not in the cards this week, as Team USA came out and continued their weeklong domination. Rory McIlroy defeated Xander Schauffele, Ian Poulter (aka the Mailman) delivered again and remained unbeaten in Sunday Singles by defeating Tony Finau, and Lee Westwood defeated Harris English one up.
The U.S. won or halved the other nine matches, including an impressive win by rookie Scottie Scheffler as he defeated the #1 golfer in the world, Jon Rahm, 4 & 3. Scheffler jumped out to an early lead after birdieing the first four holes of the match. That lead proved too much for Rahm to manage.
Sunday’s shot of the day belonged to Collin Morikawa. After a great tee shot on 17, Collin made a short tap in birdie to go one up on his match with Sergio Garcia going into the 18th hole. This guaranteed Collin would earn a half-point in his match and therefore pushing the total for the U.S. to 14.5—the magic number!
MVP Team United States
The MVP for Team USA has to be the team veteran and former world #1, Dustin Johnson. The only U.S. player to play in all five matches this week, he went undefeated, earning an impressive 5-0-0 record for the week. He is the first U.S. player to do so since Larry Nelson back in 1979. 42-year-old records are made to be broken right?
After raising the cup, D.J. was ready to party.
MVP Team Europe
This is a pretty easy pick; Jon Rahm was unstoppable this week (unless you’re Scottie Scheffler). At one point, Rahm accounted for 3.5 of Europe’s 5 total points. If you win 70% of your team’s points through four sessions, you deserve a tip of the cap.
Sergio Garcia’s reaction in this video from Saturday says it all.
A Look Ahead
The U.S. is now set up to be a dominant force for quite a while. This was a changing of the guard, so to speak—gone are the dreary days of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson getting whooped. In every match but one on Sunday’s Singles, the U.S. had the higher-ranked player in the World Golf Rankings. The one match that didn’t feature the higher-ranked player—Scottie Scheffler vs. Jon Rahm—didn’t really affect the outcome. The U.S.’s squad of six rookies went an impressive 14-4-3 this week, capturing 15.5 of the US’s 19-point total. For comparison, Europe’s three rookies went 1-8-2, earning a total of 2 points.
Tony Finau captured it the best after the event was over:
“We have a team with no scar tissue."
This group doesn’t carry around the losses of the previous generation. They are forging their own path and will sure to be an exciting and passionate group for the next decade. Even before celebrating their victory this week, they had their eyes on the next prize—a win on European soil. This is a feat that hasn’t been done since the 1993 team beat Europe in England at The Belfry.
"It’s one thing to win it over here, and it is a lot easier to do so. It's harder to win over there," Spieth said. "But if we play like we did this week, the score will look the same over there in a couple years, and that’s what we’re here for."
That also puts a cap on the major events for this year’s PGA Tour season. Next up, we have the fall series where the next generation of stars try to secure their PGA Tour card for the 2022 season, and the new year will kick off 99 days from today with the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, Hawaii from January 5-9th, 2022.
Thanks so much, and I hope you enjoyed Curated’s coverage of the biggest events in golf in 2021! If you have any questions or want to get geared up like one of the greats, reach out to me or another Golf Expert here on Curated!
