Europe Should Now Be Considered Favourites to Win The Ryder Cup

View From The Fairway by Derek Clements

If I was US Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley I would be a worried man. A very worried man. Why? Take Scottie Scheffler out of the equation and ask yourself if there is a single American golfer who would make Luke Donald’s European team on current form.

Okay, I will give you Bryson DeChambeau, the only LIV golfer whose game has benefitted from the limited schedule he now plays. The American is fast turning into a major specialist. He is a big-time player who lives for the sport’s greatest tournaments - and the Ryder Cup definitely falls into that category.

Let’s take a look at what has happened on the PGA Tour in 2025 leading up to the Memorial.

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There have been 24 completed tournaments thus far, including The Masters and US PGA and tournaments that run alongside the Signature events.

There have been three multiple winners (four if you include Ben Griffin’s victory with Andrew Novak at the Zurich Classic) - yes, Scheffler is one of them, but the other two are Rory McIlroy (AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, The Players and The Masters) and Austria's Sepp Straka (American Express and Truist Championship). There have also been three other European winners - Thomas Detry claimed the Phoenix Open, Ludvig Aberg won the Genesis Invitational, Viktor Hovland won the Valspar. And Shane Lowry has produced some phenomenal golf in 2025 without winning.

So far so good for Europe, and there is more bad news for Bradley - other winners are New Zealand’s Ryan Fox, Australia’s Min Woo Lee, South Africa’s Garrick Higgo, Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, Canada’s Nick Taylor. That means 13 victories for non-Americans. And when you look at the home players who have picked up trophies, there are very few who will have any European trembling in their boots - would any of them worry about facing Joe Highsmith, Brian Campbell, Harris English, Griffin of Karl Vilips? I don’t think so.

There are eight Europeans in the top 20 in the world rankings and 10 Americans. It is interesting to note that of those 10 US players just four have seen their ranking improve in 2025 - English, Justin Thomas, Maverick McNealy and Russell Henley.

Incredibly, Xander Schauffele currently sits in second place on the US points list but this is based almost entirely on his 2024 form, when he won the US PGA and The Open in such magnificent style. He missed the start of this season through injury and since returning has looked like a shadow of himself.

Bradley will draw some consolation from the return to form of Thomas, who finally found a way to win again at the RBC Heritage. But Thomas is no longer the dependable, consistent golfer he once was.

Patrick Cantlay has not won a tournament for almost three years but is still somehow in 12th place in the US Ryder Cup points table, Jordan Spieth is a shadow of the golfer who dominated the game eight years ago and has little or no chance of making the team. There are those who will point to the improved form of Collin Morikawa but he appears to have turned into a serial runner-up, somebody who is struggling horribly to seal the deal. Will Zalatoris? Back under the surgeon’s knife and out for the rest of the season.

Max Homa’s game has fallen off a cliff and what on earth has happened to Cameron Young? Rickie Fowler? Be serious.

And Brooks Koepka is enduring a miserable year.

Ahead of the Memorial, the top 12 in the US points table was as follows:

Scheffler, Schauffele, DeChambeau, Thomas, Morikawa, Henley, English, Novak, McNealy, Brian Harman, JJ Spaun and Cantlay.

And this is how the European team is shaping up:

McIlroy, Lowry, Rasmus Hojgaard, Tyrrell Hatton, Straka, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Aberg, Matt Wallace, Detry, Niklas Norgaard and Robert MacIntyre. Hovland will clearly make the team, along with Jon Rahm, while Nicolai Hojgaard, Matti Schmid and Marco Penge could also be in the mix.

Of course, things can change between now and September but I know who my money is on right now. I truly fancy Europe to win on American soil for the first time since Medinah - and they could even start the event as favourites.