Ryder Cup 2018 Preview – September 28th -30th
Coming so soon after the TOUR Championship, players involved in that final FedExCup action won’t have a lot of rest before heading off to France for the 2018 Ryder Cup. It is one of the great spectacles in golf, Europe v USA where some of the biggest names in the world go head to head for continental glory. This is just the second time that the event has been held in mainland Europe.
The other time was back in 1997 when Spain hosted. Europe won on that occasion so that is a good omen for them. But after Tiger Woods secured the win at the TOUR Championship on the weekend, his first title in five years, there has been a flux of support for the USA to pick up the title and they are at 5/6 odds to do so* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm). They are the reigning champions and therefore the pressure is on them to defend.
Table of Contents
Ryder Cup 2018 Odds*
USA 5/6
Europe 5/4
Draw 11/1
* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm)
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Ryder Cup 2018 Course
The course for this year’s edition of the Ryder Cup is Le Golf National in Guyancourt which is a suburb of Paris and it is a par 71 over 7,331 yards. Players will face three par-fives at the event, on the 3rd, 9th and 14th holes.
Team Europe
The first four qualification for European places goes to the players who earned the most points in the Race To Dubai. Francesco Molinari, Justin Rose, Tyrrell Hatton and Tommy Fleetwood were the qualifiers through that route to take part. Then four places went to the top four players in the World Points List (not including those who had already qualified). That was Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Alex Noren and Thorbjorn Olesen making the team automatically. The four captain’s picks are Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson and Paul Casey.
Thomas Bjorn captains Europe. There are five Ryder Cup rookies in the team, Tyrrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood, Jon Rahm, Alex Noren and Thorbjorn Olesen.
Team USA
The two teams do things differently in terms of qualification and the bulk of the USA team is selected off the Ryder Cup points list, the points for which are gained from selected events such as the Majors, WGC events and the PGA Tour events between the start of the year and early August. The captain gets four picks. The final team is Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed, Bubba Watson, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Webb Simpson with the captain’s picks being Bryson Dechambeau, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Tony Finau.
Jim Furyk captains Team USA and they are carrying just three rookies in their team who will get their first taste of Ryder Cup pressure. They are Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau and Tony Finau.
Format
The usual format which has been in place since 1979 will be used for the 2018 Ryder Cup and that is:
Day 1: 4 fourballs, 4 foursomes
Day 2: 4 foursome, 4 fourballs
Day 3: 12 singles matches
Some Stats
The last time that the USA won in Europe was back in 1993. Going into this year’s edition they have the advantage over Team Europe in terms of Ryder Cup experience. The American team has an average of 2.83 Ryder Cup appearances per player, while Team Europe is at 2.17 so there is a definite edge there for the USA. However, looking a little deeper on Team USA, Phil Mickelson has 11 Ryder Cup appearances and iger Woods seven. So those two share a big chunk of the experience on the USA Team.
On Team Europe just two players have played more than three Ryder Cups before, those being Sergio Garcia 7 and Ian Poulter 5. But again, the Europeans have gone for a blend of experience and promising rookies and are carrying more first-timers into action this go around than Team USA are.
When you look at the points percentages (points earned from matches) earned by the players on the teams who have appeared in previous Ryder Cups, Europe has the edge. Seven of Team Europe have earned a point percentage of more than 0.500 from their previous Ryder Cup matches, while only four Americans in this current team have done so.
What about the cumulative success of the teams? Counting both PGA and European Tour titles, between them Team USA has 269 combined titles and Team Europe has just 152. Again though Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson really bump the numbers on the American side as between them they have 172 of those 269 titles of players on Team USA. Justin Rose is the only European player in the current top four of the Official World Golf Rankings, with Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Justin Thomas filling out the places for the USA.
Team USA Predictions
We expect this one to be close. At the end of the Tour Championship, Phil Mickelson and other leading players on Team USA all fell away to the bottom of the pile at the tournament. Maybe there was some distraction there on the final day of play knowing that they weren’t going to get the TOUR Championship or FedEx Cup prizes. But it was a notable feature of the current form that there was that drop-off.
The team though will have been bolstered by the incredible comeback from Tiger Woods to get that win at the TOUR Championship. After so many back surgeries and doubts himself whether he would play competitively again, Woods has started to look special again. If he goes out and starts tearing things up then that confidence will just ripple through the rest of the USA Team. He is that important to them, more so than Mickelson. Woods is 13/2 to be the Top American with Dustin Johnson the 9/2 favourite* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm).
Other key players for them will be Brooks Koepka who has been in fantastic form and Ryder Cup expert Patrick Reed. After such brilliant 2018 seasons, it will be fascinating to see how the sheer boldness of Tony Finau and Bryson DeChambeau light up the Ryder Cup. Will they handle the pressure? Given what they, and Justin Thomas have done this year, they could be key players. The top American Rookie favorite is Justin Thomas, but Tony Finau appeals massively at 7/2 odds* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm).
Team Europe Predictions
Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter are the ones who are going to be carrying the weight of expectancy for Team Europe. They are the experienced hands at this, players who have tasted success before at the event. All of them have winning records from previous Ryder Cup appearances none better than Poulter who has been a fantastic wildcard at this down the years, holding 72.22 win percentage from Ryder Cup matches.
The only player on Team Europe who has participated in a Ryder Cup before but who doesn’t have a win percentage of over 50.00 from previous Ryder Cup events is Francesco Molinari. Just three of the American team have win percentages over 50.00 in comparison, so the spine of the team for Europe looks very good. You can’t help feel though that the way things have gone Justin Rose is value at 9/2 odds to be the Top European* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm) this time around. The team certainly need him to carry on in the brilliant form in which he has been playing.
They have head to head form with wins in four of the last six meetings but they were pounded badly 17-11 two years ago at Hazeltine. They got it all wrong with a team that had six rookie players in there. We have to say this time around the quality of the rookie contingent looks so much stronger and Tommy Fleetwood is a man who can handle any pressure thrown at him and he is our Ryder Cup 2018 Top European Rookie pick at 11/5 odds* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm).
Prediction
This should be much more of an evenly matched contest this time around. The USA are desperate to end their losing streak on the road and now they have an in-form Tiger Woods to give them that special spark of extra quality. They also have some hugely talented rookies in their set up as well and if things boil down to the extra scraps that the rookies on both sides take, the edge could go to the USA.
Overall we are looking at the USA to get the win and a USA -1.5 Handicap is with covering at 6/5 odds* (betting odds taken on September 24th, 2018 at 12:41 pm). We feel the USA just have the overall edge and can create a bit of history for themselves with an away win.
