Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. There’s been a lot of talk about the European players dealing with tough New York fans at the Ryder Cup, but the golf fans I saw yesterday at Grand Central Terminal on their way back from Bethpage didn’t look so intimidating.
In today’s SI:AM:
🏈 Darnold’s clutch performance
🤫 Cardinals’ quiet stars
🤔 NFL sign stealing?
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Can Team USA rebound?
This year’s Ryder Cup, one of the biggest competitions in golf, is already underway out on Long Island. The tournament only comes around every two years and is only hosted on American soil every four years, so this is a pretty big deal. If you aren’t a massive golf fan but are still trying to figure out why so many people are talking about golf in late September, here’s what you need to know about the 2025 Ryder Cup.
The format
The Ryder Cup varies from your typical golf tournament in two ways. First of all, it’s an international competition that pits Team USA against Team Europe. Second, it’s a match play competition. For the uninitiated, match play means that players are competing head-to-head on each hole. The player (or team, more on that in a bit) who gets the lowest score on a given hole wins that hole. The player who wins the most holes wins the match. The team that wins the most matches wins the Cup.
The two teams will compete in three different match play formats over the course of the three-day competition:
- Four-ball: Each player (two from each team) plays his own ball. The player with the best score wins the hole for his team.
- Foursome: Two players from each team take turns playing the same ball, alternating shot by shot. For example: Bryson DeChambeau tees off, Scottie Scheffler hits the approach shot onto the green, DeChambeau sinks the putt for birdie, Scheffler tees off on the next hole, and so on. The duo with the best score wins the hole.
- Singles: One player from Team USA plays a match against one player from Team Europe.
Friday and Saturday’s competition will consist of foursomes in the morning and four-ball in the afternoon. Sunday will be the singles matches.
The teams
Each team consists of 12 players. You can see the full Team USA roster here and the full Team Europe roster here. The size of the rosters adds a bit of strategy to the first two days of the competition. Only eight players from each team can participate in each session, so four players from each team sit out during the foursomes and four-ball portion of the competition.
Team captains Keegan Bradley (USA) and Luke Donald (Europe) choose the participants and the pairings. Their selections for Friday afternoon’s session are not due until 11:40 a.m. ET, with the first tee time of the afternoon set for 12:25 p.m. ET. So if, just to name a player at random, Viktor Hovland implodes in his morning match, Donald can choose to go to his bench and replace him with Sepp Straka for the afternoon.
There’s no sit-start conundrum on Sunday, though. All 12 players from each team will play a match on the final day.
The course
Bethpage Black is the site of this year’s Ryder Cup. The course in Farmingdale, N.Y., is hailed as one of the finest public golf courses in the country—and one of the most challenging. A famous sign near the first tee has “WARNING” in big red letters and cautions players that “the Black Course is an extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled golfers.” (The sign won’t be visible this week, though, because it’s been removed to make room for a grandstand.) The course has hosted two U.S. Opens, two FedEx Cup playoff events and, most recently, the 2019 PGA Championship. I attended that PGA Championship and came away with a much better understanding of what makes the course so intimidating. It’s long, with challenging elevation changes, tight doglegs, deep bunkers and sloping greens. It’s a course worthy of a competition as historic as this.
How to watch
USA Network has exclusive TV coverage of Friday’s matches. You can also stream the event on Peacock, while RyderCup.com has limited featured match coverage streaming for free. TV coverage moves to NBC on Saturday and Sunday. All broadcast coverage runs from 7 a.m. ET to 6 p.m.
Who’s going to win?
Our experts are pretty split on their predictions. Three picked Team USA to win, while two picked Team Europe. History is on the Americans’ side, at least. The home team has won the last five Ryder Cups—and they haven’t been close. As Bob Harig wrote earlier this week, the hosts’ advantage has been particularly pronounced in the first two days, rendering the Sunday singles matches largely moot.
The main reason to believe that the European team could snap that streak this year is that it returns 11 of the 12 players from the team that stomped the U.S. in Rome two years ago. (Nicolai Højgaard is the lone member of the previous team not on this year’s roster. He’s been replaced by his twin brother, Rasmus.) Will that confidence and experience be enough to overcome the challenge of playing in front of a hostile crowd?
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Gilberto Manzano writes that despite Seattle’s cautious late-game play-calling Thursday, Sam Darnold proved he can deliver in high-pressure moments and showed the Seahawks he’s a clutch QB they can trust. Arizona’s stars were too quiet for too long on Thursday night.
- Matt Verderame explains why the Cardinals can’t contend in the NFC West unless Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr. rise to the moment.
- Pat Forde breaks down how the Big Ten’s attempted College Football Playoff power grab fell short—and why commissioner Tony Petitti’s apparent retreat is more about strategy than surrender.
- Robert Saleh’s comments about the Jaguars’ (legal!) sign stealing sparked curiosity across the NFL—Conor Orr explains why Saleh brought it up now and what coaches say about the mental chess match of signals.
- Admirers of Sergio Busquets across the globe will be sad to hear he's finally hanging up the cleats.
- World Cup organizers were likely alarmed to hear President Donald Trump discuss changing host cities amid potential security fears.
The top five…
… shots from early morning action at Bethpage:
5. Collin Morikawa’s perfect approach from the first cut.
4. Rory McIlroy’s approach out of some thick, dewy rough that landed less than five feet from the pin. 3. A long putt by Ludvig Åberg to put him and Matthew Fitzpatrick four up on Scottie Scheffler and Russell Henley.
2. Bryson DeChambeau’s audacious drive off the first tee that cut the dogleg.
1. Jon Rahm’s unbelievable hack out of some thigh-high fescue.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Everything You Need to Know About the 2025 Ryder Cup.
