What is the Team Cup? Luke Donald explains ‘massive importance’ of Ryder Cup shootout
Ryder Cup captain Donald will be keen observer as Great Britain and Ireland take on Continental Europe in Abu Dhabi
Luke Donald gave his potential Ryder Cup players a taste of what to expect at Bethpage as he hailed the “massive importance” of this week’s Team Cup.
Footage posted on social media showed players from Great Britain and Ireland and Continental Europe forced to listen to chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” over the PA system ahead of practice rounds at Abu Dhabi Golf Resort.
The Team Cup, which effectively filled the gap left by the Seve Trophy, was revived in 2023 to boost Europe’s chances of regaining the Ryder Cup, a move which paid off with a resounding victory under Donald’s captaincy in Rome.
Donald will captain the side again in New York in September – where a hostile atmosphere is expected – and is also overseeing the Team Cup, where Francesco Molinari will bid for a second win as captain of Continental Europe against a GB&I side led by Justin Rose.
“If you look at this event two years ago, half the team we had in Rome played here two years ago,” Donald said. “I think it has massive importance.
“You’ve got two great teams, you have rookies that are hungry to try and make a mark, and you have two guys that have a lot of experience.
“It’s great for me to oversee it and see how these players perform under match play team competition and under that kind of pressure.
“I think match play and team match play brings with it a different pressure. You see how people cope under that and you see how they react. Certain people did better than others, and Nicolai [Hojgaard] was an example.
“He came in in a tough situation, replaced his brother [Rasmus, who was injured] and probably performed the best out of everyone that week. Eight months later when I was making my picks, that was something that I took into consideration.
“So these are all things that we’ll see, we’ll look at, and again, it’s an important week for the build up to New York.”
Nicolai Hojgaard will not get another chance to impress however after he was ruled out due to illness and replaced by France’s Julien Guerrier.
Guerrier will partner compatriot Antoine Rozner against Tyrrell Hatton and Tom McKibbin in one of Friday’s five fourball matches. Earlier this week McKibbin refused to comment on reports that he is set to join Hatton and Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII team on LIV Golf.
Molinari’s brother Edoardo is Europe’s Ryder Cup statistics guru and is also performing the same role in Abu Dhabi.
“He’s here helping both teams and trying to be as neutral as possible I think,” Francesco said.
“We’ve been looking at that, actually, for a few weeks now, looking at different combination of players and strengths and weaknesses; definitely something that comes in handy when we need to write down the pairings.
“I think compared to two years ago it’s a little bit different because we only have three nationalities in our team.
“So on one hand it should be easier probably to get some of the guys to gel, but at the same time you don’t want to have three groups of people not gelling with each other. It’s interesting.
“The team dynamics always fascinated me. I’m a huge football fan, so always dreamt of being a football player and a football manager. So this is probably as close as it gets to being a football manager.”
PA