Bradley and Donald ‘ready’ for Ryder Cup to begin (2:05)Team USA captain Keegan Bradley and Team Europe captain Luke Donald are both eager and ready for the Ryder Cup to begin Friday. (2:05)
Mark SchlabachCloseMark SchlabachESPN Senior WriterSenior college football writer Author of seven books on college football Graduate of the University of GeorgiaFollow on XPaolo UggettiSep 24, 2025, 05:00 AM ET
What are you most looking forward to seeing this week?
Under-the-radar players you think will have a big impact this week?
The 2025 Ryder Cup will tee off Friday with the first match of the day going off at 7:10 a.m. The parings for the first four matches will be announced Thursday afternoon by the two captains, Keegan Bradley (Team USA) and Luke Donald (Team Europe).
How will Bethpage Black play? Which players are under the most pressure? Who will end up hoisting the trophy Sunday? We asked our two reporters on the ground to break what they can’t wait to see and what they’re expecting over the next few days.
“We are doing everything we can to best prepare ourselves for what it is going to feel like,” Rory McIlroy told reporters at the BMW PGA Championship this month. “But nothing can really prepare you until you’re actually in that. You can wear all the VR headsets you want and do all the different things we’ve been trying to do to get ourselves ready, but once the first tee comes on Friday, it’s real, and we just have to deal with whatever’s given.”
How rowdy will New York fans get? Will some of the jeering cross the line? Can U.S. fans get under the skin of emotional golfers like Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton? It’s a shame longtime European Ryder Cuppers Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia aren’t around, or things might have gotten very hot.
If the U.S. team gets off to another slow start, Thomas wouldn’t be surprised if fans turn on their own, either.
Paolo Uggetti: Rory vs. Bryson DeChambeau. The ball is not yet in the air and the two of them have already done enough dramatic table setting as it is. Not only did they face off at Augusta earlier this year, but everything they have said since has shed even more light on the fact that they don’t particularly take kindly to one another.
“He wouldn’t talk to me,” DeChambeau said that Sunday. “He was just like — just being focused, I guess. It’s not me, though.”
McIlroy, who bested DeChambeau on his way to a green jacket, balked at the notion that he would be chatty.
“I don’t know what he was expecting. We’re trying to win the Masters. I’m not going to try to be his best mate out there.”
“I’ll be chirping in his ear this time,” DeChambeau told People Magazine. “Now, if we go up against each other, I mean, you can be sure of it.”
“I think the only way he gets attention is by mentioning other people,” McIlroy said. “That is basically what I think of that.”
Uggetti: After walking around the course this week, a few things stand out. One: The rough is not very high. Sure, there are some spots where it’s a little bit thicker, but overall it doesn’t appear that U.S. team captain Keegan Bradley & Co. are setting Bethpage out to be extremely penal off the fairway.
Now, of course, to the many elevated greens that the Black boasts, hitting from short grass in order to generate spin and get the ball close to the hole will be key. Overall, I think it will allow for more interesting recovery shots, which could lead to more compelling match play. The greens, however, are pretty flat, which could give players fits and also make it a bit of a putting contest.
Another thing to note is that the energy on this side of the property (Hole 1, and then Holes 15-18) is going to be off the charts. This set of holes all intertwine with each other in such a way — with massive grandstands giving multiple vantage points to different holes — that, if matches make it to this stretch, it will create an amphitheaterlike atmosphere that should be extremely compelling. The roars will be plenty.
Schlabach: Xander Schauffele is one of the best golfers in the world, but a painful rib injury that sidelined him for two months erased much of the momentum he built in winning his first two majors championships in the PGA Championship and The Open in 2024.
The 2020 Olympic gold medalist didn’t miss a cut in 15 starts and had nine top-25 finishes this past season. Three of his best finishes came in the majors, tying for eighth in the Masters, 12th in the U.S. Open and seventh in The Open.
But Schauffele failed to duplicate his success in the 2024 season, and he missed the Tour Championship for the first time in his career. He hasn’t played competitive golf since tying for 28th in the BMW Championship in mid-August, the second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Schauffele and his wife, Maya, welcomed their first child, Victor, on Aug. 29. Schauffele didn’t play in the Procore Championship in Napa, California, where 10 of the 12 U.S. players were in the field.
“Obviously, I didn’t do a whole lot of golf for a bit, having him and trying to be a good teammate to my wife, because that’s kind of all us guys can do early on,” Schauffele said. “I feel like after these two days, [I’m] surprisingly playing kind of nice. I surprised myself when I came out.”
Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay have been one of the Americans’ better match-play duos. Schauffele went 3-1-1 at Whistling Straits in 2021 but 1-3-0 in Rome.
Uggetti: For the European team, I think it’s hard to look at anyone else but Rory. A lot of that is pressure that he has put on himself, too.
“I think one of the biggest accomplishments in golf right now is winning an away Ryder Cup,” McIlroy said after the European team win at Rome in 2023. “And that’s what we’re going to do at Bethpage.”
From the moment he showed up at Pebble Beach earlier this year, McIlroy included winning an away Ryder Cup as part of the goals he was setting out to accomplish. He hasn’t wavered from his prediction and seems to be getting up for this event more so than any tournament that isn’t a major.
Schlabach: Not having world No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler on the course in all five sessions would be criminal. He just picked up his sixth victory of the season at the Procore Championship two weeks ago, and he has now won 15 times around the world in the past two years.
One of the blemishes on Scheffler’s remarkable career, however, was his 0-2-2 record in Rome. Scheffler and Brooks Koepka were on the wrong end of a 9-and-7 loss in 11 holes in foursomes, the shortest 18-hole match in Ryder Cup history, which left Scheffler in tears.
“I feel like I have a large bank of knowledge over the course of my career that I can use to my advantage, especially when things get tough,” Scheffler said. “I don’t think it can be understated how difficult of a week Rome was for us. I think we could have done better, for sure. That wasn’t how I expected the week to go and I think we learned from it. We’re as prepared as ever this time.”
Schlabach: If you’ve followed the practice-round pairings in Napa and the first couple of days at Bethpage Black, it would seem that Russell Henley is going to be paired with Scheffler in at least the opening foursomes session. They played together in last year’s Presidents Cup in Montreal and won a four-ball (better ball) and foursomes (alternate shot) match.
Henley is a 31-year-old Ryder Cup rookie, and many first-timers seem overwhelmed by the environment. But Henley, one of four rookies on the U.S. team, is composed and doesn’t seem bothered by much. Now ranked No. 3 in the world, he’s one of the best iron players in the world and is a streaky putter.
On the European side, Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre has completely transformed his game since Rome, and he wasn’t bad as a Ryder Cup rookie, earning 2.5 points. MacIntyre picked up his first two PGA Tour victories in 2024 and had the clubhouse lead in the U.S. Open before finishing second to J.J. Spaun in June.
MacIntyre didn’t compete in foursomes matches in 2023, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him in the first lineup that goes out Friday.
Uggetti: There are a few Ryder Cup rookies on the American side, but somehow it feels like the one who won a major championship this season is flying the most under the radar heading into this tournament.
U.S. Open winner J.J. Spaun could be exactly the kind of player the Americans don’t know they need but, over the course of the week, one who proves to be invaluable. Spaun has bounced around a few pairings between practice rounds this week and in Napa, and with his stellar approach play and potentially match-altering putting, he could be a good fit with several players on the U.S. roster.
Schlabach: It’s difficult not to go with the Europeans again with all but one golfer returning from the team that blasted the Americans at Marco Simone. The Europeans are a tight group that takes a lot of pride in winning the Ryder Cup.
Uggetti: Winning an away Ryder Cup is nearly impossible. As 2012 at Medinah showed, it may take a miracle to do it. And yet, the level of talent, cohesion, camaraderie and consistency that this European group has under Luke Donald makes me think that they don’t need magic to do the seemingly impossible. Europe wins 15-13.
Bradley and Donald ‘ready’ for Ryder Cup to begin (2:05)Team USA captain Keegan Bradley and Team Europe captain Luke Donald are both eager and ready for the Ryder Cup to begin Friday. (2:05)
Team USA captain Keegan Bradley and Team Europe captain Luke Donald are both eager and ready for the Ryder Cup to begin Friday. (2:05)
CloseMark SchlabachESPN Senior WriterSenior college football writer Author of seven books on college football Graduate of the University of GeorgiaFollow on X