The Ryder Cup, one of the most fascinating events in all of sport, is barely a chip and a putt away from teeing off and, for the first time in what seems like ages, the United States will go into the event as underdogs. Not massive underdogs, mind you, but certainly second favourites against a strong and experienced European team.

It must be an odd feeling for the Americans, especially considering they will be playing on home soil, where they haven’t lost since 2012. But what does home soil count for anyway?

All six of the automatic European team qualifiers ply their trade on the PGA Tour, so there should be little natural advantage to the home side on the difficult Bethpage Black layout, even if the greenkeeper is instructed to tailor the course to the American team’s strengths. The noisy New York crowd will be feverishly patriotic and full of the stock ‘U-S-A’ and ‘mashed potato’ type chants, but that’s hardly new to any of the European team, who are confronted with this kind of partisan support every weekend.

The problem facing the home team is that, unlike so many previous iterations of the biennial event, this European team appears, on paper, to be superior to the Americans. And the red, white and blue team would do well to consider that team Europe has an uncanny knack of transforming into something greater than the sum of its parts.

The big names of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose and Tyrrell Hatton, along with Rasmus Højgaard and the in-form Robert MacIntyre were the automatic qualifiers. Bizarrely, the team could be almost exactly the same as the 12 players who won the Ryder Cup so convincingly last time out, in Italy in 2023. The biggest difference would be a straight swap between the Højgaard brothers – out comes Nicolai and in goes Rasmus.

Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood

THE 2025 PLAYING ORDER

The competition will begin on Friday, 26 September, with morning foursomes (alternate shot) followed by fourball in the afternoon. The same schedule will be played on the Saturday before the Ryder Cup finishes with 12 singles matches on the Sunday.

This is the third consecutive Ryder Cup where foursomes will be followed by fourball on the opening two days, and the 13th time since 1981 that it has been used. The US has implemented this structure eight times, while Europe has selected it five times.

If the Americans are looking for any glimmer of hope, outside the red-hot form of world No 1 Scheffler, it is that history is firmly on the side of the home team. On only four occasions since the start of the Ryder Cup in 1927 have they conceded defeat on US soil, with the last time being the ‘Miracle of Medinah’ in 2012. In short, winning an away Ryder Cup ranks as one of the hardest things to do in sport.

The golf course and its set-up is, of course, likely to be the subject of much speculation. With a reputation as one of the most fearsome layouts in the game, Bethpage Black (par 72) has a course rating of 78 from the back tees, with a Slope rating of 155 – the maximum you can have. Yet recent American Ryder Cup success has been built not on making the courses harder, but quite the contrary.

‘The Americans generally set up the golf courses in a similar way,’ explained former captain Paul McGinley, now a strategic adviser to Team Europe. ‘They like it pretty open, they don’t like tight fairways and they cut down the rough – they don’t want big, heavy rough. They do like to have a low-scoring Ryder Cup, where players can be on the attack – they feel that’s better suited to the style of player that the American team is. So we’re expecting that. That’s what they’ve done in every away Ryder Cup.’

CHRIS TURVEY/ROLEX/RYDER CUP/GETTY IMAGES/PGA OF AMERICA