Plenty of ink was spilled over who could, should, or would contribute most to the Ryder Cup teams as captains have made their wild card picks in the last week. If you’re a golf fan — and I’ll bet you are — you reveled in all of it, texted your pals about it, maybe even offered an impassioned speech at the water cooler about why Keegan Bradley should (or shouldn’t) have picked himself as a playing captain.
But a hidden truth in all that hubbub over the final players making the rosters is that they won’t be the ones expected to contribute nearly as much as those who qualified automatically. You’d have to go back to the 2016 Ryder Cup in Minnesota to find the last captain’s pick who played five matches — Thomas Pieters, who was conveniently paired with Rory McIlroy for three of those matches, ultimately in a European defeat.
The last captain’s picks to play five matches before Pieters were Hunter Mahan and Ian Poulter in the 2008 Cup. Over the last eight Cups — with 61 total captain’s picks made — only three of those wild card selections played every session. Only 26 have played four sessions or more — roughly 43 percent.
The statistically-minded might point out — well, there are often more auto-qualifiers than captain’s picks, so you’d naturally expect more of them to play a bunch of matches.
Right on! But about 68 percent of Ryder Cuppers have qualified automatically in that time period and 77 percent of the players who played four matches or more were auto-qualifiers. On other words: not all Ryder Cuppers are made equal, both in skillset and how that skillset is tossed into the fire. Even simpler: captains ride their horses. And those horses are bound to make or break you.
Not convinced?
The 2023 Ryder Cup laid bare this theory. Thanks to DataGolf, which archived the strokes gained of each player during the competition in Rome, it’s incredibly easy to see how the European horses dominated while the American horses wilted. It’s not a massive sample size — there’s some obvious noise in a player’s individual performance, particularly if they get walloped 9 and 7, like Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka did — but the results were stark.
Strokes Gained stats courtesy of DataGolf
Let’s begin with Scheffler, who was the best golfer in the world at the start of the ’23 Cup. He played four matches that year — sitting the afternoon session after that 9 and 7 defeat — and his performance against expectation was considerably worse than that of Europe’s best player, Rory McIlroy. Considering how badly just one match for him went, he was better than the chart would suggest, but ultimately it still wasn’t a good Cup for him. And in that foursomes match we couldn’t look away from, he got crushed when the Americans needed points the most.
The same could be said of Xander Schauffele, the American’s third-best player, against Jon Rahm, the third-best from Europe. Same for Collin Morikawa, America’s fifth player, against Tyrrell Hatton, Europe’s fifth. You can see that and more in the chart above, which aligns the players from each team with their most comparable opponent from the other side. Essentially, both squads from 2023 were outfitted with five players who were a cut above their teammates. The expected skill curve dropped in a serious way after that bunch — and you can see a much more muddled performance against that expectation at the bottom of each roster. In other words, randomness took over.
But at the top? Europe’s horses simply played much better against expectation than America’s did. Is some of that due to a home field advantage? Perhaps. Is some due to luck? Sure. Chip-ins and holed putts and bunker shots are what we remember about Ryder Cups, not necessarily their value on the spreadsheet. But there’s a lot of orange on that plot, particularly on the far left side, which is exactly who plays the most matches. All 10 of those top-end players played at least four matches, which is exactly what we can expect from the top-end players again later this month. The better your horses play, the better your team will do. Sometimes, it’s as simple as that, particularly when four players from each team sit each non-singles session.
With that in mind, as well as a few other considerations, we’ve trimmed the herd of players who will ultimately decide things at Bethpage Black in a few weeks. Once again leaning on DataGolf’s expected skill ratings — which incorporate plenty of the same numbers the teams would use — we’ve highlighted a group of 10 that will almost surely be relied upon more than others.
Americans (5): Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Russell Henley, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay
Scheffler is the best player in the world and would need to get crushed by a grandstand to not play five matches. DeChambeau — with all his energy and driving ability — should play at least four matches, five if he’s striping it. Henley has been paired with Scheffler in team competition before and, according to all relevant metrics, has been one of the five best golfers in the world for much of the last year. Schauffele is a slight wild card, given his availability in the weeks leading up to the event. He’s played worse in 2025 than recent years, but his floor is still incredibly high. So high he’ll need to play his share of the matches. (In a world where Schauffele isn’t playing great, Justin Thomas would be a very likely addition to the four-or-five-matches squad, given all his experience. Lastly, there’s Cantlay, who has struggled at various points in the last two years, but who has turned it on lately, and has leveled off his floor a lot in 2025.
That’s your group of American horses. Others could certainly join the four-matches group, but none would be likely for five matches.
Europeans (5*): Jon Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy, Ludvig Aberg — and one or two of Matthew Fitzpatrick, Viktor Hovland and Bob MacIntyre.
Rahm is, outside of Scheffler, the most consistently great golfer we’ve seen over the last five to six years. He should be mostly a lock for five matches, barring form or stamina. Fleetwood is playing the best golf of his life and has as much positive RC experience as anyone. McIlroy is playing worse this summer than he was in the lead-up to the ’23 Cup, but his floor is, like Schauffele’s, still incredibly high. Very quietly, Ludvig Aberg has risen back into form — an even better form than he was in during the ’23 Cup. He’s the last European with an extremely high expected skill, according to DataGolf, before a bit of a drop off. Considering his youth, his success and his all-around game, you’d be shocked to see him play less than four matches. Finally, because Luke Donald is bound to incorporate everyone into the proceedings with at least three matches apiece, there will likely only be room for five or six players to play four matches. So it will come down to one or two of Fitzpatrick, Hovland or MacIntyre. With form as the leading indicator, we’ll choose Fitzpatrick, who has quietly risen into the top 10 in the DataGolf rankings.
That’s your group of European horses. The only question remaining is the most obvious one: can they run harder than their American counterparts?
