Ryder Cup teams announced, Australian Open champ misses out
Captains Luke Donald and Zach Johnson have announced their teams for the upcoming 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome.
Ryder Cup team captains Luke Donald and Zach Johnson have announced their picks for their respective teams. Team USA and Team Europe golfers are now locked in for the highly anticipated event which begins September 29, 2023, at the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome.
Like every Ryder Cup selection announcement, Luke Donald’s captain’s picks for the Europeans have proven a talking point for one particular player he’s left out.
Donald settled on Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Nicolai Højgaard, Ludvig Aberg, Sepp Straka and Shane Lowry to join the team.
They join the six golfers who had already made the team earning themselves automatic selection via accumulating ranking points throughout the season; Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton, Viktor Hovland, Robert MacIntyre, Rory McIlroy, and Jon Rahm.
Adrian Meronk can consider himself unlucky to have not made the team given he has won twice in the past 12 months including his win at the ISPS HANDA Australian Open last December. Shane Lowry’s selection was perhaps the most contentious given his form has been poor for most of 2023.
The lanky Polish golfer, currently ranked 51st in the world had a classy response on social media to his omission from the Ryder Cup team, Meronk posted to Twitter he wished them well.
Good luck @RyderCupEurope
— Adrian Meronk (@AdrianMeronk) September 4, 2023
The US Ryder Cup team was finalised last week with Zach Johnson announcing his captain’s picks and it too was not without controversy.
Johnson announced that Sam Burns, Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas would be his picks to make up the 12-man US Ryder Cup team. The six joined automatic qualifiers Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Brian Harman, Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa and Xander Schauffele.
Despite his defection to the LIV Golf tour, Johnson named world number 15 Brooks Kopeka in the team largely based on his performances at the majors when he finished second in the Masters, T17 at the US Open and won the US PGA Championship.
And while Koepka’s selection was somewhat controversial given the split in the professional golf tours, it was Justin Thomas’ selection that garnered the most attention.
Thomas has only three top-10 finishes to his name in 2023 including five missed cuts in his last eight events but somehow still got the nod ahead of more in-form players such as Lucas Glover and Keegan Bradley.