SETTING THE SCENE: The key stats ahead of the 2021 renewal at Whistling Straits.
The 43rd Ryder Cup gets underway on Friday from the shores of Lake Michigan at Whistling Straits, where the US team will be determined to wrestle back the Ryder Cup on home soil. Captain Steve Stricker can have no excuses this year, as he has the lowest ranked US team since rankings began to call upon as they bid to win their 27th Ryder Cup.
In the early days of the Ryder Cup, the US were overwhelmingly the dominant side winning a huge 18 times to Great Britain’s, and subsequently Great Britain & Ireland’s, 3 times up until 1977. Such was the US team’s dominance in the 1967 Ryder Cup that they won by a record 23½ points to Great Britain’s 8½. In 1979, the Great Britain & Ireland team was expanded to include players from continental Europe and since then the tide of dominance has turned.
Europe won their first Ryder Cup in 1985 and have won a further ten times to the US’s eight since 1979. Much of Europe’s early success was driven by the indomitable figure of Seve Ballesteros. He was Europe’s top point scorer when they won in 1987, and in total scored 22.5 points from 37 matches, spread over eight Ryder Cup appearances. Two years later, in 1989, fellow Spaniard Jose Maria Olazabal brought home 4.5 from a possible 5 as Europe hung on to tie the competition and retain the trophy. That was only the second tie in Ryder Cup history, the other coming in 1969.
Ballesteros and Olazabal still hold the record as the most successful Ryder Cup pairing, taking an incredible 12 points from their 15 fourball and foursome matches. Following in the footsteps of those great Spanish Ryder Cup competitors is Sergio Garcia, who in 1999, when aged just 19, became the youngest Ryder Cup player. His longevity and impact are unquestionable too as in 2018 he broke the record for most points scored in Ryder Cups, taking his total to 25.5 from 41 matches. Garcia’s 9 Ryder Cup appearances are still some way off Phil Mickelson’s record of 12 however, which the American racked up between 1995 and 2018. Had Mickelson been selected this year, he would have become the oldest player to play in a Ryder Cup, breaking the current record held by the US’s Raymond Floyd who was 51 years old when he took to the tee at The Belfry in 1993. That famous Warwickshire course has hosted the Ryder Cup four times – 1985, 1989, 1993 and 2002 – twice more than any other.
