Why Is Europe Prepping for a Ryder Cup that is 12 Months Away?

Greetings fellow “BMW PGA > preferred lies in Asheville” fans,

And congrats to the winner of our Holderness and Bourne collegiate collection giveaway, Colin H. Colin won a box of collegiate collection gear (his choice of school) and kindly had this to say about Normal Sport.

Name drops today: Carlos Alcaraz, J.T. Poston, Jennifer Lawrence, Jim Furyk, Jon Wertheim and Baylor’s placekicker.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

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My 9 year old told me on our walk to school this morning, “Please charge my watch today, dad. I asked mom, but I think she’s probably going to forget.”

Hate to see that, but also love to see how much he’s loving it.

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And now, onto the news.

8 Thoughts on Golf (Mostly Golf) This Week

1. Over the last 25 years, I think we got so accustomed to the reality that we had a golfer (Tiger) who was in a lot of ways bigger than the game that, in the aftermath of that, we tend to overrate how important all non-Tiger golfers are to the game. This is more or less something Brian Rolapp has been saying since he became CEO of the Tour.

Because of this, I think the two most important aspects of the new qualification criteria for the Tour’s championship series events should be …

1. Prioritizing product > individual players and …
2. Simplification

So did they accomplish that with the announcement this week of future Championship Series criteria? Uhhh … mostly. Kind of. Almost.

Here is how those Championship Series fields will be constructed.

• Top 90 players from previous year’s Championship Series.
• Top 20 golfers promoted from Challenger Series.
• Golfers who won twice on the Challenger Series.
• Winners of Championship Series events from the last 2+ years.
• No. 1 golfer from PGA Tour University.
• Medical extensions on a limited basis.
• Players eligible to use a one-time money list exemption.

2. There has been some criticism — specifically from Normal Sport readers — around Championship Series winners (including Players and majors) receiving 2+ year exemptions into other Championship Series events.

I mostly agree with that criticism, although I would point out that if you win in a given year, you’re almost certainly going to be in the top 90 anyway and eligible for the following season. J.T. Poston is a good example this year. Bad overall season but won Memorial, finished T4 at the U.S. Open and is easily in the top 50 of the FedEx Cup. It’s really that second year guarantee that should irk people.

Here’s my specific issue with it …

The Tour is a little bit trying to have it both ways. They are attempting to reward season long consistency by flattening the point distribution (see below) for everyone in the field, which caters to the top players. This is good. Your biggest stars are almost always also going to be your most consistent players over a big window of time.

But then the Tour is also massively rewarding winning an event by offering a multi-year exemption, which seems to undermine the whole idea of a pure year-to-year meritocracy in the way it has been framed over the last year.

Kristoffer Reitan and Poston, for example, should not be guaranteed spots in 2028 based on winning big time events in 2026.

Simplicity is part of the entire point here, and I think having that exemption undercuts the idea of trying to explain to someone, Well yes everyone is in danger of being relegated this year. Oh, except those three guys. And him. Oh and that guy over there.

Don’t love it. Just remove that category altogether and let the season long race decide things. This makes the product simpler and sharper.

3. But I really don’t love the career money exemption and think it is completely ridiculous. Part of the appeal of the new system is that Justin Thomas (6th in career money) or Jordan Spieth (10th) or Collin Morikawa (18th) actually could be playing in Quad Cities, San Antonio or Tampa the following year, not that they get a safety net from what they did 10 years ago. This is an example of prioritizing player over product.

Again, I get this from a business perspective — you don’t want your stars disappearing overnight — but I’m disappointed that the Tour didn’t go all the way in on prioritizing the product over the individual and making it as easy to understand as they could have.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes some European Ryder Cup things I need to get off my chest ...

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4. We will talk Ryder Cup, but first … the 2027 Euro Tour schedule.

Some things that stand out.

• Rory back in Australia at Kingston Heath in December is extremely compelling stuff. Absolutely cannot wait. Non-majors are only as good as the fields that make them up, and suddenly the Australian Open is world class event.

• TBC for a March event (six months away!) seems … kinda dicey?

• Will anyone go China —> Augusta National —> Singapore? If you win all three, you should get (a substantial amount of) equity in, like, Emirates Airline or Delta.

• Same for Portugal —> Frisco —> Germany. What culture shock.

• U.S. Open —> Italian Open —> Irish Open —> Scottish Open —> The Open is a truly insane stretch. You could certainly pick better courses for Ireland and Scotland, but that run just dunks all over anything the PGA Tour can do in the same window.

• Wentworth the week after the Ryder Cup is tough but understandable. Also, Wentworth seems to move around more than any other high level tournament in the world. Since I started covering golf, it’s been played in May, different weeks in September and even in October. A lot of that is based on when (and where) the Ryder Cup is being played, but it does make a tournament feel a bit less special when it moves around a lot like that.

5. Speaking of the Ryder Cup! Prospective members of the European team visited Adare Manor this week. Over 365 days ahead of the 2025 Ryder Cup!

Me seeing that post on a Monday in September in a non-Ryder Cup year …

Listen, I have written extensively about how much better Europe is at the Ryder Cup than the Americans. Extensively. Surely nobody has written more about this than me.

But going to Adare Manor 12 months ahead of time reminds me of this thing I saw this week about how Bill Gates removed the stereo from his car so he wouldn’t be tempted to turn it on and not think about Microsoft.

That is tantamount to what Europe is doing.

Which is at the same time aspirational and also a little bit eye-rolly.

6. The line between excellent and performative is getting a little thin for me on that side of the aisle. I don’t blame them, though. Because performative is also part of the deal. In Jim Furyk’s first press conference as captain of the U.S. team, he’s probably going to get a question about when and how often the U.S. is going to take players to Adare Manor specifically because Europe did this over a year before the event started.

He will have to get everyone on the same page. It will be an entire thing. Which is part of what Europe does well. Europe makes the U.S. uncomfortable because it makes the U.S. wonder what it even wants and needs when it comes to the Ryder Cup. So I don’t bedowngrade them for that.

What I am saying is that when you post stuff like this and start to flaunt it a little bit, you definitely open yourself to getting decleated if and when the U.S. gets its stuff together (which, also, might literally never happen).

Part of what has made Europe so great over the years is its relentless commitment to humility. One post does not erase that, but I have felt and seen just a few inklings of, Hey this is awesome because we’re awesome that I think can be a bit dangerous for the future of an organization.

7. I also realize I am mega overanalyzing the Ryder Cup 365 days out. But if you aren’t subscribed for that, then why exactly are you subscribed?

8. Last thing from me is something Carlos Alcaraz said at the U.S. Open after losing to Ben Shelton at 3 a.m. in the match of the tournament. I heard Jon Wertheim — one of the goat sports writers for me — talk about this so I went and found the clip, which you can watch by clicking below.

I’ll transcribe my favorite part …

I could perhaps write a book about that single sentence. It is one of the most mature things I’ve ever heard an athlete say, and I can’t help but wonder how different golf would have been over the last five years if more professional golfers operated from this position of gratitude rather than believing that they are both platform and performer.

To me, this is what it looks like to joyfully participate in what you were wired to do. Easy to say because Carlos is already post-money at the age of 23, but also not easy to live out because everyone at that level is telling you not only that you’re the man but that you’re one of the greatest men who has ever lived. All because you can move and twirl and swing a piece of carbon fiber with strings better than a bunch of other men.

No athlete embodies having an awe or wonder of the world more than Alcaraz for me right now. He seems to live in a healthy state of, I truly cannot believe I get to do this every day. So rare. So compelling. So attractive as a human.

Gratitude rules because it acknowledges what is true. That we are human. That we cannot do everything. That others help us and we help others no matter how high or lowly our estate.

This next part is painful for me to admit given what I wrote above, but this is very much how the European Ryder Cup team operates. What was it Justin Rose said in Rome?

Dang it, he actually said “stage”!

And it doesn’t get better.

I hate how much I like them and how wise and gracious they are when it comes to the way they view that event.

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain an algorithm-free establishment. And thank you — all of you — for this particular stage.