A year out from the Ryder Cup, a cloud looms over Team Europe

“WARNING,” reads the famous sign on the walk to the first tee. “The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers.”

Bethpage, New York is the host of the 2025 Ryder Cup and its brutal 7,400-yard Black course will be the stage for USA and Europe to renew their rivalry. The long fairways are narrow, the greens sit on little plateaus protected by horribly dense rough, and the bunkers lie in waiting like some strategic network of punishment.

Add to that a layer of thick, sorry, a thick layer of American golf jocks dressed up to the eyeballs in stars and stripes, piped full of Coors Light lager, shouting all their thoughts and goading every European golfer within an inch of their life, and you start to build a picture of what awaits Luke Donald’s team one year from now.

The Ryder Cup’s spiky atmosphere is part of its allure but it can be harsh and utterly relentless, as Patrick Cantlay found out when thousands serenaded him with “hats off, to your bank account!” as he walked down the 16th in Rome 12 months ago. It can also stray too far: this reporter witnessed European fans making lewd comments towards Jena Sims, Brooks Koepka’s wife, which went way beyond good-natured sporting rivalry, and Team Europe should not expect well-lubricated American fans to be any more civil in reply. Rory McIlroy will inevitably become a lightning rod for much of the stick in New York, just as he was at Hazeltine and Whistling Straits, but every player will cop some and it will test their mental resolve.

Lots will be said in the build-up about course setup and the type of player it will suit, and certainly the savagery of Bethpage Black will play its part in the story. There will be plenty of deep-dive analysis into driving distances and the season’s tee-to-green stats. But ultimately what will decide the outcome of the Ryder Cup is the same as it ever was: can you perform in a golfing environment like no other?

It is the reason why there has only been one away win in the past 20 years – and even that went down as a miracle. As well as form and ability, it is character and experience and competitive fight that Donald must weigh up when he selects his six wildcard picks. His stats guru Edoardo “Dodo” Molinari will crunch the numbers on each player’s suitability for Bethpage and the right blend of foursome and fourball combinations, but Donald must trust gut instinct when he decides who can stand the heat.

And it is why, above everything, the captain must conjure up the kind of unity that bound Europe together so firmly in Rome. You could feel it in the way the players bounced on to the first tee (the contrast with the uncomfortable Americans was so stark it became a meme), the way Europe’s rookies were guided by senior players, the way even the vice-captains became material, exhibited by Nicolas Colsaerts’ rousing thunderclap before each day began. It is likely four or five European players will be playing in their first Ryder Cup on American soil, and Donald will need to strike the right balance between keeping together a close-knit winning team and freshening the group with new energy.

His biggest hurdle to achieving that same harmony remains the eternal cloud that is LIV Golf. Two of Europe’s key players, LIV’s Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, are playing in the DP World Tour’s Spanish Open this week as they set about participating in the four tournaments required to be eligible for Ryder Cup selection. That part is simple enough, but the issue is complicated by fines which Rahm and Hatton are refusing to pay, against which they have lodged appeals. They are allowed to play in Spain while their appeals are considered.

There wasn’t a great deal of sympathy coming from their Ryder Cup teammates at Wentworth last week, where most of Team Europe’s hopefuls gathered for the BMW PGA Championship. Reading between the lines, the message was clear: use those bumper LIV earnings to pay your fines and be on the team or prepare to miss out; Team Europe will go on without you.

“If you look at the last Ryder Cup,” said Tommy Fleetwood, “there was a big deal made about who we were missing in terms of presence in the team room [LIV players such as Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, as well as initial captain Henrik Stenson], and we didn’t have a lot of big characters [but we still won]. So you don’t want to lose anybody that you know that you can have there, but at the same time, the Ryder Cup is much bigger than all of us.”

Yet the players are well aware that Team Europe would be significantly – perhaps irreparably – weakened by the absence of Rahm and Hatton. That point is underscored by the way they made such an effective pairing, unbeaten in three matches across the past two Ryder Cups.

“That would be to Europe’s detriment for sure,” said Justin Rose on the prospect of arriving at Bethpage without Europe’s LIV duo. “They’re great players and bonded as well – they were great together in Rome. They’re a pairing and those types of connections are powerful, they’re quite difficult to recreate. Obviously we hope that we find natural pairings in the next year or that turn up in Bethpage and emerge. But if you have working partnerships, that’s also a really, really important and powerful part of the team.”

Donald will need every possible tool against a still-hurt USA who will come out fighting – both the players and their fans. McIlroy has described crossing the Atlantic to win the Ryder Cup as one of the hardest achievements in sport, and recent history attests to that. The challenge for Donald is to foster those same connections made a year ago, at a time when the game of golf remains divided. To conquer America, Europe must first rebuild the spirit of Rome.