Gavin Cooney

RICHARD BLAND HAS maintained phone access in his LIV-gilded cage, and so his take on Luke Donald’s picks for the European Ryder Cup team was well-ventilated. 

“Hearing Adrian Meronk not getting picked”, posted Bland on Instagram. “Wins Italian Open at the Ryder Cup course, third in DP World rankings! Deserves a pick over an out of form Lowry in my opinion!”

Talk about a false conflation. Meronk has missed out to rookie Nicolai Hojgaard, rather than Lowry. 

Donald had six picks to give him, in his own words, “greater flexibility in terms of in-form players, players with Ryder Cup experience, and potential pairings”, and that Meronk wasn’t among them is undeniably harsh.  (The greater issue is that Meronk didn’t qualify automatically, but was edged out as Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm qualified via the European points list, rather than the OWGR-based world points list.) 

Lowry’s inclusion hardly rises above the stuff of quotidian quibbling. The chief argument against Lowry has been his form, with the most frequent line of prosecution the fact he did not have a top-10 in any event from February to the moment Donald announced his picks. (Lowry then helpfully went and tied for third at the Irish Open a few days later.) 

Lowry’s mid-summer form was poor by his standards but it’s been nothing like as bad as, say, Justin Thomas’s, with whom Zach Johnson has stuck. Lowry, by contrast, finished inside the top 20 of the first three majors of the year before missing the cut at the Open: McIlroy, Rahm, Viktor Hovland, and Tommy Fleetwood are Lowry’s only European team-mates with at least three top-20 major finishes this year. Plus, he arrives in Rome off the back of a T3 at the K Club and a T18 at Wentworth. 

Lowry has naturally bridled at suggestions he doesn’t belong in this team. 

“I think I’m a good player for a start,” he told Golf Digest at the Irish Open. “I think I’m not going to be afraid of anyone that comes to stand on first tee in two weeks’ time. I think I’ll be good for the rookies. I think I’ll be good for team morale or in the team room. I think I’ll be passionate. I’ll show my emotions. I’ll enjoy myself.”

Plus, Donald isn’t picking solely on form. His picks and pairings will be informed by data, but Lowry brings those intangible qualities which suddenly appear material in the white heat of the Ryder Cup. Experience, passion, character, basic good vibes: all of these are easy for fans to scoff at but much less easy for any captain to discard. 

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Lowry’s experience at Whistling Straits two years ago will be useful, given LIV has winnowed Europe’s selection options. Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, and Ian Poulter aren’t around anymore, and so a third of Donald’s team are rookies, namely Hojgaard, Bob MacIntyre, Sepp Straka, and Ludvig Aberg, the latter becoming the first player ever selected for the Ryder Cup before playing in a major.

Lowry’s experience of Whistling Straits two years ago will be important, where his clutch putt on 18 salvaged a much-needed albeit ultimately academic fourball win on Saturday. 

Europe won’t win without a level of enthusiasm that ultimately becomes daunting for their opponents, and Lowry guarantees that at the very least. 

“It was one of the best experiences of my life, and it’s the only thing I want to do for the next two years”, he said after Europe’s hammering two years ago. “I don’t care what I do for the next two years now as long as I’m back in Rome to try to take the trophy back off them.” 

Europe have always profited from making a virtue of a team dynamic, and that aspect has been adopted by the US team since Phil Mickelson’s infamous drive-by on captain Tom Watson at Gleneagles nine years ago. 

For Europe, Lowry is a solution on the course and a solvent away from it. His family is steeped in the GAA, and think of how rare it is that anyone from a family grounded in a team sport to go off and carve out a career in an individual sport: Lowry sometimes gives the impression that he’s a Gaelic footballer frustrated at having to go off and do the right thing by this ethereal talent for golf. 

“I wish golf was a team game”, he said after Whistling Straits. “I’d love to be part of a team every week. It’s very individually based. That’s the way it is. God, I’d love to have this experience every week.”

This week marks the start of a new era for the European Ryder Cup team, one in which they must fashion a few new heroes. Donald’s bet that Shane Lowry will be one of them looks astute.