Europe won the Ryder Cup away from home for the first time in 13 years after they survived a remarkable United States comeback on a dramatic Sunday in New York.
The visitors had started the day with an 11½-4½ lead at Bethpage but were made to battle on a nerve-shredding afternoon before Shane Lowry retained the trophy and Tyrrell Hatton sealed a 15-13 victory.
Needing ten points for the biggest comeback in Ryder Cup history, the US won five of the top seven matches and with the contests down the order on a knife edge, so was the destination of the cup. But Ludvig Åberg beat Patrick Cantlay 2&1 and Matt Fitzpatrick tied with Bryson DeChambeau to leave the stage clear for Lowry.
The Irishman had been two down with four to play against Russell Henley, but a stunning approach to the 15th saw him go down the last knowing a win would retain the cup. Henley found sand off the tee but hit a beautiful recovery to ten feet only to see Lowry get inside him on the same line. The American left his effort short and Lowry holed from six feet before setting off dancing across the green before bursting into tears.
Hatton then hit a wonderful approach of his own into the last to tie with Collin Morikawa and seal a fifth European win on US spoil since 1979.
Robert MacIntyre and Sam Burns shared a half in the anchor match but the rest of the matches all went the way of the United States as Cameron Young beat Justin Rose 1 UP, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler and Ben Griffin beat Tommy Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy and Rasmus Højgaard respectively by the same score, Xander Schauffele downed Jon Rahm 4&3 and J.J. Spaun defeated Sepp Straka 2&1.
The victory makes Luke Donald just the second European Captain after Tony Jacklin to win a Ryder Cup both home and away and makes it back-to-back wins after the 2023 victory at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club.
“It’s been the most stressful 12 hours in my life,” said Donald. “Shout-out to the Americans, Keegan, his captaincy. I knew it would be tough. I didn’t think they would be this tough on Sunday, they fought so hard, and all the respect to them. But this means a lot to me and the team. We came here knowing that the task was very difficult. I couldn’t be prouder of these guys and what they have gone through, how they have come together, how they are playing for history, how they are playing for the people that came before them, and now there will be talk for generations to come as someone going down in history.”
Keegan Bradley, who gave up a spot as a player to captain the US team, said: “When you are the leader of the team and you lose, you have to take the blame. This is no one else’s fault. Sometimes in sports, you go up against an opponent that simply play better than you, and Europe played better than us. We gave it a great fight, that’s for sure. To go out there today and do what they did is close to a miracle, but it wasn’t quite enough.”
He added: “I definitely made a mistake on the course set-up. I should have listened a little bit more to my intuition. For whatever reason, that wasn’t the right way to set the course up. We thought this was the best way to set the golf course up to win. Sometimes, you’ve got to make a decision on what to do, and if I could go back I probably would have changed that. But the Europeans played just incredible golf. It doesn’t matter how you set the course up when you play that well.”
For all the scores from the 45th Ryder Cup, visit www.rydercup.com/scoring