06-05-2025
Ryder Cup test in hostile Bethpage 'biggest challenge an away team has ever faced'
Paul McGinley insists Luke Donald's side will need characters to face an incredible and challenging atmosphere
Paul McGinley reckons Europe face their biggest-ever Ryder Cup test in hostile Bethpage.
The 2014 winning captain says Luke Donald's golf side will need characters to face an incredible and highly-challenging atmosphere when they get to New York in September. McGinley says the hot reaction from the United States-backing home support will test the visitors to the extreme limit.
Donald led the team to success in Rome in 2023, but the Irishman said: 'My view was that the challenge that we're going to face over in Bethpage is probably the biggest challenge an away team has ever faced on either side.
"That atmosphere is going to be really difficult to play in. Going away from home with 80 per cent of the crowd against you, Americans with their tails up on an American-tailored golf course. They've got home advantage,and it is a very difficult situation.
'Our players have to perform in a very hostile environment, which is a difficult thing to do. I played away from home in Detroit 2010.
"I have one experience of it. Luke was my partner actually in his first Ryder Cup.
"And playing when 80 per cent of the crowd are pulling against you is a difficult scenario, it requires deep concentration and it requires a bit of an edge in your personality. So we are looking for personnel who might have that edge.
'We are looking at their psyche for sure. You can have all the stats you want because our stats guys do amazing stuff now, but personality is going to be a big deal.
"Who's performed in a hostile environment? Who stands up to be counted when the odds are not quite going for you? Personality traits are going to be important. Experience is going to be important.'
The experience of Donald will be vital and, speaking to Sportsboom, McGinley continued: 'I was obviously involved with that decision to bring him back. The perception is that we nail the Ryder Cup and America don't.
"What we do is win at home. And what American nail is winning at home. Both teams have been poor on the road.
'The Ryder Cups in the last 10 years have been pretty much one-sided with the home team winning. We haven't won away from home now since Medinah. And that was a miracle.
"Before that it was eight years before that at Oakland Hills in Detroit, and I was on that team. So away matches are very difficult, much more difficult than winning at home.
'The template that works at home doesn't necessarily transfer, so we have to cultivate a new template to tackle these away matches and not just take for granted that whatever we did in the home match is going to work again, whether that be pairings, whether that be personnel, whether that be approach.
'For me the view is to create a new template away from home and the first roll of the dice with that was to put a captain in who had captained before, and who captained successfully.
"So that we're not training in a new captain and dealing with all the differences of being away from home. So, bringing an ex-captain in who's been there was the first roll of the dice of doing something different.
'Luke is the captain. My job is not to tell him what to do, my job is to expand his thinking and make sure that everything is considered before decisions are made.
"But ultimately, it'll be his decision. From what he said already publicly and what he has said privately, they're the kind of things that he's looking at.'
