The Secret of The Ryder Cup Home Advantage | Golf Digest

For a decade now, the Ryder Cup has been dominated by the home side. But why is that? There is one stat that seems to explain it but it’s complicated. Shane Ryan explores the trend of foursomes play in recent Ryder Cups, talking with experts to try and explain why the format favours the home team so strongly.

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We are right now in a very distinct era of the RDER Cup. It is the era of the home blowout. For the last five RDER Cups, the home team has absolutely crushed the visiting team and it has never been close. At this point, we are on a decade of complete runaways. So, why is it happening? Well, I’ve always been one of those people who says it’s the fans. It’s got to be the fans. There’s more of them than ever before. They are louder than ever before. They’re meaner. They’re certainly drunker. And it’s all very overwhelming. Professional golfers are not used to playing in front of hostile away crowds. So every year, every Ryder Cup, you hear them say, “We’re ready for it this time. We’re going to go do it.” They’re never ready, and it never works out. So I’ve always felt very, very good about the fan theory. But but there is one very weird stat, one very annoying stat actually, that seems like it pretty much destroys my whole theory. I don’t have an answer for it. I’ve tried to ignore it before, but the point of this video is to try to figure out what the heck it actually means. Let me explain. In Ryder Cup matches, there are three different formats. The very simplest one is singles. It’s one-on-one. It accounts for the most points. There are 12 of those. Then you’ve got four ball. There are eight fourball matches. This is just twoon two. Every player playing his own ball. Best score on the hole wins. Not that hard to understand. But then there isomes. This is twoon two alternate shot. It is the weirdest format. The players take turns. So one guy will drive, the other guy hits the approach, the first guy hits the putt, and so on. And crucially, one player te’s off on all the odd holes while the other player te’s off on all the even holes. And I want to show you something. in the last six RDER cups going back to 2012. Check out the home team’s record in four ball and singles combined. So, it’s leaving out alternate shot. The record is 63 and a half to 56 1/2 a winning percentage of 52% almost dead even. Now, in that same period, look at Forsomes 36 1/2 to 11 12 a winning percentage for the home team of 76%. In other words, these huge margins of victory for the home team in the last decade and change, they all come from this one weird format that only makes up about a quarter of the whole RDER Cup match. And we have so many notorious examples of this. 2016 Hazeline Morning Forsomes, the Americans win 4. It’s a blood bath. All of a sudden, Europe has a huge mountain to climb and they can’t do it. Paris 2018, Europe goes down 3 to1 in the morning. Oh no, Thomas Bjorn wants to change everything for afternoon forsomes. His stats guys convince him not to. They win 40. The blowout is on. Whistling Straits three years later. The Americans start with forsomes. They dominate 3 to one and then they do it again by the same score Saturday morning. So that by Sunday the Europeans have no shot. Then we go to the last Ryder Cup, Rome 2023. Luke Donald says, “Hey, if we’re so good at forsomes at home, let’s put it first instead of second.” Great idea, Luke. The Europeans will win the session 40-0, and that whole RDER Cup is basically over before any of the Americans watching back home can even wake up. So, what’s going on here? Well, it boils down to two basic questions. First, what is it about Alt Shot that is different that can be manipulated? And second, and most importantly for us, why does it seem like it can only be manipulated by the home team? I needed some experts. The first person I spoke to is one of the great statistical minds in golf, Justin Ray. You’ll know him if you’re on golf Twitter. He works for the 21st group and he advises the US Soulheim Cup team. That’s the women’s version of the RDER Cup. We only did an audio call, but listen to what he said about this. Alternate shot is the format where the numbers and the sequencing of players has the biggest impact. And I know when I worked with Stacy and Team USA for the Sohand Cup, we couldn’t do a lot to the golf course. Ultimately, it’s still a fair competition and you’re not going to completely modify the course to benefit your side, but what you can do is have a little bit of influence on which T boxes are used on par 3es. Um, but ultimately it comes down to putting players in the best position possible. In other words, we are getting closer to solving the puzzle of what makes altsh shot different. And that word Justin used sequencing is important because it determines which player is hitting what kind of shot. Now, the second man I spoke to is Jason Aino. Jason is the head of Scouts Consulting. That’s the group who advises Team USA on all matters, statistical, strategic, any research at all that they need. They’re very important to the team. Now, quickly about Jason before you hear from him. When he was a kid, he was so Rydercup obsessed that he would tape the coverage and he’d watch it over and over and over again after school. Then he grew up and he became a military analyst working with the Department of Defense on long range warfare strategy. So, can you imagine a better combination for a guy who would one day be a Ryder Cup strategist? I can’t. And here’s how he described the process of putting together a Forsomes team. You know, ideally, you’ve chosen guys that are already good for uh good fits for the course. Uh but here especially, you want them to be good fits for each other, both chemistry- wise uh and in terms of game type. So, the question is, do they complement each other on multiple levels? All right. And then you’ve got to factor in who te’s off on evens and odds. Um if you think about it, the guy teeing off on the evens is basically playing a very different golf course from the guy teing off on the odds. Um and then you’ve got to factor in the golf ball. like it makes a huge difference. Um, some guys play low spin balls, some play high spin balls. Uh, some are firm, some are soft. These guys are doing yardages down to the yard. Uh, and, uh, factoring in what happens when the ball lands. So, it stands the reason that the ball matters. Are you starting to get the sense that this is a very complicated puzzle? It’s not quite like that in the other formats where every player plays every hole on their own ball. Aino gave me one example from the President’s Cup in Montreal last year where most of the par 3es were on odd holes, meaning not only did you have the same player hitting all those T-shots, but the other guy would be hitting the putts. And the first guy, the one teeing off, wouldn’t be hitting many drivers all day. But this can go as deep as well, who’s hitting the most approaches from 150 yards and who’s best at that. and then you have to account for four different partnerships in the same session and figure out which TE’s are the best fit for all of them. You can start to see how it becomes incredibly complex. And both of these guys made another point which is that it’s not surprising that the format itself can be volatile that it can lend itself to these huge swings. Here’s a great stat Aino gave me. The average score of a RDER Cup player in singles is 2.7 strokes under par when they finish. The average in alt shot is 1.2 underpar. Remember, in both cases, you’re playing just one ball. But clearly, having to share the course with a teammate makes everything harder, which makes for bigger swings and which makes it even more important for guys like Aino to help the captains maximize every single advantage. Now, we get to the second question. We know forsomes can be influenced more than other formats, but why does the home team come out on top? And this one, I’m just going to tell you, is harder. I thought maybe the away team wouldn’t know where the TE’s were, but actually they do. Those are now set by a basically neutral committee. Both teams learn the general tea locations early in REDRE Cup week, but they aren’t even told which TE’s or pins that they’re given will be used for which session. So, that doesn’t explain anything. And we’re back to the same question. What accounts for the home team advantage? I asked Justin Ray. The problem with him is the one time he has consulted for the US Soulheim Cup team in an away match in 2023 in Spain, he was hugely successful. The Americans won the Forsomes match 6-2. So that home advantage that we see in the Ryder Cup doesn’t apply for him. So no wonder he said this. Statistically speaking, I mean, you know, from my experience, I’ve done I’ve worked with the Solon Cup team for a road and a home event, and I found it to be pretty much identical in terms of the prep we did, and the outcome was pretty much the same, too, in alternate shot. So, um, it’s difficult to find a real great mathematical reason why uh it’s been so overwhelming. Jason Aino, on the other hand, has been on the front lines of watching the home team dominate in Forsoms, both good and bad for him. But in terms of an explanation, he didn’t really have much either. Yeah. You’re entangling that cuz I think you’re you’re you’re entangling sort of this phenomena with the home team. Yeah. And I’m saying I don’t I disentangle that. I don’t I think it’s um uh entirely idiosyncratic to the nature of forsomes and how much is required uh in terms of uh just preparation um and being and and being able to really match um the the the two partners together and really get it right. I wish I could pinpoint like a particular reason for you. Uh, and I it’s so disappointing for me to be able to tell to like to not be able to give you a good answer, but it’s just uh like every like I certainly have theories, but you know, I I not not particularly good enough that I’d be willing to share to be honest with you. I got the sense from both of these very very smart men that deep down they thought this was mostly statistical noise and small sample size that you know if you fast forwarded through five more RDER cups the scores would be more even. As Aino told me the volatility could easily stay and probably would but it could just as easily swing toward the away team. So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with a great big question mark. On paper, we have this very blatant, very lopsided disparity in one particular format that has persisted for a decade in the RDER Cup. And that seems to explain the era of the home blowout. But even when you get the literal smartest guys in the field, they’re not sure what’s going on, and they’re not sure it will even continue. So, we have something statistically decisive yet completely opaque. And in a very subjective way, I have to admit I love it because at the heart of the RDER Cup for the last 12 years is a total mystery that may never be solved. A strange stat that tells us how the home team is winning, but not Boy. [Music]