2025 Ryder Cup preview at Bethpage Black, Team USA looks to win at home and defeat Team Europe.
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Team USA
Scottie Scheffler
Xander Schauffele
Collin Morikawa
Patrick Cantlay
Russell Henley
Sam Burns
Justin Thomas
Bryson DeChambeau
J.J. Spaun
Harris English
Cameron Young
Ben Griffin
Team Europe
Rory McIlroy
Robert MacIntyre
Tommy Fleetwood
Justin Rose
Tyrrell Hatton
Rasmus Højgaard
Shane Lowry
Jon Rahm
Sepp Straka
Viktor Hovland
Ludvig Åberg
Matt Fitzpatrick
#RyderCup #BethpageBlack #TheStoneShieldsShow
Rder Cup gets going tomorrow and I’m a big golf guy. I haven’t talked golf on the show. Um if enough people are interested, I’ll continue talking about um golf obviously kind of a dead period here after the RDER Cup. Um but I I’m locked into the PGA Tour at all times. I absolutely love it. It’s unbelievable. I love watching it. Um, you know, those guys are some of the best, um, I’m not going to say some of the best athletes, but some of the most talented people that are professional athletes as I kind of escape my way around that statement there. But the bottom line is these guys are incredibly talented and they’re really, really good. 12 guys obviously on each team, Team USA and Europe. Six guys get in, they automatically qualify for each team. The captain picks the latter six guys. Um, Luke Donald again is the captain for Europe. Keegan Bradley, the captain for Team USA. I haven’t been this fired up about a captain and I don’t know in quite some time. Keegan Bradley is that dude. He is a competitor. He’s an awesome dude, by the way. He’s also a really good golfer and I think he is the perfect person to captain this ship for Team USA. They have to win, right? They have to win. They’re favored um against Europe. Obviously, it’s at home. One of the hardest things to do in golf, Rory Mroy said this. I think it’s absolutely true. One of the hardest things to do in golf is win an away Rder Cup. The US unfortunately saw that in Rome a couple of years ago. Big- time struggle for them. Europe wins that. I would argue on paper Europe has probably the better team top to bottom. But it’s at home. Beth Paige Black New York. That crowd is going to be incredibly feisty as it is in all RDER cups. They’re going to be out. They’re going to show out. They’re going to be ready to go cheering on Team USA and heckling the you know what out of team Europe. So automatic qualifiers for Team USA. Scotty Sheffler, JJ Spawn, Xander Schoffley, Russell Henley, Harris English, Bryson Dashambo. Dashambo is the key there or one of the keys. Obviously, Scotty Sheffller, best player in the world. I would argue the best athlete in the world right now. Scotty Sheffller is unbelievable. One of my favorite athletes. Guy’s insane. Now, in team events in the past, he has taken a small step back, meaning he’s not quite as dominant and brilliant as he is in the individual stuff. This year, this weekend, got to be different. and they need Scotty Sheffller to be the best player in the world and be the best player out of all 24 guys that are competing in this RDER Cup. But Bryson Dashambo, you have him. Obviously, he’s a live player, but he Bryson Dashambo is built for the RDER Cup. And there is nothing more that I want to see a singles match between him and Rory Maroy where he’s just chirping Rory. That would be awesome. Obviously, um you know, they had their history and their drama at Pinehurst a couple of years ago. Rory absolutely folded there at the end. Bryson wins at Pinehurst, picks up his second US Open. That was awesome. And by the way, I’m not fully a Bryson guy. He’s got some quirkiness and some things that I don’t agree with, but just in this spot and with this team, the US, they’re going to need Bryson to Shambo. And I think he’s the perfect guy to kind of, you know, be up to the challenge. And obviously at the Masters this past year, right, Rory obviously ends up winning that. He breaks through. He gets his first green jacket. Bryson was playing with him and he just didn’t have the game that Sunday. you know, he was missing too many iron shots and really was never a threat. And Justin Rose obviously kind of climbed back into it. He had a great first couple of days at the Masters, but he was really the guy applying pressure to Roy. Bryson really couldn’t do that because his game just really wasn’t in a good enough spot to do it. But obviously the Masters are a major. You’re not going to get guys, you know, chirping at each other or anything like that, but you’re going to get it in a Ryder Cup. And seeing Bryson Dashambo and Rory Mroy in a singles match, that would be absolute chills. And I think Bryson would be ready to deliver. But the X factor for me, no pun intended, is Xander Schoffley. Xander Schoffley is one of the best players in the world and he’s got to show up and be ready to go in this RED Cup. Why? Because there’s four guys that are rookies for this US team. JJ Spawn, Russell Henley, Ben Griffin, and Cam Young are all four rookies playing in your first RDER Cup. Now, I get it’s at home and not on the road, but the pressure that comes with that is immense. So the guys that have been there, done that, have to carry the load, particularly early in the week as that kind of was an issue in Rome. It’s like you were just behind before you even got going, you butt kicked the first day and it’s just we were fighting an uphill battle and you couldn’t even really get back into it. You have to get out to a hot start and you got to lean on those guys that have been there and competed in these moments. Xander Schoffley needs to be big in this RDER Cup for Team USA. The captain’s picks, Patrick Can, Ben Griffin, Colin Morawa, Justin Thomas, Cam Young. real quick on that team that Keegan assembled. I was one of those guys I was pulling for Keegan Bradley. I wanted him to be a playing captain. Um, you know, I think he’s he’s one of the top 12 players in the US. I think that’s very clear. He won this year as well. Um, but, you know, based on his conversations, meeting with the media, it’s become pretty obvious that the only way he was going to be on this team is if he got in by points. Top six guy. He wasn’t going to pick himself. I get it. You know, when he was asked to be the captain, he was brought here to be the captain. That was his job. And you can say what you want, but there’s no way that he could do his best job possible at being the captain if he also had the added stress of playing as well. So, he opted not to pick himself. Colin Morawa is the main one where I’m like, what what are we doing here? I don’t get that. Moraua has not played good golf down the stretch um this year on the PGA Tour. I get he’s played in these events before and with four rookies on the team. That is probably intriguing. That’s probably why he is here because the guy that I wanted was Chris Gddup who really just came on the scene at the end and he’s just a dog and you saw him really compete really well. Played really well over in Europe um at the Scottish Open and the British Open there as well. Um so he’s a guy that I would have picked over Morawa, but I get it. Keegan probably didn’t want to have five rookies on this team. Mind you, there’s only 12 spots, so he goes with Morawa. Don’t feel great about that. We’ll see how Colin plays. Justin Thomas, another captain’s pick. he’s built for these types of moments as well. When you look at the guys that are really going to have to play really well for Team USA is Sheffller, Schoffley, um, uh, Dashambo, and Thomas are the four guys that they got to play well. All right. And then hopefully you can get a lot out of some of the newer guys or whatever, but you can’t be like, you know, Russell Henley, he got in on points, right, his first time. JJ Spawn nails at the US Open, first RDER Cup. You just don’t know what you’re going to expect with those guys. the guys that have been there and have the ability to compete at a high level. Sheffller, Dashambo, Schoffley, and Justin Thomas have to carry the load this week and hopefully um you get some help beyond that. Um certainly going to need help beyond that obviously as well. Going to be fascinating to see how Keegan Bradley handles his pairings and what exactly he does as the weekend progresses. Team Europe, they’re loaded. Team Europe is absolutely loaded. There are no two ways around it. Roy Mackoy obviously is their guy. where Roy Mroy was talking, right? He’s gonna continue to talk. What was he saying after Rome? He’s like, “Yo, yeah, we’re celebrating this, but we’re gonna come to Beth Paige in a couple years and we’re gonna win there, too.” He said one of the only boxes now after winning the Masters that he wants to check off is winning an away Rder Cup. And I can’t stress to you how difficult it is to win an away Rder Cup. That’s something that Rory’s trying to do. And shoot, he’s got the team to do it. Robert McIntyre, he’s got experience. Tommy Fleetwood. He just broke through and won the FedEx Cup, right? The knock on him is he’s always in contention, but he can’t finish. He, by the way, has always been a good Ryder Cup player. Well, now he’s got the confidence of winning the FedEx Cup. Look out for Tommy Fleetwood. Justin Rose, kind of an ageless wonder. That guy’s got some feistiness and a nastiness about him. He loves competing in these team events. He’s getting up there in age, but he finds himself continuously in a spot where he can compete. He also recently won a PGA Tour event. Rasmus Hoygard is their only rookie. He was with the team and around the team a couple of years ago in Rome, but now he’s playing. He’s really the only wild card where it’s like, yeah, we don’t know exactly what we’re going to get from him. Tyrone Hatton, he’s playing really good golf. He was in the mix late, right? He was in the mix at the US Open when JJ Spawn won. He’s a hotthead. He gets heated, but maybe that’s the energy they need in a Ryder Cup. We will see. Those are their automatic qualifiers. And these captain picks are loaded as well. Shane Lowry, he’s great in Ryder Cups. He’s got the camaraderie and the, you know, the um the ability to really play well with guys like Rory and Bobby Mack and Fleetwood, right? Um John Rom, that’s a captain’s pick live guy, but I mean John Rom plays good in these Rder Cups. Scotty Sheffler, by the way, has had his number, so looking forward to, you know, that potential matchup if we see that. Sea, he’s played really good golf. Ludvig Oberg, great player, great young player. People believe he’s kind of that next guy where it’s like he’s going to win a major at some point. when’s it going to happen? Victor Havlin, very much an up and down year. He’s been great in Ryder Cups. Matt Fitzpatrick, major champion there as well. He was in the mix um you know, late in the FedEx Cup there as well. So, lots of really good players. This team Europe is loaded. They’re the underdogs in this. And I’m not ever going to sit in here and say you should bet on team Europe. I am an American. I’m a proud American. I’m a true American. I’m pulling for the USA. But I’m worried to be completely honest with you. Obviously, it’s home. People don’t understand how big of a advantage it is to be on your soil for the RDER Cup. It is a massive advantage and the US have that. But it’s all about, you know, matching it and um, you know, showing up in the moment. This is a big moment for Keegan Bradley as it relates to his legacy. Obviously, he’s a major championship. Obviously, this kind of second part of his career has been really good. He’s picked up some wins there as well. Keegan Bradley, you know, he’s an East Coast guy. Beth Paige, obviously, East Coast. He needs to win this. He needs to uh lead this team to victory. Zack Johnson a couple years ago was horrible captain. All right, I have a full belief in Keegan Bradley, but he’s got an uphill battle. You could argue he’s got the worst team and obviously he has less experience than Europe does on their side as well, but it’s going to be awesome. Starts tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Hopefully Team USA hoisting that trophy on Sunday. I love talking golf. Looking forward to continue doing it. But um Ryder Cup going to be awesome. That starts tomorrow.
