2 unsung Ryder Cup heroes thwarted potential for disastrous Sunday

Luke Donald will be the first to tell you that the most important factor in winning a Ryder Cup is to have your stars play like stars. The 2025 European Ryder Cup team built a dominant lead over the Americans at Bethpage Black thanks to Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Jon Rahm being who Europe needed them to be.

“You need your big players to step up,” Donald said on Sunday at Bethpage Black after Europe’s 15-13 win. “Looking at Rome, Viktor [Hovland] was our FedExCup champ. We had Rory. We had Jon. They had 10.5 points without playing together once in Rome.

“This week, Rory has won four out of five. Jon, three out of five. … You could argue Tommy is maybe four out of five. You absolutely need your big guns to fire, and that’s what we are proud of, that the U.S. guys’ big guys, their guns, they didn’t get as many points as ours.”

For two days at Bethpage Black, this was true. McIlroy, Rahm, Fleetwood and Justin Rose were dominant as Europe built a 12-5 lead following Viktor Hovland’s Sunday WD due to a neck injury. But Europe’s big guns were clearly tired from the mental grind of the Ryder Cup. And as their stars fell during Sunday singles while the Americans mounted a furious rally, Donald needed others to save the day.

Shane Lowry’s tie with Russell Henley eventually secured Europe’s retention of the Cup, but the blue-and-gold wouldn’t have conquered Bethpage without two critical early matches that stabilized the proceedings and allowed Lowry to nail the final blow.

The first came from Matt Fitzpatrick, who jumped all over Bryson DeChambeau early in the third match of the day. Fitzpatrick went 5 up through seven holes only to see DeChambeau rally to tie the match on 17. With Rose, Fleetwood and Rahm already defeated and McIlroy running on fumes against Scottie Scheffler, Europe needed Fitzpatrick to salvage a tie against DeChambeau to catch its breath.

Fitzpatrick, who entered the week with a career 1-7-0 Ryder Cup record, split the fairway at 18 and hit his approach shot short to 39 feet. With the pressure ratcheted up, Fitzpatrick hit his lag putt to 10 inches to get in with par and secure a half point for Europe. He finished the week going 2-1-1 and brought Europe closer to victory by stopping one of America’s big guns from completing what would have been a momentum-fueling comeback.

Moments after Fitzpatrick secured a half point, Ludvig Åberg, who was a Ryder Cup rookie in Rome in 2023 but has blossomed into a star since, put the finishing touches on his match against Patrick Cantlay, winning 2 up to bring Europe to within a half point of retaining the Cup. The final member of Europe’s Sunday singles “firewall” was the only one to put a blue flag on the board.

“Today, I was proud of the way that I played,” Åberg said Sunday. “And I’m proud of being a part of this team. There’s 11 guys that I have tremendous joy to have been a part of and a captain that I’m so happy that he put trust in me, and I’m just trying to repay that by playing good golf. Yeah, today is a day that I’m going to remember for a very, very long time.”

As for Fitzpatrick, the four-time Ryder Cupper’s heroic will best be remembered not by a quote or a single shot, but by two gestures that will live in European highlight reels. The first was a celebratory moment with the visiting European crowd on Saturday evening after he and Tyrrell Hatton finished off Sam Burns and Patrick Cantlay in four-ball to give the Europeans a seven-point lead.

“I have to cut this short,” Fitzpatrick said of his interview after he and Hatton’s momentum-building win. “I want to go celebrate with them. The atmosphere is out of this world.”

The second came Sunday as he was locked in a battle with DeChambeau.

After winning the 8th and 9th holes, DeChambeau had cut Fitzpatrick’s lead to 3 up. With a wave of red building and the American crowd trying to boost DeChambeau to a comeback, Fitzpatrick needed a response. DeChambeau appeared ready to cut Fitzpatrick’s lead to two when he birdied the 12th, but the Englishman answered with a birdie of his own and gestured to the crowd to calm down — this would not be America’s version of the “Miracle at Medinah.”

The unsung heroics of Fitzpatrick and Åberg are representative of the larger reason for Europe’s Ryder Cup victory — a culture that asks 12 of the world’s best players to check their egos at the team-room door and do what is asked to cement their place in history. It’s a culture that has buy-in from every single member.

“I think those weeks we spend together are the ones we remember the most and the ones we cherish the most because of the time we get to spend with each other,” Donald said of his success as captain. “That’s a big part of my captaincy is to create an environment where these guys are having the best weeks of their lives, honestly. We’ll always remember this. We’ll always go down in history. We talk about all the people that came before us that paved the way for us. Now future generations will talk about this team tonight and what they did and how they were able to overcome one of the toughest environments in all of sport.

“And that is inspiring to me and that’s what Rory gets and all these other 11 guys get, as well.”

And Europe needed every single one to conquer Bethpage and write their names in European Ryder Cup history.