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Home improvement: How Ryder Cup captains can weaponize the golf course to their advantage

<i>Jamie Squire/Getty Images via CNN Newsource</i><br/>

By CNN Newsource

Published September 24, 2025 5:45 am

By Don Riddell, CNN

Farmingdale, New York (CNN) — Home advantage always counts for something in sport, but arguably it is most important in golf’s biennial Ryder Cup.

The American team hasn’t been able to win overseas since 1993, and no travelling team from Europe has won on foreign soil since their victory at Medinah in 2012. For Team Europe, three of their last four road trips have ended up with them being mauled by an average of 7 points. The team captains will do anything possible to help their team and for the event host, that can mean weaponizing the very golf course itself.

To the untrained eye, Ryder Cup golf courses might all look rather similar, but if you know where to look, the home captain’s fingerprints will be everywhere. At Bethpage Black this week, the players will all walk past the infamous sign on the first tee that warns of the “extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled players,” but the Europeans will know that it’s been tweaked to make it even harder for them.

The US captain admitted as much to CNN Sports on Monday.

“We look at the analytical data and how our players perform at their best and we set up the course accordingly,” Keegan Bradley said. “One of the great things being a captain is to have a say in how the course is set up.”

Armed with just a few lawnmowers, some bags of fertilizer and a bespoke watering regimen, golf course superintends can drastically alter the way that every hole looks, feels and plays, but it seems as though the Ryder Cup had already been going for 30 years before anyone thought to give themselves an edge.

Back then, the Cup was contested between the USA and Great Britain and Ireland, and – by 1957 – the Americans had won seven times in a row. The Brits and Irish were desperate for a change in fortune, so their captain Dai Rees analyzed the playing styles of the two teams and figured out a winning strategy.

He told the staff at Lindrick in Yorkshire to stop watering the fairways and greens to make them firm and fast, and his plan worked to perfection. The Americans, who were used to softer targets, bounced through the greens and into the thick rough that he’d grown especially for them on the other side. The home team knew what to expect and pulled off a surprise victory.

There are many ways that a golfer can plot their way around a course, and long hitters would generally have an advantage. But a bigger ball can also be a lot less accurate and so booming drives are more likely to run into trouble. The Americans tend to hit the ball further and so European captains have tried to manipulate courses that will make them think twice about using a driver.

Seve Ballesteros’s Valderrama in 1997 was tight and tricky and at The Belfry in 2002, Sam Torrance grew the rough and narrowed the fairways at 285 yards to deter the Americans from trying to outdrive the bunkers.

In response, the 2008 American captain Paul Azinger left no stone unturned in his quest to help his players at Valhalla.

“Europe’s done a great job of exploiting golf course advantage on us for a long time,” Azinger said at the time. “If there is a perceived advantage, I’ll try to exploit it.”

He wanted his “big dogs to eat,” so he set up the tee boxes 300 yards from the back edge of the bunkers and grew the rough longer in front of them. He even instructed the course superintendent Mark Wilson to cut down two tree limbs, specifically to help just one of his players, JB Holmes. The two became so close over the project that Wilson even named his dog “Zinger.”

These days, Ryder Cup captains have access to reams of data on everything they could possibly imagine, but there can be more to the setup than trying to reward your players and penalize your opponents.

In 2016 at Hazeltine, the American captain Davis Love III said that he didn’t want any “sneaky stuff,” instead opting to make the course easier – for everyone. He wanted as many birdies as possible, figuring that would fire up the American crowd and their partisan energy would help the home team.

It worked and the US romped to victory, but some feel as though course manipulation is weakening the credibility of the competition. The European veteran Justin Rose said that the easy pin placements in 2016 made him feel like he was playing in a pro-am tournament.

Many will be hoping that the notorious Bethpage Black will at least present a serious test to the world’s top golfers this week. As an alumnus of St John’s University, Bradley has been coming here since he was a teenager.

“I’ve played this course 50 to 100 times,” he told CNN. “This is probably the best condition I’ve ever seen it.”

Whilst not quite as familiar, some of the European players do have experience at Bethpage – Rory McIroy and Justin Rose played the U.S. Open here in 2009, and more than half of them played the 2019 PGA Championship.

Team Europe captain Luke Donald beleives that even if the course has been tricked up to benefit the Americans, it won’t be any tougher than they’ve experienced before on this side of the Atlantic.

“I think it’s nothing out of the ordinary,” he told CNN Sports, “You look at previous Ryder Cups held in the U.S., not a ton of rough, the greens are a good speed. Bethpage is a tough course, but it’s certainly not set up like a U.S. Open.”

Donald was speaking alongside Bradley in the media conference and if he had any more thoughts on the matter, he wouldn’t say. He’s won all five of the Ryder Cups that he’s been involved in as a player and a captain, and if he has spotted that his opponents have an edge he’s probably too wise to admit it.