Europe thrashed the USA in the last Ryder Cup in Rome two years ago.
And, in theory, going into battle at Bethpage Black in New York with 11 of the same 12 players is a good idea.
Six qualified automatically while Donald shaped the team to look almost identical to his Rome squad by picking Shane Lowry, Viktor Hovland, Ludvig Aberg, Matt Fitzpatrick, Jon Rahm and Sepp Straka as his wildcards.
They were safe picks and logical in many ways. But surely something different is needed to win on overseas soil.
In the last nine Ryder Cups, the home team has triumphed on eight occasions. The outlier required a miracle.
Indeed, Europe’s astonishing fightback from 10-4 down in 2012 in Illinois was coined ‘The Miracle of Medinah’.
So did Donald get it right with his picks? We’re far from sure and would have rolled the dice with these two significant changes.
OUT: Matt Fitzpatrick
The numbers are pretty damning. Matt Fitzpatrick has played in three Ryder Cups and lost seven of his eight matches.
In his two away Ryder Cups, Fitzpatrick lost both matches at Hazeltine in 2016 while at Whistling Straits in 2021 he lost three out of three.
Sure, he’s since won a US Open (2022) but the great Ryder Cup players tended to have hit the ground running in the biennial showdown.
Much of this intense showdown is played in the head. Fitzpatrick will be made aware of his terrible Ryder Cup record time and time again and that makes him vulnerable even if his latest form is encouraging.
IN: Marco Penge
Remember Thomas Pieters in the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine?
The Belgian was a massively in-form, big-hitting rookie with no experience at this level and yet he justified his wildcard pick from Darren Clarke by emerging as Europe’s top points scorer with 4pts out of 5.
For Pieters in 2016, read Marco Penge in 2025.
The Englishman hits it a mile which is ideal for lengthy Bethpage Black and he’s on a roll having posted a win, a sixth and an eighth in his last three DP World Tour starts.
Penge would be ideal for fourballs and with a nothing-to-lose, all-this-is-a-bonus attitude, he could have been the ‘X’ factor needed to help pull off that increasingly uphill task: winning a Ryder Cup away from home.
Fitzpatrick is a known, beatable entity; Penge is a maverick that Bradley and his team could have found hard to tame if the Englishman really clicked.
OUT: Sepp Straka
It’s hard to maintain excellence for a full calendar year and, without doubt, had the Ryder Cup been played in the first half of the year, Sepp Straka would have been one of Europe’s most in-form players.
But things are different now. He pulled out of the recent BMW Championship with “personal issues” and then finished 30th and last in the season-ending Tour Championship.
Hopefully all is well but it seems that this Ryder Cup could be coming at the wrong time for Straka.
Often there’s a hard-luck story and the Austrian would have felt justifiably miffed had he not been chosen – even if his play in the majors this year (MC-MC-MC-52) is perhaps another concern.
But sometimes hard decisions need to be made and Donald has maybe taken the easy option on this one.
IN: Matt Wallace
Again, let’s go back to the idea of needing something extreme to win an away Ryder Cup.
If a poll was run asking which player was most obsessed by making the European Team, the winner would likely have been Matt Wallace.
He eventually finished 12th on the automatic qualifying list, one place beneath Matt Fitzpatrick, after finishing runner-up in the European Masters in Switzerland on Sunday.
Wallace was reduced to tears on Sky Sports afterwards, knowing that perhaps only a win would have given him a chance of making Donald’s team. In truth, even that might not have been enough.
And yet, he could have been a difference maker. Wallace would have brought enormous passion and boundless energy to the dressing room. And you sense he’d have loved giving it to the rowdy New York crowds.
And here’s the final, little-known, twist. Wallace played in the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black and finished third. He was the only European in the top seven.
With current form, course form, a previous win on the PGA Tour and a spiky attitude made for the bearpit of an away Ryder Cup, the case for Wallace to have been handed a wildcard was strong.
Read next: Ranked: Team Europe from strongest player to weakest
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