FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — The No. 1 player in the world looked anything but on Day 1 of the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black.
Scottie Scheffler entered this event expecting to dominate as he has done on the PGA Tour and at the majors this year. Instead, the three-time major winner went winless in both sessions Friday and is 2-4-2 all time in the event. He has not won a full point since 2021, when it was played at Whistling Straits.
“When you’re the No. 1 player in the world, you have a day that maybe it wasn’t his best, normally you bounce back,” U.S. team captain Keegan Bradley said. “We are not worried about Scottie Scheffler.”
Playing with J.J. Spaun in the afternoon four-ball, Scheffler was not as sharp as he typically is from tee to green and looked confused multiple times on the greens, missing putt after putt.
“We gave ourselves plenty of opportunities,” Scheffler said. “It really just came down to me not holing enough putts.”
The most striking result, however, came in the morning, when Scheffler and foursomes partner Russell Henley lost 5 and 3 to Ludvig Åberg and Matt Fitzpatrick.
“We just didn’t hole enough putts early. We had some chances,” said Scheffler, who will play with Henley again in Saturday morning foursomes. “I think the putts just didn’t fall.”
Putting was a much-discussed topic among the American players who struggled Friday. Bryson DeChambeau, who played with Justin Thomas in the morning foursomes and Ben Griffin in the afternoon, also lost both of his matches.
“They made everything,” DeChambeau said. “I felt like I was clutch when I needed to be, but … there were so many putts that just didn’t go in for us that went in for them. Luck is on their side right now.”
Bradley cited several times the number of putts the Europeans made, as well. And though he inserted Cameron Young into the foursomes lineup in place of Thomas for Saturday, the rest of those pairings that lost Friday morning, including Collin Morikawa and Harris English (who fell 5 and 4 to Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood), will be teeing it up again in the morning session.
“We’re sticking to our plan,” Bradley said. “We’re not going to panic and make those sort of mistakes. We’re going to stick to what we know.”
According to DataGolf, the Morikawa-English pairing is the worst potential tandem of any of the 132 possible combinations for either team based on strokes gained.
“We came in here this week with a plan, and the players are prepared for that plan,” Bradley said. “We look at the data. We look at the strokes gained. In the morning session, we just didn’t make any putts. Really, hardly any at all. Everything else was pretty good.”
Bradley said his message to the team after Friday emphasized that only 28% of the total points have been decided and that there’s still plenty of golf ahead. But this is the fourth-largest deficit the U.S. team has faced on Day 1 of a Ryder Cup on home soil, according to ESPN Research. Of the three previous times, only one has resulted in the American team coming back to win: 1999 at Brookline.
“Listen, we knew this was going to be difficult. We knew this was going to be tough,” Bradley said. “We didn’t expect to come in here and this not be a difficult week. … What a stage, what an opportunity that they have to go out there tomorrow and prove to everybody that now they are down, now they have got to go catch up. I like that.”
