HAVEN, Wis. – Rory McIlroy has been benched.
The heart of Team Europe will not be playing in Saturday morning’s Foursomes session at Whistling Straits, with captain Padraig Harrington sitting one of his main players who was far from his best on Friday.
For the first time in his Ryder Cup career – which started in 2010 – McIlroy lost two matches on the same day. And after playing in every session since 2010 (26 in all), he will sit for the first time in his Ryder Cup days.
McIlroy and Ian Poulter lost the first five holes and were whipped, 5 and 3, in morning Foursomes by Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele.
In afternoon Four-Ball, he and Shane Lowry were trounced, 4 and 3, by Tony Finau and Harris English.
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McIlroy has won just two points in his last eight matches in the Ryder Cup.
With one of its big guns misfiring, Europe needs to regroup and regroup quickly in the 43rd Ryder Cup as the U.S., which has lost four of the last five matches, took a commanding 6-2 lead, the largest lead by the USA after the first day since all of Europe joined the Ryder Cup in 1979.
Europe won just one of the eight matches and halved two others. That’s it.
“It wasn’t a good start, but there’s still a lot to play for,” Harrington said. “Coming out tomorrow, we need a big day.”
Harrington spoke to the media before the pairings were released, so no one knows how tough it was for him to sit McIlroy.
“We can come back from 6-2,” McIlroy said after losing in the afternoon.
The U.S. will have a say in that matter, obviously.
Captain Steve Stricker’s message to his team from the get-go was to out-prepare their European counterparts. But you wonder if Stricker was prepared for this. Riding a boisterous partisan crowd and superb play from all 12 of his charges, the U.S. led, 3-1, after morning Foursomes in light wind and calm temperatures and then won two matches in the afternoon Four-Ball and halved the other two matches when British Open weather arrived and flags started whipping and temperatures started dropping.
Dustin Johnson, for the first time in his Ryder Cup career, won two matches on the same day. As did Xander Schauffele. Patrick Cantlay won one and halved another.
Now Stricker will work to make sure his team doesn’t become complacent.
“My message to the guys before I left is tomorrow is a new day,” Stricker said. “Let’s just go out tomorrow and try to win that first session again in the morning and pretend today never happened, and let’s keep our foot down and continue to play the golf that we know we can play.
“These guys realize what’s happened in the past and not to take anything for granted, and this was just the first day.”
“This is a great start, but the job’s not over,” said Bryson DeChambeau, who teamed with Scottie Scheffler to tie Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton in the afternoon Four-Balls. “We have two more days. A lot more golf. And we cannot lose our mindset to win.”
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