SAINT-QUENTIN-en-YVELINES, France — The pairings for the Ryder Cup’s opening Friday morning matches won’t be made official until the two captains divulge them Thursday, but the writing is on the wall — at least in pencil.
Based on the last two days of practice rounds, with one more practice session Thursday, it looks as if for the first day (a quartet of fourball matches in the morning, and a quartet of foursomes in the afternoon) U.S. captain Jim Furyk will pair Tiger Woods with Patrick Reed; Jordan Spieth with Justin Thomas; Phil Mickelson with Bryson DeChambeau; Dustin Johnson with Rickie Fowler; Brooks Koepka with Tony Finau; and Bubba Watson with Webb Simpson.
On the European side, it appears captain Thomas Bjorn is going to pair Rory McIlroy with Sergio Garcia; Justin Rose with Jon Rahm; Ian Poulter with Tommy Fleetwood; Paul Casey with Thorbjorn Olesen; and Francesco Molinari with Alex Noren.
Surely, an eraser can be used by the captains on their respective plans, but the exercise of people trying to guess the pairings has become somewhat of a wink-wink process, with players and captains not divulging the plan even though many outside the team rooms have a pretty good idea what the initial plan is.
“One of the tasks for every captain and the vice captains is really trying to figure out not only your best pairing, but how you get your best four or your best five, your best six?’’ Furyk said Wednesday. “How do you work together and make a strength and depth of strength throughout your team so you feel like at each session you have four great groups out on the golf course? That’s what both of us [him and Bjorn] are trying to do.’’
Furyk said the decisions on whom to pair with whom is a “combination’’ of analytics and feel.
“We have the analytics team in place and they have opinions on why guys match up well together from a statistics standpoint, but we really need to, as a captain, is understand the personality side and how guys mesh together and why that happens,’’ Furyk said.
When told Bjorn said he was 85 percent set on his Friday pairings, Furyk joked he was “86’’ percent set on his.
“Coming in here we both were going to have a plan of exactly what we wanted to try to do,’’ Furyk said. “There’s always going to be a reaction to what you’re seeing on the golf course, what you’re feeling, options to branch off of, but I’ve got a really good idea of what I’d like to do for Day 1. Maybe not quite as exact on Day 2, but have some options to branch off and work some different pairings.’’
Said Bjorn: “I’m pretty set in my mind where I want to go with this from the beginning.’’
One of the things Bjorn seems set on doing is pairing his five rookies with veterans — at least for the opening matches.
One of those rookies, Rahm, welcomed that.
“I can play with anybody, but I believe I will play with somebody experienced,’’ Rahm said.
“They are not going to put two rookies up on Friday morning. If I were to play with Rory, we’ve played a lot together, I think we know each other’s game very well and we have a very similar game plan in mind.
“I think the one thing that you can say about both of us is that we are both fearless. We really complement each other very well. But again, I could play with any of the other 11 guys, I have equally as good a time as I would with Rory.’’
One U.S. pairing that’ll likely happen at some point, perhaps in Friday’s foursomes (alternate shot) is Reed and Spieth, who became a revelation as rookies at Gleneagles in 2014 and were at Hazeltine in 2016. Their record together is 4-1-2.
Another is Thomas and Fowler, who went 2-0-1 at the Presidents Cup last year. Koepka and Johnson are close friends and could pair. They went 0-1 together at Hazeltine, but were 2-0 in the Presidents Cup.
Woods has taken a liking to DeChambeau and those two could also team up at some point. Same for Mickelson and Finau. Finau ranked 17th in strokes gained off the tee this season and Mickelson was ranked fourth in putting, so alternate shot could be a good bet for them together. Mickelson, too, could partner with Fowler. They went 1-1 together at Hazeltine.
Because of the five rookies, Europe’s pairings are more difficult to predict. It’s fair to think Garcia will be paired with Rahm, a fellow Spaniard, at some point. Rose and Stenson are 4-2 together in the past two Cups. Pairing Casey and Fleetwood, two Englishmen, looks like a possibility.
Poulter and Hatton, a fiery player who plays with a lot of emotion, could be a combustible duo. Poulter, who’s 12-4-2 in the Ryder Cup, could carry along the rookie Hatton. Poulter, too, has a 4-1 record when paired with Rose, so that surely is on Bjorn’s radar.
