Ryder Cup Odds: Smart Money Sees Upside in Underdog Euros

On a week-to-week basis, professional golf is almost exclusively determined by stroke-play competition. The player with the lowest score over the course of a four-day tournament wins. Then there’s the biennial Ryder Cup, where stroke-play is set aside during a three-day, match-play event that pits 12 Americans against 12 Europeans.

The 44th edition of the vaunted competition will be held in Rome, with play beginning on Friday and concluding on Sunday at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club. According to the DraftKings Sportsbook, the U.S. is favored to win (-115) while Europe has +125 underdog odds. 

Given that 28 points are up for grabs — Friday and Saturday consist of 16 team matches, with a quartet of foursomes and four-ball matches on each day, while 12 singles matches are played on Sunday — there is the possibility of a 14-14 tie, which would ensure that the Americans retain the Cup as the defending champions. (The odds of a tie are set at +1,000.)

How are these odds determined? Because the event is so fundamentally different from the rest of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, sportsbooks don’t have much to work with, says veteran golf oddsmaker Jeff Sherman, who is the vice president of risk at SuperBook Sports and also runs golf betting resource site golfodds.com. 

So what might seem like a simple question — who is favored to win the Ryder Cup? — comes down to the golfers’ recent form, how players have historically performed in the event, which team has home-continent advantage, and the fact that the Europeans have, as Sherman says, “taken this more seriously, especially when it’s in Europe.”

While the Europeans have home-course advantage, and while the U.S. has not won in Europe since 1993, the Americans are favored for a couple reasons. They won the 2021 Ryder Cup, 19-9, and seven of the 12 players from that team are returning this year. The Europeans, meanwhile, are fielding a team for the first time since 1995 without any of their stalwarts Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood or Ian Poulter. 

The U.S. announced its team on Aug. 29, with captain Zach Johnson selecting Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Rickie Fowler, Sam Burns, and Justin Thomas joining automatic qualifiers Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Brian Harman, Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa and Xander Schauffele.

Spieth and Thomas have historically paired well. In three team events — the 2018 and 2021 Ryder Cups, as well as last year’s Presidents Cup — they are 8-2-0 as a team. 

Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele have proven to be another successful pairing. The close friends have teamed up in each of the past three years at the Zurich Classic in New Orleans, where they finished tied for 11th in 2021; first in 2022; and tied for fourth in April. Their record in Ryder and Presidents Cups is 6-3-0 in the last three U.S. victories at the two events. 

The Californians boast two of the most well-rounded skill sets in golf. Over the last six months, according to Data Golf, Schauffele has been the third-best player in the world and Cantlay has been the fifth-best. “With the success that they’ve had, in both this format and both in the Zurich down in New Orleans as a team event, you’re going to have to pay an extra tax when that team is priced up together,” Sherman says of the Cantlay-Schauffele duo. 

Given that “extra tax” regarding the Cantlay-Schauffele team, as well as the aforementioned dependability of the Spieth-Thomas pairing, the Americans could surge to an early edge on the backs of their strongest partnerships — so long as the rest of the 12-man roster chips in. 

And with just one Ryder Cup this century being won via a comeback during singles play — with the Europeans completing the Miracle at Medinah in 2012 — having a team (or in this case, teams) that can consistently get it done over the first two days is a key data point for why the Americans are favored. 

A week after the U.S. squad was announced, European captain Luke Donald picked Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka, Shane Lowry, Justin Rose, Ludvig Åberg and Nicolai Højgaard to join automatic qualifiers Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Tyrrell Hatton, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Robert MacIntyre.

On both sides, the names you expected to be there were mostly there. That gave oddsmakers a calibrated gauge on how to handicap the event, because many of the players feature heavily on gamblers’ cards on a weekly basis. But odds, of course, are only a best-guess prediction of outcomes. 

The Europeans have a hot player in Hovland, who is headed into his second Ryder Cup. He ended the PGA Tour season on a tear, winning the final two events of the FedEx Cup Playoffs to take home the $18 million prize for capturing the FedEx Cup. Contrast Hovland’s recent play with that of Fowler, who in July won his first tour event in over four years (Rocket Mortgage Classic) but has since played in five tournaments without a top-10 finish.

That discrepancy is part of an overarching narrative heading into the Ryder Cup, and a reason why Sherman views this as much closer to an even competition. 

Just look at the leaderboard at the BMW PGA Championship, the DP World Tour’s flagship event which concluded on Sept. 17 in England. New Zealand’s Ryan Fox won the tournament at 18-under-par, but the list of European Ryder Cup team members in contention should serve as a warning shot to the American side. Hatton, Rahm, Hovland, McIlroy, Fleetwood, Åberg and Straka finished in the top 10, with Fitzpatrick and Lowry finishing in a tie for 18th. 

That bodes trouble for the Americans, who could be dogged by the putting struggles of Scheffler or the recent mediocre form of Fowler, Spieth, Thomas, Burns and Koepka.

“The U.S. is solid top-to-bottom, but I don’t think there’s that much of a discrepancy on the European side either to make the U.S. as large of a favorite as they were just a month ago,” Sherman says. 

Where did Sherman put his money? 

“I played Europe a little while back, just because of the price,” he says. “I liked the strength of the European team. I don’t think it’s that far off of the U.S. team, and I thought the price really should be closer to a pick-em match, being played on European soil.”