It wasn’t quite as emphatic as the 3-1 victory in the opening foursomes session, but the European team have stretched their advantage to three points at the end of day one at Bethpage Black.
Jon Rahm followed his morning foursomes victory over Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas with another impressive takedown of the U.S. team’s major stars in world number one Scottie Scheffler and reigning U.S. Open champion, J.J. Spaun.
While Hatton sat out, Rahm was joined by Sepp Straka and, similar to the opening session, lost the first hole but rallied to complete a 3&2 victory.
While they were first match out and didn’t need to go down the 17th, they still weren’t the first match to come to a conclusion. Match number three saw Cameron Young and Rasmus Hojgaard make their first Ryder Cup appearances, playing alongside Justin Thomas and Ludvig Aberg respectively, but while it was a day to remember for New York native Young, it was certainly one to forget for Hojgaard.
After securing a 6&5 win, Thomas paid tribute to his partner’s performance.
“I really just kind of sat back and watched the show,” he said. “I tried to help when I could, but I’m just so happy for Cam but I’m proud of him. Playing in your first Ryder Cup is really hard, but playing in front of your home fans I would imagine is even harder, but he definitely played like the veteran today.”
Only one of the early matches went beyond the 15th hole, but both of the remaining matches in session two went the distance. Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose won the 11th to get back all-square with Bryson DeChambeau and Ben Griffin, who was also making his first Ryder Cup appearance, but birdies on 14 and 16 from Fleetwood guaranteed at least another half-point for the boys in blue.
A clutch birdie on 17 from Bryson brought the match to the last, and with Griffin and Fleetwood both facing eight-footers for birdie, Justin Rose removed all doubt by pouring in a 12-footer of his own to guarantee that Europe would at the very least hold their ground in the afternoon session.
That left just Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns on the course. Of the eight matches played on day one, this was the only one that saw more than one change of the lead. The Americans drew first blood, but Lowry poured in a lengthy birdie putt on the second to level the match and back-to-back wins on six and seven put more blue on the leaderboard.
But Cantlay and Burns weren’t going down easy, and after trading wins on 10 and 11, two U.S. wins in a row brought the match back to level going into the final five holes.
With Lowry struggling a little, McIlroy stood tall, pouring in birdie putts on 16 and 17 to secure halves after Cantlay had beat him into the hole on the former and with Burns in close on the latter, and down 18 they went.
After Lowry and Cantlay both secured pars, Burns’ 15-footer for birdie dipped low, leaving the stage clear for McIlroy to complete a hat-trick of closing birdies. But with the jeers that had been ever-present throughout, his putt slid by, leaving McIlroy bitterly frustrated despite the great start the Europeans had put together.
“Yeah, it was great,” McIlroy said. “Absolute honour to partner with this man again and get out there. You know, we got a half a point. Obviously right now, disappointed I didn’t hole out for a full point, but it’s been a great day for Europe. We have come out of the gates really strong like we wanted to. Yeah, we should be really proud of ourselves.
“It was rowdy and lively. They made it difficult for us. You know, but I felt like Shane and I, we handled that really well and dug in. Made some good swings and good putts when we needed to.”
Lowry is adamant that the three-point lead won’t change the Europeans’ mindsets, stating that Luke Donald will be working hard to keep them focused on the overall goal.
“Obviously, we’re going to be very happy [tonight],” he said. “But, you know, we had this the first day in Rome and Luke is a great captain.
“He’s not going to be getting too excited. We’ve got a job to do. We’ve got two tough days ahead of us. You saw it was a bit rowdy out there this afternoon, and you know it’s going to get like that over the next two days and I feel like we did a great job today.
“We would have loved to have won that point, but like Rory said, an amazing day for Europe. And, yeah, we’ll take it.”
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