The DP World Tour season is just heating up with multiple PGA Tour golfers now available to compete in some of its biggest tournaments. Traveling to the K Club for this week’s Irish Open and Wentworth for next week’s BMW PGA Championship, which doubles as the circuit’s flagship event, the DP World Tour will see many of its familiar faces back inside the ropes as they prepare for the Ryder Cup at the end of September.
Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry and Tyrrell Hatton are in the field for the 2025 Irish Open alongside European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald. McIlroy enters as a better than 4-1 favorite with Lowry fourth on the oddsboard at 16-1, per FanDuel Sportsbook. As it stands, 11 of the 12 players on the European team will play next week’s BMW PGA Championship with Sepp Straka the only one holding out as his family recently welcomed a child into the world.
Two years ago, Europe as a whole found its footing at the BMW PGA Championship as seemingly every member of the team contended in their final action before playing in the Ryder Cup at Marco Simone. McIlroy explained why time under the gun can only be seen as a positive.
“I’d love to get myself into contention and at least be a little bit sharper than I was at BMW and at the Tour Championship,” he said. “I figured out my ball striking at least in Atlanta. I felt like I hit the ball terribly at the BMW, but I putted well. Then, in Atlanta, I hit the ball better, but I putted terribly. So, just need to try to piece everything together.
“These are two big weeks to make sure the game is sharp, but the only way to tell you’re as sharp as you want to be is getting yourself in contention under pressure and the sort of business end of things on Sunday. It’s important to do that. It’s important to give myself a couple of chances to win. Ultimately, winning, that would be lovely, but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary going into the Ryder Cup, but it would be great to at least feel really good about my game and looking ahead to Bethpage [Black].”
McIlroy has been adamant since the winner’s press conference in Rome about his desire to claim a Ryder Cup on American soil. The eight-time participant was a member of the last European team to accomplish the feat in 2012 at Medinah, and now, he comes into this Ryder Cup as the most seasoned player on either side.
It is experience on which Europe will lean as it returns 11 of its 12 players from the winning team in 2023. Players like Robert MacIntyre have gone from Ryder Cup rookies to major championship contenders and candidate to take on additional roles. Lowry is similarly an elder statesmen as he will tee it up in his third straight Ryder Cup, second in the United States.
“I feel like we have the same team as last time, and I feel like everybody’s become a better player,” Lowry said. “So, I think we have a better chance. It’s going to be hard. It’s not as easy as just copy and paste from what we did in Rome because there’s a lot different challenges, and the golf course plays differently. The golf course in Rome was set up perfectly for us, and not only in the way it was set up with the rough and the way the greens were but just how the course played for foursomes and four-ball settled pretty well for our pairings. So, I don’t know if they’re planning on changing that.
“But yeah, I feel like our team is very, very accomplished. A lot of the guys are playing well. I’m very excited for Bethpage. I played really well the last few rounds there the last time, but it’s going to be a different golf course for the Ryder Cup. It’s probably not going to be playing as physical. It will just be interesting to see. That’s what the practice trip is going to be great for the team to see how they set up the golf course. It will be good for us to play it twice that week.”
With his roster largely the same, Donald is following a similar blueprint in terms of preparation. He will lead a scouting trip to Bethpage Black at the conclusion of the BMW PGA Championship. Europe will charter a flight over to New York where the team plans to play Bethpage Black across two days.
“I expect the golf course to not really be set up like a U.S. Open,” Donald said. “Obviously, these are 12 world-class players that understand how to prepare themselves in the right way to give themselves time for a big event like the Ryder Cup. I don’t get involved with that. They have their team. They understand the best way to practice.
“We’ll give them a pretty detailed statistical roadmap of what we think the course demands, what’s happened in the past and what are things to maybe look at and give that to them, and they can use that however they want. But, individually, it’s really up to them and their teams to figure out exactly how they want to be primed for that week.”
Donald’s idea is to keep his team in the United States in the same time zone once it arrives so that the bodies of his 12 players are fresh and without any semblance of jet lag — something he noticed that certainly hindered the United States two years ago.