"Henrik Stenson and his vice-captains, with hopefully some new blood in his European side, are going to have to play out of their skins"; Marco Simone Golf and Country Club hosts next year's Ryder Cup from September 29 to October 1, live on Sky Sports
Tuesday 15 March 2022 19:55, UK
Henrik Stenson finds himself captaining a European side that will be underdogs on home soil, says Sky Sports expert Rob Lee...
When you look at Henrik Stenson's background, with his major win and Ryder Cup appearances, silver medallist at the Olympics, he has all the credentials to be captain.
But he is going to be up against it.
Let's face it, the young Americans at Whistling Straits tore the Europeans apart. They played for the first time with swagger - Americans are very good at swagger but they don't have it a lot of the time when playing Europe.
Europe are always better than the sum of their parts and the Americans are better in terms of their world rankings. However, I think the last win for the USA was a massive one for them.
Europe are really up against it when we get to Rome. Stenson and his vice-captains, with hopefully some new blood in his European side, are going to have to play out of their skins.
Zach Johnson and his men are going to come to Rome and they will view that as a very difficult task, but they will again be bringing the best team and they'll be trying to win on European soil, which isn't something they've done very successfully in recent Ryder Cups.
Can Stenson galvanise the European team? You've got to have the players. What makes a good coach? Good players. It's absolutely essential.
If he has got a group of young bucks that really start to show in the next 18 months that they want to be part of a Ryder Cup, and they have the sort of mental fortitude to fight as one of the 12 against the might of the Americans, maybe they can turn it into an advantage as a European side playing at home.
But I'm telling you now, it is not going to be easy. It's going to be very difficult. Europe won't be the favourites on home soil.
Europe have always been good at bringing a group of players - who are not as good as the Americans in the world rankings - but the togetherness and team spirit that we seem to get for so many Ryder Cups played a massive part in what would be three days of excruciating competition. They came out in front more often they didn't.
However, there's a sea change. Like I said, the Americans have got their swagger back. They love to win and hate to lose, and they do winning very well.
Remember the scenes on the first tee on the Saturday with Justin Thomas and Daniel Berger, beer swigging and slamming beers into the turf. That would be unheard of unless you were absolutely cocksure that you had it in the bag. And they were.
They're going to bring that confidence to the next Ryder Cup. Europe have got to find a way to get in and upset that a little bit.
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