Europe said to have already found their replacements for Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood ahead of the Ryder Cup in 2025

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With 2025 being a Ryder Cup year, there’s an added excitement to the golfing calendar and Team Europe will be looking forward to defending their trophy from Rome in 2023.

Luke Donald’s team were by far and away the better team and they’ll go to Bethpage Black full of confidence and with a feeling they can win on foreign soil.

As it stands, there has been progress made with the LIV Golf side of things but with no OWGR points available for those players and a lack of events on the PGA and DP World Tours, it remains to be seen who will make each team’s final 12.

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The LIV split, as we all know, has ruptured the game and the consequences of the fallout are well known.

Now, golf analyst Rex Hoggard has questioned whether the LIV issues will in fact impact Team USA more than Team Europe.

Why Team Europe are benefitting more from LIV Golf split than Team USA

With Thomas Detry being the fifth winner in six PGA Tour events this season after his victory at the WM Phoenix Open, the alarm bells may well be ringing when it comes to Keegan Bradley and his Team USA camp.

And according to golf analyst Rex Hoggard, Luke Donald and Team Europe will be delighted with how things are going right now.

“I think there is one American winner on the PGA Tour so far this season and we have played six events. If I am Luke Donald I am sitting at home on my couch in Florida and smiling to myself at the way this is stacking up. It’s a long way between now and September to Bethpage and the Ryder Cup this year but you look at all those players who seem to be in really good form, as opposed to the Americans, and I am with you,” Hoggard said.

“We had this conversation two years ago when LIV Golf and the fracture in golf was first formed and you had to make a decision. I think Henrik Stenson was going to be captain and then they removed him and Luke took over.

Adding further comment to his opinion, Hoggard then suggested that Europe have seamlessly found replacements for some of their long-term big hitters.

“I remember my argument being at the time that I feel like this divide whatever LIV Golf is going to become, it is going to impact the European team more than the US team. I felt like the US Team was just going to reload and you were coming off Whistling Straits at that point and it felt like that American team was stacked and there was no reason to look back.

“Now, in the wake of what happened in Rome, at the last Ryder Cup and the wake of what is happening in golf right now. It seems to me that Europe just needed to refresh. All those players that they thought they needed to have any chance of success, the warhorses that they have, Ian Poulter, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell, Ryder Cup stars, they just got replaced pretty easily.”

The current Team Europe and Team USA Ryder Cup rankings

Certain players will simply be shoe-ins for the Ryder Cup squads on both sides. The likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa are almost certain to play.

The rest, though, is very much up for grabs and as we saw with Detry’s win this weekend, it’s all to play for for those top six positions.

As it stands – and there is a long way to go – we could very much see some new faces involved in 2025.

As it stands, it looks like the USA team is well stacked but with European players in such fine form, it looks like it’s going to be a close run tournament once again.