Ryder Cup could become the biggest battleground of the LIV golf era

With all due respect to the Presidents Cup, played last week at Quail Hollow in North Carolina, it ranks a few steps behind the Ryder Cup in terms of interest with golf fans.

Perhaps that’s why the loss of players on both the U.S. and International teams because players made the leap to the LIV tour was not earth-shattering. In fact, rather than bemoaning the damage to the Presidents Cup, Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols insisted this was a chance to fix the Presidents Cup by making it a co-ed event.

So the absence of players like Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed may not have been that big of a deal for the Presidents Cup, at least for the U.S. team. The International team missed players like Cameron Smith, Marc Leishman, Joaquin Niemann and Abraham Ancer.

But move forward a year, and the mess that was the Presidents Cup this year could become a similar mess at the Ryder Cup. And that could make one of golf’s premier events the biggest battleground of the LIV golf era.

Think about what the American side might look like at a Ryder Cup devoid of LIV golfers. Sure, Phil Mickelson is well past playing in the Ryder Cup, but he was certainly in line for a captaincy or at least another turn as a vice captain. The last time the Ryder Cup was played in 2021 with Americans handing out a 19-9 thrashing of the European team, Johnson went a perfect 5-0-0 in the event. Reed has been a team room problem in the Ryder Cup, but he certainly embraced the Captain America persona.

Top players not in field

Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka supposedly buried their feud at the last Ryder Cup, and both have been on the U.S. team multiple times. Other Americans like Talor Gooch, Matthew Wolff, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na and perhaps even Bubba Watson would have been in the mix for automatic berths or a captain’s pick from U.S. captain Zach Johnson, who will still have plenty of talented players fighting for berths.

The European side for the 2023 Ryder Cup was in flux even without LIV golf showing up. The Europeans were soundly beaten in Wisconsin and felt like an old team that needed new blood. So perhaps the loss of golfers like Lee Westwood, Graeme McDowell and Ian Poulter to LIV is not the worst thing for the Europeans.

But the team has also lost a captain, with Henrik Stenson moving to LIV and being replaced by Luke Donald. Paul Casey could easily have been a 2023 Ryder Cupper. And how could Donald not use a captain’s pick if needed on Sergio Garcia?

With the…