The Underdog Trend in Ryder Cup History
Fading the favorites at the Ryder Cup isn’t just a contrarian move—it’s one of the sport’s most time-tested betting angles. The history of golf’s biggest international tournament is loaded with lower-ranked pros punching way above their weight to take down A-listers.
Emotion, energy, crowds getting into players’ heads. It’s all as much a part of the Ryder Cup as the shots themselves. And the smart money can take advantage.
Psychological Edges in Team Competition
Let’s face it. Your average country club pro can hit 99% of the shots that the pros do. They can blast it from the tips, hit fades and drain 20-foot putts just as much.
It’s the stuff between the ears that sets PGA and European Tour pros apart from Chad at Thousand Pines down the street.
And the same applies to the Ryder Cup. When the world’s best golfers team up and square off, we know they can all make any shot. But the raw emotion and team energy can elevate or crack the best of them. There’s a psychological edge to it all.
Ryder Cup betting is all about a different edge. Getting in on inefficient or mispriced lines early or making quick adjustments with live betting.
Why do underdogs have such a good track record to give smart bettors that edge? Could be because there’s less expectation. Guys like Tiger Woods have been expected to carry the team and set the tone for them and the fans. Meanwhile, guys like Francesco Molinari just need to go out and play, with 1/10th the amount of pressure on their shoulders.
Course familiarity only cranks up that emotional edge. Since 1983, host teams have won close to 70% of Ryder Cups. This means a fairly obscure Team USA or Team Europe player has a built-in edge over a bigger name opponent whose home is across the pond. They know their own courses better, eat home cooking, and have the crowd fully behind them while making the visiting team feel as unwelcome as possible. That home course psychological edge gets a tactical boost too. Home teams control the pairings and session order. A savvy captain like Luke Donald can use that to boost the edge, finding the right pairings to attack the other side.
Betting on Underdog Pairings and Players
Betting on the Ryder Cup pre-match odds? Foursomes, four-ball and singles games all have their share of underdogs. We’re not saying you should fill your bet slips with 100% ‘dogs. There’s too much quality among some of the world’s best to ignore. But there are always valuable underdogs lurking in the rough.
Target underdog pairings and singles matches where team chemistry, emotional momentum could be big and match play strengths and weaknesses make the odds too tempting to ignore.
Ryder Cup formats reward chemistry and guts as much as raw ability. Think about no-name pairings in the past decade+. Players like Jamie Donaldson, Thomas Pieters, or Francesco Molinari delivered historic upsets and helped Europe dominate matches against way bigger names on the Team USA side. We guarantee 90% of the golf betting public never heard of any of those guys until they looked up and saw them taking down a US pairing 3&2.
Since you can’t track chemistry on any advanced golf metrics, what do you look for?
Performance history. You can track players who did well together in the previous 1-3 Cups and look for them to continue in the next version. This year, Åberg and Hovland could be solid. What did they do in 2023 as a pair? They took down Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka, big-time favorites, in a record-setting 9&7 demolition. Both players spoke afterwards of the “comfort” of playing a round as a Scandinavian pairing. That’s chemistry.
You can also look for Jon Rahm and, well, anybody. He’s 4-0-0 in foursome play and could be great value if he’s listed as an underdog. On the US side, Cantlay and Schauffele were undefeated in 2001 and solid in 2023.
You also want to fade players who have a history of not-so-friendly vibes on Tour, no matter how great they look on paper. Think Tiger and Phil, for example. They went 0-2 in their short-lived experiment in 2004, even though both were in the top 5 in world golf rankings. Both those losses paid out well for underdog bettors.
Another intangible to look for: momentum.
The Ryder Cup is famous for wild swings over the course of even 1 or 2 holes. When underdogs grab early leads, it can fire up their side, while the favorites get tighter as the momentum builds. They don’t want to get shown up on the world stage, never mind the pressure of taking home the expected points for their side. American players probably still have nightmares of Ian Poulter, a relative no-name compared to some of the bigger hitters he’s taken down at the Ryder Cup. Dustin Johnson was one of them, and was the world’s #1 at the time, when Poulter took him down 2up in Paris in 2018.
The market overvalues stars and the sportsbooks tend to play along. This leaves solid value in the underdogs at the Ryder Cup every time.
How to Spot Mispriced Ryder Cup Odds
The Ryder Cup is full of recency bias and public overreaction when it comes to betting. But like the sharps will tell you, the Cup’s format (being so different from regular Tour play) plus all the emotional volatility adds up to favorites that are rarely as safe as oddsmakers make them seem.
Home odds are usually too short too, especially when Americans travel to Europe. The USA hasn’t won on European soil since 1993. European team prices can see big value at home, sometimes as high as +170 or more, in years where the talent gap really isn’t that wide.
Study recent pairings, look for underdogs to take down big flashy brand names, and get in early on the live betting gaps when the ‘dogs start to make noise.