Brandel Chamblee Uses Decades of Data to Warn Scottie Scheffler and Co. Before Ryder Cup Showdown

As the 2025 Ryder Cup draws near, tensions around Team USA are already building, not just over pairings or form, but over something deeper. Golf analyst Brandel Chamblee has been particularly vocal in recent weeks, subtly questioning captain Keegan Bradley’s selections. And now, Chamblee’s latest analysis shuts down a long-standing myth, one famously echoed by a player in 2021.

In a recent tweet that’s been making the rounds, Brandel Chamblee dismantled a long-standing American excuse — one that traces back to an analogy from Patrick Cantlay. Chamblee recalls an instance in September 2021, where Cantlay was asked why “Europe keeps winning”. Cantlay used a card game, Gin Rummy, to draw an analogy and said, “If you play enough gin hands, a one or two percent difference in skill translates to almost an assured win over many, many, many hands of gin, but you could have a big difference between somebody, maybe a 60 to 40 percent skill level difference, and gin is still chancy enough to where you could play 10 hands and lose six or seven of the hands than someone that’s much worse than you skill-wise.” His implication was clear that the American team is better, and over time, the results will reflect that.

Europe’s edge was just a temporary statistical fluke. But Chamblee then went on to lay out some hard facts and immediately flip that theory, with numbers that suggest the issue isn’t luck, but something far more systemic. He begins by taking an example from the 1987 Ryder Cup, where “Europe won 15-13,” despite “Europe’s 12 players’ average world rank was 40th compared to the USA’s 17.8.” At the time, that could’ve been chalked up to chance. One Cup. A small sample. But the dataset has since exploded.

“However, since 1987, there have been 18 Ryder Cups played and 504 matches played in them,” Chamblee continues. “During that time span in those Ryder Cups, the average world rank of the 12 players playing for the USA has been 18.02, while the average world rank of Europe’s 12 players has been 30.67.” Over that period, given the skill advantage and the world rankings, Team USA hasn’t just been “1 to 2% better…but 51.96% better.” And according to Chamblee, a team with that kind of edge “should have won 60.31% of the matches and Ryder Cups played since 1987.”

But the stats are completely different. On paper, Team USA may always have been the stronger one of the two, but in reality, things are different. “60.31% of 18 is 11, and of 504 it is 304, and yet the USA has won just 6 Ryder Cups out the last 18 and just 242.5 points out of a possible 504 points or matches. Clearly, this is not a matter of luck. Even a 3% better team over “many many many” matches (and I think 504 matches, or hands of gin for that matter, qualifies as “many many many”) would have won 267 points of the 504 and 10 or 11 of the Ryder Cups since 1987,” Chamblee added.

His hard, cold facts come just a few days after he took a subtle dig at Keegan Bradley when he made a statement to Trey Wingo. “The last five Ryder Cups have been won by the home team and have been won by an average of almost seven points. They’ve been absolute blowouts. So, first and foremost, I just hope it’s close because I want something compelling to happen on Sunday.” Chamblee hinted that the home team has always had the advantage in the Ryder Cup, with stats pointing to the “winning team scoring 6.6 points more than its opponents”. 

Brandel Chamblee also added that Europe also “puts teams together far better than the U.S,” and highlighted that it’s the smaller details that make the difference.

Brandel Chamblee believes Team Europe has more passion for the Ryder Cup

Brandel Chamblee continued to point out that Team Europe’s success in the Ryder Cup stems from something deeper than talent — it’s about passion, purpose, and unity. “The Ryder Cup is about group dynamics and passion. It’s not that the USA doesn’t come together and doesn’t have passion for the event; it’s just that the European teams do a better job of leaving their egos at the door of the locker room, and they simply have more passion for the event,” he added. He then highlighted an example of Sergio Garcia who paid fines just to play in the Ryder Cup in 2023, whereas Team USA “has demanded to be PAID TO PLAY FOR THE RYDER CUP.”

In 2023, Sergio Garcia, Europe’s all-time points leader, offered to pay nearly $1 million in fines just to regain eligibility for the Ryder Cup after leaving the DP World Tour for LIV Golf. Contrast that with the U.S. side, where players are now set to be paid roughly $200,000 each. It’s a stark shift from past decades, when Ryder Cup participants donated any earnings to charity. He then drew an analogy of his own, stating, “What makes a great player or a great team isn’t any one thing, it’s an assembly of small details, like in a mosaic, or perhaps more precisely the symbiosis of a symphony.”

According to him, while the U.S. certainly cares about the event, the Europeans take it to another level, and to continue the metaphor that a harmonious integration of different elements is necessary to produce beautiful music, Chamblee adds, “the Europeans have been, for the better part of 40 years, producing better music than the Americans.”