-This Sunday morning, the third round of the Omega European Masters has concluded, leaving us with a truly exciting scenario, a battlefield. Thriston Lawrence (-18) is the leader, with a one-shot advantage over Matt Wallace (-17), who today has made the most of the final stretch of the round with the immense determination of someone still yearning for victory, of course, because he is also defending the title, but above all for his inclusion in the European team for the Ryder. His chances are remote and certainly depend on dazzling the captain this week with an epic win. Otherwise, it seems his last effort would fall short. In fact, even winning doesn’t seem to guarantee that Donald will include him tomorrow among his six picks. That’s how tough it is.
-Wallace has signed three birdies this morning in the five holes he had to play, taking advantage of the two final par 5s, holes 14 and 15, and making one more on the 17th (another could have fallen on the 18th). A notable haul to get right into the star group of the fourth round alongside Lawrence and Matt Fitzpatrick (-16), another who is vying for his presence in Bethpage, which would be his fourth Ryder. Donald and his vice-captains can be proud, because even Marco Penge (-11), another Ryder candidate at the start of the week, closed a third round of 63 strokes to at least give himself one last desperate chance in the final Sunday charge.
-Alongside Lawrence, Wallace, and Fitzpatrick, there is a fourth contender for victory, which is Sami Valimaki (-15). The Finn is certainly a clear example of how incredibly difficult it is to get into a Ryder team. He hasn’t done anything wrong on the PGA Tour. In fact, he arrived at the final round of the Wyndham a few weeks ago with a real chance of getting into the FedEx Cup playoffs. Until then, he had some good performances, like that fourth place in Houston, a 15th at the Farmers, a seventh in Myrtle Beach, considering also that in this edition of the Ryder, the regular calendar tournaments of the PGA Tour have added a huge amount of points. However, you have to go down to the 40th position in the Ryder ranking to find him. He has never even appeared among the group of remote candidates. He hasn’t existed in the Ryder year, really.
–Fitzpatrick knows firsthand such difficulty. He has earned his stripes and prestige, among other things because he has already played three Ryder Cup and is a Major winner, but he knows it’s not enough. And that’s despite, in a not particularly brilliant year, coming from making all four cuts in the Majors in 2025, and not only that: he comes from finishing fourth in the Open and eighth in the PGA, also from being fourth in the Scottish Open and eighth last week in the British Masters… And here he is, still trying to confirm his presence in Bethpage, surely because his numbers in the Ryder, in the three he has already played, are really poor (one win and seven losses in eight matches).
-It’s all very complicated in a Ryder. Surely Fitzpatrick still wonders why his captains didn’t give him more opportunities to play some fourballs in the 2016 and 2021 editions, the first two he played. He didn’t debut in this format until Rome 2023 with a great victory alongside Rory, in which he was a major protagonist. And it’s also likely that he values, beyond the cold numbers, those two singles against Daniel Berger (2021) and Max Homa (2023) that in both cases he took to the 18th hole and lost by the minimum (one down). Fitzpatrick won’t stop until he feels powerful and decisive in a Ryder, until he also earns those stripes. Donald knows this. That’s why he strategically placed him in the fifth position of the singles in Rome, right in the stretch where Europe had to decide the victory. In fact, Matt had it in his hand: a draw against Homa would have given the arithmetic victory to the continental side, but he fell just short by one down on the 18th.
–Marco Penge goes out in the final round forty minutes ahead of the star group, where Wallace and Fitzpatrick are playing for much more than victory, and perhaps Lawrence will benefit from it. Surely Penge, who by the way is the most desired Ryder candidate by his DP World Tour teammates, will go all out today sooner or later. He’s going to give it his all. In a few hours, the solution.
