2023 PGA: Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson says U.S. team will make early trip to Marco Simone

PITTSFORD, N.Y. – Hoping to end three decades of futility across the pond, the entire U.S. Ryder Cup team will take a rare trip overseas to see host site Marco Simone in advance of this year’s matches.

American captain Zach Johnson said the trip will be in mid-September, two-and-a-half weeks before the Sept. 29-Oct. 1 matches and about a week following the conclusion of Tour Championship.

“I think it helps,” Johnson said Wednesday. “Certainly chemistry and camaraderie and all that good stuff inside the locker room. But more than that, for those that have played, Monday through Thursday is pretty trying. There’s a lot that goes on … and they don’t have to push themselves immensely.

Full-field tee times from the PGA Championship

“It’s a priority for those guys to get on Marco Simone.”

This year’s Ryder Cup venue is a bit of an unknown, especially for the Americans. No U.S. player competed two weeks ago in the Italian Open, won by Adrian Meronk, with the event held opposite the PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship.

Johnson said a U.S. team hasn’t had an official team scouting trip ahead of an away Ryder Cup since the 2006 matches at the K Club in Ireland. The extra look didn’t help the Americans’ chances that year – they still lost by nine points in what remains their most lopsided defeat.  

Two years ago, however, almost all of the American team spent a few days at Whistling Straits ahead of the 2021 matches. They went on to post the largest margin of victory in the modern era.

There was a window of opportunity for another team trip this year with four weeks between the end of the Tour Championship and the start of the Ryder Cup. The timing of the trip – likely the second week of September – would conflict with the Tour’s fall opener, the Fortinet Championship in Napa, won last year by Max Homa, a likely U.S. Ryder Cupper. There is no LIV Golf event scheduled that week.

The Americans’ 12-man roster will be finalized following the Tour Championship.

“They get their feet on the ground, experience Marco Simone firsthand, and then when we leave and come back home for two weeks, they’ll have a pretty realistic expectations as to what is required,” Johnson said.