CHARLOTTE — When the dust settled on the morning wave Thursday at the PGA Championship, the flags at the top of the leaderboard might have fooled a passerby into thinking he’d accidentally stumbled into a meeting of the Charlotte chapter of the European Union. Five different European nations were represented, starting with Germany’s Stephen Jaeger and continuing down through all the countries with crosses in their flags—England (Luke Donald), Denmark (Rasmus Hojgaard), Sweden (Alex Noren), England again (Matt Fitzpatrick) and Robert MacIntyre (Scotland).
This is not novel, and as I write just after 2 p.m. local time, it’s not close to over—we’ve still got Ludvig Aberg, Viktor Hovland, Tyrrell Hatton, Sepp Straka, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, and others on deck for the afternoon. Plus, just beyond the top 10, heavy hitters like Jon Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood lurk. They’re so powerful, and so numerous, that it doesn’t even matter that their bell cow, Rory McIlroy, laid an egg (74) at his favorite course.
All of this is a variation on a 2025 theme: The European hordes are at the gates. If you’re tuned into Ryder Cup discourse and have any British or Irish friends, you’ve already heard the boasting. The one major played this year belongs to them (McIlroy at Augusta). So does the Players. They’ve won three signature events to just two for Americans. Overall on tour, they’re ahead of the Americans 8-7. Even the American who has won the most events this year, Straka, actually is not American, but Austrian. In short, roughly 100 years after the epicenter of elite professional golf shifted from the UK to America, the Europeans believe they are shifting it back.
Luke Donald off to a flyer.#PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/jWiS0bZEsQ
— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 15, 2025
Here’s a piece of trivia for you: How many countries have more players in the field this week than Denmark?
Answer: Four. The U.S., England, Australia and South Africa. Denmark, with a population just under six million—a number that would make it the 20th largest state in America—has five players in Charlotte. How is that possible?
(Part of the answer is that Europe is lapping the rest of the world in youth development, an imbalance which the USGA is trying to right with its National Development Program.)
Make no mistake: The U.S., with its massive population base and relative wealth, is still the preeminent men’s golf power. But things are changing even from recent history. This same week in 2005, there were four Europeans in the top 30 of the world rankings. By 2015, 10 years ago, there were eight. Today, as we watch the year’s second major, there are 11. If you look at PGA Tour wins, it’s the same scenario. Compare this year’s 8-7 Euro advantage to 2015, when after the first week of May the U.S. enjoyed a gaudy 19-4 edge, or 2005, when it was almost a full skunking at 11-1. Morsel by morsel, the chicken is fed, and here in a Ryder Cup year, the European chicken looks ravenous.
Rasmus Hojgaard of Denmark.
Ross Kinnaird
Give or take the shocking surge of your Ryan Gerard types, Charlotte is the latest proving ground of what we can safely call the European renaissance. It’s not just individual excellence; it’s the sheer depth. Lose McIlroy, and you can fill his spot with five others. It’s the European hydra, where cutting off one head actually strengthens the beast.
The fact that it seems to be accelerating in a Ryder Cup year is of profound significance. It’s my opinion that there won’t be a notable Ryder Cup result until the visiting team actually wins one—arguably the most difficult ask in all of sports—but the situation this year has to be alarming for any American partisan. Not only are the Europeans winning everything in sight, but their Ryder Cup organization is helmed strategically by the premier genius of the event, Paul McGinley, and he’s advising a repeat captain, Luke Donald, who is himself an intelligent leader with a victory under his belt and the respect/love of his charges.
Meanwhile, the U.S. chose as its captain a man with no experience, still in the prime of his playing career and thus living in two worlds, who is currently tied for sixth place at the year’s second major and could easily make the team and throw the entire organization into a logistical blender.
Warren Little
Charlotte is nicknamed the “Queen City”—it was named after King George III’s wife—and thus it seems an appropriate place for this realization to take hold and set. Not only is Europe rising like a tidal wave over the world of golf, but it’s set to crash this fall in Long Island, destroying the infrastructure and the confidence of a U.S. Ryder Cup team that had to be rebuilt a decade ago and seemed to have found its feet after the nightmare of the mid-aughts. Now, they’re teetering on the edge of calamity after what feels like an impulse decision, while Europe is amassing at the borders like a well-oiled conquering army. This could be bad.
The sky is not exactly falling—not yet. An American leads the PGA, Scottie Scheffler is the best player in the world, and in general the country is holding tight to its century of dominance. But that dominance is being eroded, slowly but surely, and it’s reminiscent of nothing so much as the decline of Scottish and English golf pre-eminence after World War I. If nothing else, it’s a closer fight, and when the broader trends even up like they’re doing now, you should always fear the side with momentum.
Batten down the hatches and shutter the windows, because the Europeans aren’t just coming … they’re already here.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
