Lowry out first in debut Hero Cup

The Hero Cup golf matches, which start tomorrow in Abu Dhabi, sees Shane Lowry first out in fourball competition representing Britain and Ireland.

Lowry and Tommy Fleetwood will be first off the tee and they go head-to-head with Thomas Pieters and Alex Noren representing the Continent of Europe.

Seamus Power will be out in the last of the five fourball matches against Austria's Sepp Straka and Irish Open champion Adrian Meronk of Poland.

All 18 players competing in the tournament have been picked Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald for the new event which has been introduced to give more players experience of a matchplay team tournament ahead of the Ryder Cup against the United States in Rome next September.

The three-day event consists of one session of foursomes, one session of fourballs and one session of singles matches. All 20 players take part in each session.

Francesco Molinari and Fleetwood, Ryder Cup team-mates, will lead Europe and GB and Ireland, respectively.

In addition to Power and Lowry, Scots Ewen Ferguson and Robert MacIntyre and English trio Callum Shinkwin, Jordan Smith and Matt Wallace have been selected to play under Fleetwood.

Austrian Sepp Straka, Denmark's Rasmus Hojgaard, Frenchman Victor Perez, Adrian Meronk [the first Polish player to win on the DP World Tour with victory at this year's Irish Open], Belgium's Thomas Detry and Italian Guido Migliozzi make up the European team.