Luke Donald vows familiar Europe Ryder Cup team will take ‘different angle’

European captain Luke Donald insists the defence of their Ryder Cup will not be “rinse and repeat” despite his team featuring an unprecedented 11 members of the victory from two years ago.

There were no real surprises in his selections of Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry, Viktor Hovland, Ludvig Aberg, Matt Fitzpatrick and Sepp Straka to join automatic qualifiers Masters champion Rory McIlroy, newly-crowned FedEx Cup winner Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Bob MacIntyre and Tyrrell Hatton.

That brought together all but one of the players who triumphed in Rome 16.5-11.5 and even the odd man out, Rasmus Hojgaard, is a familiar face as he replaced his twin Nicolai as the final member of the team.

Retaining 11 of the previous team is a record for the Ryder Cup, beating the 10 by Great Britain and Ireland in 1973, and while that continuity will be a benefit Donald knows a Ryder Cup on foreign soil presents a different prospect – particularly somewhere as hostile as Bethpage in New York.

So for the last two years he has been making plans to “come at it from a different angle” as they seek a first European victory in America since the Miracle of Medinah in 2012.

“Just because we have a very similar team doesn’t mean we are going to roll out the same pairings or the same line-up in foursomes and four-balls,” said Donald.

“This isn’t certainly a question of rinse and repeat from Rome. I think over a two-year period, these players do change, their profiles change, and we’ll adapt to that.

“The strategies and thought processes I’m trying to come at in this one is quite different to what we did in Rome.

“I knew I had to come at it from a different angle. Different challenges require different strategies and this has been in the back of my mind