Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy selected for early Ryder Cup action

Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry have both been selected for action on the opening morning of the Ryder Cup in Italy.

Both Irish players will compete in the morning foursomes with Lowry first of the duo out, teaming up with Austrian Sepp Staka and taking on Rickie Fowler and Collin Morikawa in match three of the opening session at Marco Simone golf club in Rome.

McIlroy will follow Lowry in the final game of four, alongside playing partner, Tommy Fleetwood, coming up against arguably the USA's strongest pair in Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay.

Europe captain Luke Donald showed faith in two of his rookies for the opening session of the 44th Ryder Cup in Rome.

While the pairings of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton and McIlroy and Fleetwood came as no surprise, Donald also sent out Ludvig Aberg and the aforementioned Straka in the foursomes.

Rahm and Hatton will face world number one Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns in the first match, with Aberg and Viktor Hovland up against Max Homa and Open champion Brian Harman.

Donald said what he had seen in practice this week had reinforced the plans he had in mind from the outset in terms of his pairings.

"We had a pretty good plan in place. It was always going to be a plan that could change, but I didn't really need to," he said.

"I haven’t given the US pairings much thought to be honest. Nothing surprises me."

US captain Zach Johnson left out two of his captain's picks in Jordan Spieth and, more contentiously, Justin Thomas, despite the two forging an impressive Ryder Cup partnership in previous editions.

"The gist of it is we have only 12 guys and unfortunately I can’t play all 12 each session so at some point someone has to sit," he said.

"It’s a golf course which demands a lot out of you