Europe

How do the U.S. and European teams stack up when it comes to the blocking and tackling of golf—long driving, finding the fairway, hitting greens in regulation and holing putts? To find out, we added up each player's rank on his respective tour in those categories and divided by four. We took that number and, from lowest total to highest, listed the 24 Ryder Cuppers from one to 24. Voilà! The Ryder Cup Rank. (For Padraig Harrington and Ian Poulter, members of both tours, we combined their U.S. and Euro totals and divided by two.) Players are listed by Ryder Cup Rank.

Lee Westwood
England
Age: 35
Ryder Cup (5): 14-8-3
World Rank: 12th

RC Rank 1
[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

Now that his favorite four-ball partner, Darren Clarke, isn't on the team, Westwood may join Sergio García to form Europe's most dynamic duo in all four team matches. Westwood was 3-0-2 in the 2006 Ryder Cup and thrives on match play golf. He is longer off the tee than you think and one of the game's best iron players from out of the rough.

Soren Hansen
Denmark
Age: 34
Ryder Cup (R): 0-0-0
World Rank: 44th

RC Rank 2
[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

Never mind that you've never heard of Hansen. What you need to know is that he owns a classic swing that holds up under pressure. In fact, Padraig Harrington said that there isn't a player in Europe who wouldn't trade for Hansen's swing. He is very accurate with his irons, but it's his putter that has held him back.

Robert Karlsson
Sweden
Age: 39
Ryder Cup (1): 0-1-2
World Rank: 21st

RC Rank 4
[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

This 6'5" Swede is scary good. He was the only player to finish in the top 10 in the first three majors this year—Masters (tie 8th), U.S. Open (tie 4th) and British Open (tie 7th)—and was 20th at the PGA Championship after holding the early first-round lead. A Karlsson-Stenson pairing would take a backseat only to García-Westwood for the Euros.