Edoardo Molinari appointed as Luke Donald's first vice captain for 2025 Ryder Cup

Former Scottish Open champion gets backroom team role again after being statistical genius behind win in Rome

Italian Edoardo Molinari will be one of Luke Donald's vice captains for the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York. Picture: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images.

Luke Donald has made his first move in his bid to become a back-to-back winning Ryder Cup captain by appointing Edoardo Molinari as a vice captain for the 2025 contest in New York.

The Italian has become the first man on Donald’s backroom team for Bethpage Black after being the statistical genius behind Europe’s 16.5-11.5 victory at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome last year.

“Edoardo is someone I have got to know very well over the last couple of years and he’s going to be a great addition again for the 2025 Ryder Cup,” said Donald, who was re-appointed as Europe’s captain in December.

“He plays a very significant role. He’s playing full-time out here on the DP World Tour, he’s a good player, a Ryder Cupper and he knows what it’s all about. He’s around the players a lot and he works with a lot of players on their statistics as well.

“I’ll lean heavily on him with the qualification criteria and then when we get close to the matches, how the team is forming, how their skill sets match to the golf course at Bethpage and whether they’re more foursomes-related pairings, fourballs-related players, and putting those pairings together.

“We spent a lot of time together over the last couple of years, we grew very close. He was extremely important to the whole journey and the process and he’ll be even more important on this away one. If we can create some history and try and win away from home, it’s going to be a very, very sweet four years together.”

Molinari joined his brother Francesco as a vice captain for the match in Italy, where Donald also had two previous winning captains - Jose Maria Olazabal and Thomas Bjorn - and Nicolas Colsaerts in his backroom team.

“I’m very happy,” said Moliari, a three-time DP World Tour winner, including the 2010 Scottish Open, of being involved again in the bi-ennial contest. ”It’s something that I’m very proud of and probably means I did a pretty decent job last time, so I cannot wait to help the team and Luke again in Bethpage and I’m really looking forward to it.

“Luke called me the very day he was named captain, a little before the official announcement, and said he really enjoyed working with me in Rome and would like my help again. We had another chat about a week later, maybe 30 or 40 minutes on the phone, chatted about a few things and he asked me and I said of course, I would happily do it all over again.

“I think Rory [McIlroy] put it best in the press conference after Rome, he said the most difficult thing in golf these days is to win an away Ryder Cup. It hasn’t been done in many years now, Luke was part of the team in Medinah, the last one that Europe won away, and hopefully we can produce something similar.

“I cannot wait to be at Bethpage with the whole team, it’s going to be a long two years waiting for that week, but it will be extremely exciting and hopefully we can win again.”