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Ryder Cup Weather Forecast for Medinah

PR Release – GolfWeather.com – Content for distribution and re-publishing Live forecast http://www.golfweather.com/rydercup

Medinah Country Club Weather Forecast – Ryder Cup The weather could favour USA

By Neville Leck

In normal circumstances when we at Golf Weather.com forecast the kind of weather we have for this weekend's Ryder Cup, most golfers jump up and down and clap their hands in glee.

Yes the forecast for Friday, Saturday and Sunday when the 2012 Ryder Cup fourballs, foursomes and singles matches will be played at storied Medinah Country Club in Illinois, USA, is good; very good.

You will have seen from our five-day forecast that no rain whatsoever has been forecast for the Ryder Cup this week and that on each and every one of the three days of play the weather will either be sunny and mild or partly cloudy with light winds from the north east of no more than 5 or 6 mph except late on Friday when it could get up to 7mph max.

Indeed we at Golf Weather.com are so impressed, that we have given all three days a Four-Star award as we did for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when Davis Love III's USA and Jose Maria Olazabal's European teams will have spent time getting to know Medinah’s highly-rated Course No 3 and again on Thursday when the two teams, along with their wives or girlfriends, will have participated in the colourful opening ceremony that traditionally precedes this biennial, trans-Atlantic Ryder Cup battle.

Having said that, we might, in fact, find that the European invaders are not quite as happy with our weather picture as their hosts for it is pretty widely accepted that having grown up in wetter and windier climes and in many cases on the unforgiving links courses of England, Scotland and Ireland, the Europeans are generally more adept at handling inclement weather.

Dry weather will also make it possible for the Americans to decide on just how dry and fast or wet and slow they want the greens to be for according to the Ryder Cup rules, the host nation’s captain has the sole say with regard to how the course is set-up.

So round one to the Americans - and that won't be their only advantage. Love’s men will also have home ground advantage with the raucous support patriotic US galleries have come to be associated with.

And, as they say in the classics, that’s not all...

The US 12-man team will also have the edge on the World Rankings list where they will average out with a 12.25 ranking as against the 18.9 of Jose Maria Olazabal's visiting Europeans.

With Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy and Englishmen Luke Donald at No 3, Lee Westwood at No 4 and Justin Rose at No 5 as against lone American Tiger Woods at No 2, Europe certainly dominate the top of the Rankings list.

But that's where it ends for after Rose, Europe’s next highest ranked golfers are Ulsterman Graham McDowell at No 18 and Spain's Sergio Garcia at No 19 and in between the Americans have in place from No 7 to No 10 Bubba Watson, Webb Simpson, Jason Dufner and Brandt Snedeker and after South Africa's Louis Oosthuizen at No 11, Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Keegan Bradley, Matt Kuchar, Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson in the No 12 to No 17 slots.

The only American player not in this tight-knit group is seasoned Ryder Cup veteran Jim Furyk who was ranked at No 24 on Monday's up-dated ranking list following The Tour Championship.

The bottom half of the European contingent come below him with Swede Peter Hanson at No 25, England's Ian Poulter at No 26, Scot Paul Lawrie at No 28, Italy's Francisco Molinari at No 31, Germany's Martin Kaymer at No 32 and Belgium Ryder Cup rookie Nicolas Colsaerts at No 35, who along with Poulter, was one of Olazabal's wild-card picks.

And this, of course, does say something about current form, for it was not too long ago that Europe not only held sway at the top of the World Rankings, but also had the greater number of players in the top 20.

And it doesn’t end there...

The Davis Dozen between them own a total of 23 majors to Europe's five, which, even after Woods’s 14 majors have been subtracted from the US total, leaves them in the lead at 9-5.

The American team also includes the most number of Ryder Cup caps thanks to Mickelson (8), Furyk (7) and Woods (6), but Europe do hold sway statistically in one important aspect.

They are fielding only one new cap (Colsaerts) as against America's four (Simpson, Dufner, Snedeker and Bradley) and it's no secret that the enormous pressures under which Ryder Cup matches are played can leave first timers wide-eyed and shaking.

But Ryder Cups, of course, are not won on superior figures alone, as Europe, who will arrive in Illinois as the winners of the last three Ryder Cups, have quite clearly proved, and we doubt that this year's trans-Atlantic battle will be a push-over for either side with each having their own special strengths that cannot easily be translated into figures.

These include local knowledge, team spirit, inspired leadership, guile and strategy and suitability to local conditions which brings us in a full circle back to the weather which has to be one of the most important aspects of any golfers life, be he an amateur hacker or a multi-million dollar star.

GolfWeather Editorial Department: editor@golfweather.com

Live forecast http://www.golfweather.com/rydercup






Click here to view the detailed forecast for Medinah Country Club