Great Britain & Ireland take early Team Cup lead

Great Britain & Ireland took the spoils in three of the opening matches of the 2025 Team Cup as they moved into an early 3½ - 1½ lead over Continental Europe after the Friday Fourballs session at Abu Dhabi Golf Resort.

Despite losing the opening match of the session, GB&I Captain Justin Rose’s selections for the other four matches proved inspired as they claimed three and a half of the four remaining available points.

Rose and Matt Wallace lost 3&1 to the French pair of Romain Langasque and Matthieu Pavon, but the scores were quickly levelled by Laurie Canter and Jordan Smith who beat Rasmus Højgaard and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen 1Up.

GB&I then moved ahead after Tyrrell Hatton and Tom McKibbin beat Julien Guerrier, who was drafted in as a late replacement for Nicolai Højgaard, and Antoine Rozner.

Matthew Jordan and Paul Waring halved their match against Niklas Nørgaard and Thorbjørn Olesen, while in the anchor match Tommy Fleetwood and Aaron Rai defeated Matteo Manassero and Continental Europe Captain Francesco Molinari 4&2 after winning three consecutive holes from the 14th to close out the match.

“I'm really, really pleased with that because some of the key messaging is to get off to fast starts and I did notice there was a little bit too much blue on the board for my liking which I was contributing, as well,” said Rose

“But the team rallied well. I thought Laurie and Jordan closed it out beautifully on 17 and 18. And Matty Jordan, nice tricky up-and-down on 18 to halve that match after Thorbjørn's shots. To play 18th hole well, to make most of today, I would have snapped that up at the beginning of the day.

“Obviously foursomes tomorrow, different format, different style of golf, probably one of my favourite styles of golf. It's tricky. So hopefully we can kind of keep the momentum up tomorrow but yeah for my decision-making point of view, I'm very happy.”

Both Captains have made changes to their pairings for the first session of foursomes on Saturday morning, with Rose sending out three new pairs with Molinari conversely keeping three of his groups together.

In the opening match, Olesen and Nørgaard remain paired together and will face Hatton and Wallace. The two captains will go head-to-head in match two, with Molinari and Guerrier taking on Rose and Fleetwood.

Højgaard and Neergaard-Petersen will take on Rai and McKibbin in the third match, followed by Manassero and Rozner against Waring and Jordan. In the final match Pavon and Langasque, Continental Europe’s only victorious pair from Friday will play Smith and Canter, who also won their match on the opening day.