Seve Ballesteros remains big inspiration for Europe at Ryder Cup

GUIDONIA MONTECELIO, Italy – European Captain Luke Donald has made sure his Ryder Cup team does not lack for inspiration. It even reduced Shane Lowry to tears.

Team Europe posted a video of Donald giving a tour of the team room at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, decked out in blue and gold with images of the late Seve Ballesteros practically everywhere.

There is a wall with the names of all 168 players who ever competed for Great Britain & Ireland and Europe (starting in 1979). The locker room has lockers for every player and caddie because as Donald says, “We're all in this together.”

His favorite room is what Donald calls the dressing room to get ready for the matches, with words in each stall – “This is your time” – written in their native language.

There are 13 such lockers – 12 players and one for Ballesteros.

“Seve is our ultimate symbol of what makes a European player great,” Donald said. “His spirit and his enthusiasm and his soul will be with us all the way.”

All the way out the door, for sure. The room has a painting of Ballesteros on the wall as they head out to the course.

“What the Ryder Cup meant to him, they'll feel that as they go out,” Donald said.

As for Lowry? The Irishman who once said he didn't cry when he won The Open Championship or when his daughter was born confessed to tears upon the arrival at Marco Simone.

That stemmed from some motivational videos Donald had for his team when they arrived. Details are not forthcoming, at least not yet.

“That's kind of personal for us,” Jon Rahm said. “We have some individual videos and some collective videos. There’s very few players not shedding a few tears yesterday afternoon, I can say that.”

Lowry owned up to being one of them.

“Look, it's an emotional week, and even some of the stuff that’s happened already this week would get you quite emotional,” said Lowry, who made his Ryder Cup debut in 2021 at Whistling Straits, a 19-9 loss to the Americans.

“I think being a part of something that is bigger than you or anything else is pretty cool, and I think Whistling Straits was hard to take,” Lowry said. “But it was quite motivating for me coming away from that, and it’s quite motivating for me this week.”

All that Rahm shared about the video was that it was family-related, a reason all the players made it to the Ryder Cup.

“If you guys were to watch it, it would make you feel a lot of the same emotions we felt,” the Spaniard said.