Ryder Cup: Jim Furyk Hires Stats Guru Justin Ray

Jim Furyk at the Ryder Cup — (Image credit: Getty Images)

On his second go at being Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk is leaving no stone unturned, as he looks to take a leaf out of Luke Donald's playbook and lean on statistical analysis.

Furyk suffered a heavy loss in Paris in 2018, but in his first act to improve his chances of redemption he's ditched the USA's regular stats partners and brought in popular stats journalist Justin Ray and player-turned-stats guru Hunter Stewart.

Donald has heaped praise on former Ryder Cup player Molinari, who has turned into a stats guru and helped players like US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, for his role in winning the last two battles with the USA.

Molinari helps use data to come up with pairings, course strategy and even training programs, while he's also involved in devising the qualifying process to help get the right profile of golfers into the team.

Now Furyk believes he has found a statistical dream team to help level the playing field.

Scouts Consulting Group, led by Furyk's friend Jason Aquino, helped with his own 2024 Presidents Cup win along with the 2022 victory and also the 2016 Ryder Cup success.

But Furyk told Golfweek that he felt a change was needed, and believes his two new stats guys can help Team USA in their quest to end what will be a 34-year wait for an away win by the time Adare Manor rolls around.

“That conversation was difficult in some respects but ultimately I felt like we had an opportunity and I had to make the best decision for the United States team," explained Furyk.

Ray is a hugely popular social media guy with golf stats after working with the likes of ESPN, Golf Channel and currently The Athletic, but he was also part of data analytics company Twenty First Group who helped with Europe's emphatic 2018 Ryder Cup victory - against Furyk no less.

Ray also worked for Solheim Cup captain Stacy Lewis in the back-to-back competitions in 2023 and 2024 - experience which is said was attractive to Furyk.

Stewart hoping to emulate Molinari role

Edoardo Molinari at the 2023 Ryder Cup — Edoardo Molinari has been Europe's not-so-secret stats weapon in the Ryder Cup

Furyk describes Ray as "our big picture guy” while presumably Stewart will work more closely with the individual players - as he currently does for the likes of Maverick McNealy, JT Poston and European Ryder Cup player Ludvig Aberg.

Stewart will work with Brandt Snedeker's Presidents Cup team later this year to get familiar with the role and have something of a practice run ahead of the 2027 Ryder Cup.

Stewart operates in a similar fashion to Molinari - using stats to analyse players' games and form not only individual training plans but also formulate tactics for taking on different courses every week.

That seemed to be a huge shortfall of Keegan Bradley's captaincy - as vice-captain Kevin Kisner revealed when talking about being caught out by Europe having specific gameplans for Bethpage.

Former captain Paul Azinger recently said he was "mortified" watching the Kisner video, which showed how much better prepared Europe were - even playing away from home.

Furyk seems to agree, and showed he's ready to really shake things up this time as this unorthodox move is aimed at trying to level things up and make sure if Team USA don't win in Ireland it won't be down to a lack of thorough preparation.

Paul Higham is a sports journalist with over 20 years of experience in covering most major sporting events for both Sky Sports and BBC Sport. He is currently freelance and covers the golf majors on the BBC Sport website. Highlights over the years include covering that epic Monday finish in the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor and watching Rory McIlroy produce one of the most dominant Major wins at the 2011 US Open at Congressional. He also writes betting previews and still feels strangely proud of backing Danny Willett when he won the Masters in 2016 - Willett also praised his putting stroke during a media event before the Open at Hoylake. Favourite interviews he's conducted have been with McIlroy, Paul McGinley, Thomas Bjorn, Rickie Fowler and the enigma that is Victor Dubuisson. A big fan of watching any golf from any tour, sadly he spends more time writing about golf than playing these days with two young children, and as a big fair weather golfer claims playing in shorts is worth at least five shots. Being from Liverpool he loves the likes of Hoylake, Birkdale and the stretch of tracks along England's Golf Coast, but would say his favourite courses played are Kingsbarns and Portrush.