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Q. Pairings, barnstormer out first, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton against Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas. Do you feel you have two men who relish coming out? Feels like the Americans, it's all about the atmosphere and getting the crowd going?
LUKE DONALD: Yeah, absolutely, Bryson brings his own crowd. The first tee, first match, wherever you play, home or away, it's intense and pure energy. Jon and Tyrrell got to feel that in Rome, too.
I'm excited for them to go out first and lead for us. They played so well two years ago.
Q. Jon Rahm is playing his fourth Ryder Cup and he's gone out first every time for Europe. Clearly the captains trust in him to do that.
LUKE DONALD: We trust in him. We trust in all 12 guys but he certainly likes to lead from the front.
Q. Looking at the pairings that you split up, what's the thinking there?
LUKE DONALD: A little bit of statistics, looking at the golf course, and a little bit that it's two years from Rome. People's profiles and people's games change. Again we went with what we thought was the strongest match.
We're trying to win. We're trying to get our strongest pairings out, and this is what we feel like is our strongest group.
Q. And Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood, obviously a strong pairing, they go out third.
LUKE DONALD: You know, again, there's a strategy behind everything we do. Again, it's very -- it gets very tricky to try and see what the U.S. are doing and plan around that. That's, again, not in our control. We control what we can control and how we feel like we're going to get the most out of a session and that's where we went.
Q. Four players have to sit out, players in good form, Justin Rose is definitely one of them. I know he didn't play all the golf in Rome and not seeing him practice on the golf course a little, is he okay?
LUKE DONALD: He's good. Obviously, Justin, he understands his limitations. He's 45 now. He need to rest and recover sometimes. I think he feels great. He came out on the 6th hole and he did a bunch of putting and chipping and walked around with the team. But no, he just went to focus a little bit on the range earlier this morning.
Q. You talked about the stats show the first four sessions in recent Ryder Cups is crucial --
LUKE DONALD: Yeah, it's important. It's important. We know that. But as I said in the media there, we've performed four times away, and sometimes that's from behind and sometimes not doing very well. But even a home one in Paris, we lost the first session 3-1. It's not just defining everything, the result, by the first session but certainly we would love to get off to a good start.
Q. It's been a long time planning and it's almost here. What is on the to-do list? What does the captain still have to do tonight?
LUKE DONALD: We'll have a relaxed evening. We'll have some fun together. We'll get the boys together and make sure we do everything we need to do to be our best versions of ourselves.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports