Luke Donald knows that NBA legend Michael Jordan will likely don Team USA attire this weekend at Bethpage, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t influenced Donald — and by extension the Team Europe group he’s captaining again — previously.
When Donald neared the end of his collegiate career at Northwestern in the early 2000s, he played golf with Jordan in Chicago.
They’ve remained friends since and reside near each other in Florida. And as Donald watched the “Last Dance” documentary in 2020, he observed that Jordan “was never going to do anything he didn’t ask his teammates to do” while also learning about the importance of a team setting from Jordan.
“You can be a team of champions but not a championship team,” Donald said. “You always need the people around you. You’re always stronger being a collective. I think that’s something that I certainly took from him and I’ve tried to implant on my teams the last two times, that we’re always stronger together. Those are strong values that we try and live up to.”
Jordan, who starred for the Bulls for 13 seasons before unretiring a second time and joining the Wizards for the final two years of his career, is an avid golfer, but Donald didn’t recognize his true significance while growing up in England. That quickly changed after arriving in Chicago.
And after Donald finished with the Wildcats, he embarked on a professional run of his own — reaching No. 1 in the world golf rankings in 2011 and holding that spot for 56 weeks across his career despite never securing a major title.
He won four Ryder Cups as a player and also served as a Team Europe vice captain before guiding them to the title in Rome two years ago. After that success, Team Europe made Donald the first person to captain back-to-back Ryder Cups since Bernard Gallacher in the 1990s.
“I’ve been very fortunate to get access to and pick his brain occasionally about what made him tick, what motivated him, how he was able to get the best out of himself,” Donald said. “Michael is also very close to Keegan [Bradley], and I’m sure Keegan has maybe leaned on MJ a little bit as well over the last year.
“He’s not going to specifically give me advice this time around, but certainly my friendship over the years I’ve picked up many things. It’s nice to have someone that is a legend of their sport, the greatest ever, quite arguably, to sit down occasionally and pick their brains.”