Europe begin their quest for a fourth consecutive Ryder Cup crown at Valhalla Golf Club on Friday as joint favourites with Sporting Index. The spread betting firm cannot split the two sides and offer a spread of 11.5–13 points about both on an index where 25 points are awarded for a victory and 10 points for a tie. Buyers of Europe will be hopeful that Faldo can lead his men to a sixth Cup win in seven attempts, whilst sellers will take encouragement from the fact that the USA hold a better record over time, if not over the last decade. Since 1927, when the first Ryder Cup took place in Massachusetts, the USA have won 24 of the 36 played.

For the first time since Brookline in 1999, the Ryder Cup gets underway with foursomes rather than fourballs – a seemingly rather strange choice of US captain Paul Azinger. The fact of the matter is that the key to Europe’s recent hegemony has in fact been the foursomes and ‘Zinger’ may regret that decision. Not since 1991 have Europe come out second best in the alternate shot format and Sergio Garcia’s 100% foursomes record over eight matches has been instrumental in this. Over the last seven Ryder Cups, Europe has won 32 and halved seven out of 56 foursomes matches (0.63 points per match) and that record even improves a little in the USA (0.65 points per match). Therefore, buyers of Europe’s Day One points supremacy at 0.4 with Sporting Index could well be out in force.

The vocal Kentucky crowd looks sure to play a part and it will be interesting to see how the more inexperienced members of the European squad cope with such hostility. Let’s not forget that Hansen, Karlssson, McDowell, Rose, Poulter, Stenson and Wilson only have three caps between them. Sporting Index have opened up a 50/30/20/10 index on which European player will score the most points and Sergio Garcia is pitched at 18-21 points. McDowell looks certain to attract plenty of buyers at 5 points if he lines up with Harrington as expected on the opening day. However, it remains to be seen whether the partnership will stay together even if they are paired up in the foursomes.

Recent European captains have refrained from pairing the same players together in both formats; Ian Woosnam changed his pairings for each format whilst only the Monty/Harrington partnership was used by Bernhard Langer for the first three rounds at Oakland Hills. Yet, Nick Faldo himself played six Saturday morning matches with the same partner as he had had throughout Friday and took five and a half points out of six. Langer, Monty (twice), Woosie (twice) and Lee Westwood were his successful accomplices. Therefore, you couldn’t rule out the chances of Faldo keeping winning partnerships together.

The Top debutant point scorer market looks really interesting and Sporting Index make Anthony Kim favourite to come out on top. Buyers of one of golf’s bright young stars will have to pay 20 points to side with him on this 50/30/20/10 index and it will be interesting to see whether he is paired with another rookie or with someone more experienced. It’s important to remember that this year Nick Faldo has four rookies to introduce, but Paul Azinger has six. This could be critical because pairing two newboys together has been wholly unsuccessful historically.

David Howell and Paul Casey’s win over Jim Furyk and Chad Campbell in 2004 was Europe’s first all-rookie win since 1981. The USA have had a little more success with five wins and a half from 16 matches but it has still not proved a successful policy. Europe averages 0.30 points per match and USA average 0.34. At least Zinger may be able to offer some helpful guidelines for turning this trend around; he and Chip Beck won both their matches together in 1989 as rookies.

As always, the traders at Sporting Index have come up with a host of creative novelty spread bets on the event. Local boy JB Holmes looks sure to get plenty of attention this week and ‘Holmes under the Hammer’ rewards punters with 5 points every time Holmes (or his partner) win a hole. The market is currently pitched at between 55-60 points and it will be interesting to see how often Azinger uses the big hitter. Another market which catches the attention is Kim Kong which centres on the performance of Anthony Kim. With 10 points awarded for every match won and a 50 point bonus if unbeaten, his fans may well be tempted to buy at 27.

Finally, it’s just worth mentioning that the Sporting Index golf trading team will be offering 40 in-running markets per match as well as trading 20 long term market in-play at the same time. That’s staggering! When I worked on the Sporting Index trading floor back in 1999 for the Battle of Brookline, I think we just about traded one market in-play for each match. Punters around the world have never had more choice - this really is the golden age of betting.

Click here to go to Sporting Index now!