Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry have both been selected for action on the opening morning of the Ryder Cup in Italy.

Both Irish players will compete in the morning foursomes with Lowry first of the duo out, teaming up with Austrian Sepp Straka and taking on Rickie Fowler and Collin Morikawa in match three of the opening session at Marco Simone golf club in Rome.

McIlroy will follow Lowry in the final game of four, alongside playing partner, Tommy Fleetwood, coming up against arguably the USA's strongest pair in Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay.

Europe captain Luke Donald showed faith in two of his rookies for the opening session of the 44th Ryder Cup in Rome.

While the pairings of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton and McIlroy and Fleetwood came as no surprise, Donald also sent out Ludvig Aberg and the aforementioned Straka in the foursomes.

Rahm and Hatton will face world number one Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns in the first match, with Aberg and Viktor Hovland up against Max Homa and Open champion Brian Harman.

Donald said what he had seen in practice this week had reinforced the plans he had in mind from the outset in terms of his pairings.

"We had a pretty good plan in place. It was always going to be a plan that could change, but I didn't really need to," he said.

"I haven’t given the US pairings much thought to be honest. Nothing surprises me."

US captain Zach Johnson left out two of his captain's picks in Jordan Spieth and, more contentiously, Justin Thomas, despite the two forging an impressive Ryder Cup partnership in previous editions.

"The gist of it is we have only 12 guys and unfortunately I can’t play all 12 each session so at some point someone has to sit," he said.

"It’s a golf course which demands a lot out of you physically, I think it’s an ideal situation where you don’t necessarily play everyone all five sessions.

"The eight guys I have down on paper I feel put us in the best position to get us off to a great start.

"There is a lot of things I’d like to keep internal, but I have the utmost confidence in these eight and the utmost confidence in Jordan and Justin.

"It’s not about their form, they are playing great, it is really just a mater of trying to dissect all five sessions."

First out for Europe, Rahm said that he is looking to lead by example alongside England's Hatton.

"We get the honour of opening the Ryder Cup. We’re the first group out. It’s going to be a really fun day, setting the stage with this man, which we’ve done before, and can’t wait to get our first full point on the board tomorrow," said Rahm.

Rookie Straka, in the third match, admits he is not sure what to expect on Friday.

"I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like on the first tee. Today it wasn’t even packed the whole way and it was already crazy," said the Austrian.

"Playing with Shane, the guy’s a legend."