Considering that international team events in professional golf occur only once a year, it is natural to overanalyze every aspect of these tournaments, cast long-ranging opinions and ask questions that cannot be answered or the better part of 12 months. It’s part of the fun: poring through numbers, fact sheets, scuttlebutt and everything in between.
The 2026 Presidents Cup is no different.
Decisions are being second-guessed by fans and even the captains themselves. Good golf was not always rewarded, and sometimes, not-so-good golf was. That is the way match play works. You can only play the man across from you, and the draw may not always be in your favor — in fact, it’s often not.
With the United States coming back from a historic four-point deficit after the second session to win 17 to 13 — on the back of a monstrous 9.5 to 2.5 singles performance on Sunday — eyes shift toward next fall and the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in Limerick, Ireland, against the Europeans.
A win is a win — again, you can only play who is across from you — but how should the red, white and blue (and the black and gold!) feel after a week in Chicago?
Result does not justify process
If you bypassed watching the Presidents Cup and only looked at the final score, you would be fair to assume a ho-hum win for the Americans. It was anything but. The U.S. team enjoyed such a large talent gap over the International team — as shown in an impressive singles session — that it was truly alarming how poorly they performed in the four-ball and foursomes team sessions.
This is precisely what transpired last year at Bethpage Black. While the talent discrepancy was much closer, it still leaned towards the homestanding Americans. While the Ryder Cup was effectively lost before Sunday even began, the U.S. nearly swept singles, which would have resulted in an even more miraculous comeback. Alas, the Americans did not, and it stands to reason they may not win another team competition at that level if they cannot figure out how to play team golf.
In the last two Presidents Cups, the U.S. is 5-13-0 in foursomes. The mark at the Ryder Cup is even worse at 3-13-0.
Sunday singles have made messy team performances look cleaner — like shoving piles of clothes into the closet before company arrives. It’s not going anywhere. It still needs to be cleaned up at some point.
Yes, singles is a huge part of the competition, but it is not a winning formula to rely on final-day heroics, even if it produced a trophy last weekend.
Captain Brandt Snedeker admitted that the first time he got his lineups correct all week was on Sunday. Sunday! In the fifth and final session! Hey, at least we can respect the honesty.
It’s easy to identify where the mistakes were made. Snedeker played Justin Thomas in foursomes. He didn’t play Jacob Bridgeman once in four-ball, and he put Bridgeman with Russell Henley in foursomes. He sat the world No. 1, which appeared to come as a surprise to said world No. 1. He showed his hand when announcing his Sunday singles lineup. He leaned on buddy pairings, vibes and the same logic that has been a losing approach when the opponent’s talent is in the same neighborhood as the U.S.
Geoff Ogilvy had his dream scenario
If you gave the International captain Hideki Matsuyama, Adam Scott, Si Woo Kim and Min Woo Lee against Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Jackson Koivun and Jacob Bridgeman for the Presidents Cup on Monday, he would have taken those matchups 12 times out of 10 and run.
That’s the exact scenario he faced: His best and most experienced International players taking on U.S. players who had some question marks in either category.
After Sungjae Im and Tom Kim won their matches, pushing the team’s total to 12.5, these four players had the opportunity to win three points to claim the cup. Three of those matches went to the final hole with the U.S. winning the 18th each time (one conceded birdie and two pars), while Scott was on the receiving end of a 57-foot bomb from Cantlay on No. 16 that more or less put their match on ice.
The International team grabbed zero points from these four matches and only added to its total thanks to Nick Taylor, who tied Henley in the penultimate match after the competition was already settled.
In their 12th and seventh appearances respectively, Scott and Matsuyama had their chances to put their imprints on the cup. But after playing with house money for so long, it felt as if they realized late Sunday all that accumulation of wealth meant this time they had something to lose.
Scottie Scheffler’s honest … if you’re willing to listen
Everyone has a theory when it comes to Scheffler’s performances in the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup. The world No. 1 went 3-1-0 by week’s end, co-led the U.S. in terms of points and wrapped up his singles match with relative ease, but the eye test does not lie.
This was not the Scheffler we see week to week, and his improved performance in Chicago does not atone for his play in prior team competitions. Still, it was a significant step in the right direction, and clearly something was different. Let the man himself explain:
“As a hypercompetitive person, I think sometimes I can probably try too hard. If you look at my putting stats over the course of my career, arguably what made me struggle the most in 2023 was probably trying too hard. I think when you look at this format, maybe my record hasn’t matched up to what I think that it should be. Could it be trying too hard? I think that’s definitely a factor for sure.
“For me, it’s different in the sense that you also have a partner with you, and you’re playing for somebody outside yourself, and that’s a lot different as well. Kind of striking the balance between how much do you care, I think that’s something I’m always trying to figure out. Definitely for me, I think just trying less would be really important. It’s just one of those things that’s a lot easier said than done.”
Scheffler has countless superpowers — course management, elite all-around skills, competitive drive — but one that tends to get overshadowed by the rest is his level of care. It is not what most people think about. Athletes should really care about the outcome, but caring and pushing too much or not caring and not pushing hard enough can actually lead to similar outcomes.
The 30-year-old has perfected this balance, but it runs counter to those who have thrived in this format, such as Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Patrick Reed and Justin Thomas. When emotions run deep, these players find a new speed. Scheffler has the ability to separate the process from the result — remember his press conference before winning the 2025 Open? — but what makes weeks like the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup so difficult for that mindset is that there is a result on every hole.
The process bleeds into the result and vice versa. It is near impossible to separate the two.
Scheffler has identified this, and when that happens, history suggests the problem will be solved. Heck, for all the discourse, his Presidents Cup team record is now 5-4-1, including a foursomes win, and that comes even without the form and mindset we all know he possesses.
The Brothers Kim saved the Presidents Cup (for now)
The event was lacking major juice … until 2022, when Tom Kim was introduced into the competition. Shushing the crowd in Charlotte, mixing it up with the Americans in Montreal and leading the Chicago event in points, Kim has nearly single-handedly revitalized the Presidents Cup.
Throw in a perfect partnership with Si Woo Kim, and the two personalities have injected a pulse into a competition that appeared destined to flatline. It’s what the Presidents Cup needed: a new run of stars for the International team that (1) pose problems for the Americans and (2) are likable while doing so.
“The first time I went to the Presidents Cup, I was the only Korean, and our culture is so different, so I get shy, and especially since English is not my first language, I get more shy, stressed for me,” Si Woo Kim said when I asked him about his relationship with Tom Kim and Sungjae Im ahead of the Presidents Cup. “It was fun to play with the best pro in the world [in 2017], but it wasn’t fun because I was too shy; I couldn’t speak English much.
“Since joining Sungjae and Tom, we can talk to each other in our own language, and it gets me so comfortable. Even when we talk in English, Tom has great English, so it got me back cause I think it’s really good company for us.”
The kids are going to be alright
There are positives for the U.S. team coming out of this week, and for all the smack we have talked about Snedeker, he did have the huevos and foresight to select Jackson Koivun with one of his six captain’s picks.
The 21-year-old was sensational. After a nervy start that produced a full point on Thursday, he settled into his own. Koivun carried Thomas to a half point on Saturday and captured a crucial full point in a match that stretched to the 18th hole. He was 2 down at the turn, won Nos. 11-13 and never relinquished the lead.
If it was not clear before, it should be now that Koivun has it. It’s not something that can be taught or pulled from a spreadsheet. It’s something that can only be seen, and the kid put it on full display, especially on Sunday.
But he was not alone. Presidents Cup rookie Chris Gotterup teamed up with Cameron Young for a little Tri-State partnership that produced magic. The U.S. has looked at comfortable partnerships in the past — Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, for example — to provide a steady hand. Sometimes they play them out longer than they should, but the shelf life on these two together should read well into the future.
Jim Furyk’s inside perspective
Snedeker was flanked by Ryder Cup captains past and future in Keegan Bradley and Jim Furyk all week. The spotlight now turns to the latter as Furyk gets his chance at redemption in the 2027 Ryder Cup. At the helm in 2018, Furyk was on the receiving end of the worst American loss since 2006, but he has been vocal that he learned from the 17.5 to 10.5 drubbing in Paris.
Furyk has already altered his course by changing the qualifying method to a year-long process. He has been able to identify tendencies, biases, learnings and more (like bringing on a new analytics group) through his involvement as an assistant captain this week and in last year’s Ryder Cup.
He has been able to confirm or deny whether this leadership core — Snedeker, Bradley, Gary Woodland and Webb Simpson, who have been involved in those same two competitions — is worth retaining. Furyk has already named Stewart Cink and Justin Leonard vice captains for his leadership room.
Lack of information shouldn’t be an issue for Furyk, but how he handles noise and pertinent material will be critical in the lead-up to next year’s Ryder Cup.
“I think you’re always learning,” Furyk said. “I’m always trying to find ways, new ideas. We had some new people in the room this year. Always sharing ideas, always trying to learn, always trying to be a calming influence. I said it all along: If you’ve been listening all year and you’ve heard my media all year, it’s really been about, ‘Why did you come back? Why did you want to be the Ryder Cup captain?’ Because I love these guys. I really do. I think they’re special. We’ve got a lot of great veterans in the room. We’ve got a lot of folks that we really lean on, and we’ve got a lot of young guys.”
Eyes shift towards 2027
And just like that, we are a year out from the Ryder Cup. European captain Luke Donald had a timely social media post on Sunday commemorating the one-year anniversary of winning the cup at Bethpage Black, while Snedeker may have given them early bulletin board material by saying, “This team is going to be a problem in Ireland.”
What problem, exactly? For who? Those questions will only be answered in time.
Remember: The Europeans brought back 11 of the 12 players from Marco Simone in 2023 to Bethapge Black in 2025, only replacing Nicolai Højgaard with his twin brother Rasmus. The core of their team is likely to remain the same as they look to raise the cup for the third straight event and eighth straight time on home soil.
As for the U.S., it saw four roster spots change over in a single year with Gotterup, Koivun, Bridgeman and Wyndham Clark playing the Presidents Cup after missing out on the Ryder Cup. That might happen again a year from now; 365 days can be both long and oh-so-short.