Weekend Wrap - Tuesday Edition

I appreciate your patience in allowing me to wrap the weekend a day late....  Not that there's much to wrap until, checking calendar, April.  

The Dunhill - I'm chastened to inform that I didn't watch any of it after Thursday, as baseball, football, actual golf and life intervened.  Though I've not deleted the tape of Sunday...  In any event, Geoff has a nice game story:

Meronk's fifth DP World Tour victory secures his card for next year. He’d arrived in St Andrews 141st in the Race to Dubai Ranking with one event to go.

The 33-year-old from Poland birdied the first, second, fifth and ninth holes while making vital par-saving putts at the sixth and eighth to turn in 33. Meronk separated himself from overnight leader Jarvis with a birdie at the ninth, before the 23-year-old South African bogeyed the short par-4 that’s normally a must-birdie in Old Course championships.

Meronk made his pro debut in the 2016 Dunhill, yet had reached Sunday’s final round just once before. But this time the exiled LIV golfer was attempting to win with his career on the line. So naturally, it all came down to the Road hole and all of its idiosyncrasies. A drive in the light lefthand rough meant he faced a 209-yard approach. The shot dribbled just over the green and onto a patch of thin turf between the dirt path and road. Meronk played safely over the green’s sideslope and past the hole, took his bogey, and then walked over to the 18th tee to wait.

Moments later, Meronk had driven to the front edge before Jarvis also bogeyed the Road after missing the green long and left. That re-opened what became the final two-stroke cushion after Jarvis was unable to eagle and force sudden death. Watching the final group play the Home hole in scoring, Meronk took several congratulations before bending down and crying in relief.

“After my drive on 18, I was quite happy with the position I was in,” Meronk said I was just trying to enjoy the walk. It's an amazing walk when you cross the bridge. You look around, the people, the history. Actually, when I was crossing the bridge, I talked to myself. I was actually thinking about Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus walking on the bridge and I was asking for good energy from them. It was just a great feeling. I really enjoyed that.”

Best. Polish. Player. Evah!  Pop Quiz:  Who is the second best Polish player ever?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Isn't this why we have AI SI? 

Adrian Meronk and Mateusz Gradecki are widely recognized as the two best Polish professional golfers in history, as Poland has a very young and developing golf tradition

Unsurprisingly, a bit of a falloff from No. One to No. 2:

Top Polish Golfers

Golfer	Career Highlights	Major Accomplishments
Adrian Meronk	First Pole to win on the DP World Tour, play in a Major, and join LIV Golf	4 DP World Tour wins, 2023 DP World Tour Player of the Year, LIV Golf winner
Mateusz Gradecki	Second Polish winner on the European Challenge Tour	Won the 2022 Limpopo Championship (Sunshine/Challenge Tour)

 Meronk has always been a nice player, though most famous for a Ryder Cup snub....

I don't feature all that many favorable stories about Tiger, but Geoff has this one:

Meronk first came on the scene five years ago after winning the Irish Open at Mount Juliet Estate. He turned up two weeks later at The 150th Open in St Andrews and spotted his hero, Woods, on

the putting green. Meronk asked for a photo thinking it would be his only Woods encounter. Two days later, Meronk played a practice round with Woods on championship eve. (This Jack Bantock story has a nice account of Meronk’s week.)

I heard a slightly different version of the practice round tale from Woods’ friend and TGR EVP Rob McNamara. Woods got off a 10th tee shuttle bus in full focus mode, walked onto the 10th tee and did not see Meronk blending in at the back of with marshals and spectators. As Woods went through his routine, he spotted Meronk, who quipped, “Would you like to join me?”

Woods chuckled, said yes, and the two went on to enjoy nine holes. The following February, Woods gave Meronk a sponsor’s invitation to the 2023 Genesis Invitational.

Kids, it pays to have a dry sense of humor.

He must have caught him on a good day....

I can't move on without excerpting Geoff's caustic take on the coverage:

American viewers hoping to enjoy the wonderful scenes from St Andrews and the changes ahead of next year’s Open were unlikely to have gleaned a thing watching Saturday’s broadcast after an onslaught of commercial slop occasionally interrupted by action.. Things improved a bit Sunday on the DP World Tour’s feed aired by Golf Channel.

The extra ads are inserted by the Channel and covered the gamut from Temptation Treats (cat meals), the Bullseye Blower (a one-minute spot for a leaf blower!), TrustandWill.com, TexasGold.com, Rugiet (erectile dysfunction chewables), Presidents Cup apparel (“We’ll see you at Medinah!”), way too many Hidden Links spots, a special duo of Affordable Dentures and Clear Choice dental implants in the same break (options!), the Stoko short stabilizer to strengthen your hip rotation, and a bursts of Versant ads on repeat for things like Jim Cramer’s Investing Club, Full Swing, and Golf Now.

The heap of slop was all the more amazing since the tournament is sponsored by Dunhill, a subsidiary of Richemont and possibly the world’s finest collection of luxury brands under one roof (Montblanc, Chloé, Jaeger-LeCoultre,, IWC Schaffhausen, Peter Millar and G/FORE, to name just a few).

Did you say Prez Cup apparel? Are we closing out Medinah swag or is Kingston Heath on presale?

Prez Cup Scat - Tom Kim Edition - Has to be my favorite story of the week, especially since folks thought he was under excruciating pressure the prior week.  This, though, is what pressure looks like and a second favorable nod to the Striped One):

Tom Kim’s last PGA Tour win, which came at the co-sanctioned Genesis Scottish Open in July,

ended with a congratulatory text from Tiger Woods. On Saturday, as Kim prepared for a career-altering round at the 2026 Asian Games, Woods sent him a different message.

“Just be you. Nothing more, nothing less,” the message from Woods said, via Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Kim arrived in Japan for this week’s Asian Games under immense pressure. South Korean men between the ages of 18 and 35 are required to serve up to 21 months in the defense forces. PGA Tour pros Sangmoon Bae and Seung-yul Noh served during their prime and it impacted their golf. But the South Korean government awards exemptions to athletes who win a gold medal at the Asian Games or any of the three medals at the Olympics. Si Woo Kim and Sunjae Im won a gold medal in the team competition at the 2023 Asian Games, earning an exemption from military service.

“I was still scared as [expletive],” Si Woo Kim told The Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson in March of his Asian Games win.

That’s what Kim faced Saturday as he entered the final round holding a one-shot lead over Japan’s Kazuki Higa and Taiwan’s Wang Wei-hsuan.

Spurred by a text from his idol and friend, Kim played his best golf on Saturday. He birdied Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8 and 11 before making an eagle on the par-5 13th to gain some breathing room. A final-round 6-under 64 saw Kim finish at 18-under and claim the gold medal at Kasugai’s East course in Japan and earn an exemption for his military service.

It's a bizarre system, as it seems that military service should either be required of all or none.  That said, we know how it's affected other Korean players and you can just imagine how difficult the week was for him.

The Tour Confidential gang had thoughts:

Tom Kim won the 2026 Asian Games on Saturday and earned the individual gold medal for

South Korea, but his win also means the 24-year-old will avoid an 18-21 month stretch in the South Korean military required of all males in the country. We’ve seen a lot of impactful wins this season — Gary Woodland and Anthony Kim come to mind — but where does this one rank among some of the biggest of 2026?

James Colgan: It’s not at the AK and Gary Woodland level, but I think it’s in that neighborhood. Winning is, like, the hardest thing to do in golf. To win when the weight of a career-altering inevitability hangs over you if you don’t win? That’s extremely, extremely impressive.

Josh Schrock: Given the potential career-altering stakes, I’d say this win is potentially the biggest of the year. AK and Woodland’s wins were great stories in their own right, but had AK lost LIV Adelaide, his future wouldn’t have been greatly impacted outside of his bank account. The pressure Tom Kim had to have felt knowing how military service impacted Sangmoon Bae and others was undoubtedly immense and he got it done. What a weight to lift off your shoulders.

Alan Bastable: Dramatic stuff for sure, though if he hadn’t gotten it done, Kim, who is 24, still would have had two more chances, at the next Summer Olympics (L.A. in 2028) and next Asian Games (Doha in 2030). That was not the case for Kim’s Asian Games teammate, S.H. Kim, who is 28. His time is up. Tough stuff. Interesting the stock the Korean government puts in those two events in particular; you might think that a major-championship win would rank as highly in terms of national pride.

Although perhaps I would back off my comments above knowing he had until 2030 to work the system further.... 

Tom Kim had three PGA Tour wins from 2022-23, but didn’t win again until this year’s Genesis Scottish Open. Last week he was one of the best players at the Presidents Cup, and now his latest win will certainly prolong his professional career. What has changed and what’s the ceiling for Tom Kim?

Colgan: I think we might be seeing Tom Kim’s ceiling right now. He’s a player on the rise who can hang with some of the best in the world. He’ll need to elevate another notch — either in his ball-striking or his distance — to ascend into the territory of a top-10 player in the world; and he’ll need to learn to play faster to earn the adoration of the broader sport. But he’s just 24. He still has room to grow to get there.

Schrock: Tom Kim was so young when he burst onto the scene, it’s easy to forget that he’s still just 24 and is probably arriving at his peak years. He admitted to having to eat some “humble pie” over the last two years but thinks his game and his mindset is better for it. The putter has improved and it’s fair to envision a big year for him in 2027.

Bastable: Yeah, it’s the putter. Kim’s iron play always has been elite, but when he gets to the green, he struggles to put the ball in the hole. In his last few starts, he’s largely been gaining strokes on the green, which historically has not been the case for him. Look at this season alone: despite a strong finishing kick, he still finished 83rd in SG: Putting. For him to elevate to the next level, he’s going to need to get better with the flatstick. If only he could bottle his Presidents Cup play and bring that excellent and energy to every Tour stop.

He plays a lot of golf in Dallas with a guy with a similar profile, that has managed to solve his putting issues....  I don't lose a lot f sleep over Tom Kim's prospects.

Prez Cup Scat, Varied & Sundry - Don't we think this calls for another Task Force™?

Would it be wrong of me to remind us all of that guy that led us to our first Task Force™?  Because he was in the news last week:

Phil MickelsonChecked Into Treatment Center

Really, there are places that will treat you for being a dick?

Phil Mickelson voluntarily checked himself into an addiction treatment center amid ongoing personal issues ... TMZ Sports has learned.

A rep for Phil tells TMZ Sports ... "Phil was seeking treatment for family trauma and addiction."

And who do we think caused the family trauma?  Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the right guy?  

Back to the TC panel:

While we are officially a week removed from the U.S. narrowly beating the Internationals in the Presidents Cup — and discussed some talking points in this space last week — there’s still much to learn from Medinah. One we didn’t cover: What did 2027 Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk learn that will help him in Ireland?

Colgan: That if he actually wants things to be competitive at Adare Manor, he needs to get really, really, REALLY serious about creating a blueprint to improve the team’s performance in foursomes play.

Schrock: I would hope he learned that while the U.S. team remains really good at singles, they still have a lot of work to do at team golf, especially in foursomes. A Sunday singles charge against the Internationals shouldn’t paper over the big issue that has plagued the Americans for several competitions in a row.

Bastable: That JK (Jackson Koivun) might soon be the U.S.’s new JT (Justin Thomas).

But James, can you helps us with what that blueprint might entail?  It's like the weather, everyone talks about but no one does anything about it....

But, kids, I fear that the wrong question has been asked.  I'm less concerned about what Jim "Alas, poor" Furyk learned in Chicago, and far more worried about whether he learned anything in Paris.  Because that wasn't a Task Force™ success....

Let's remember that, twelve years into our Task Force™ era, that the pattern is to use Prez Cup wins to create a veneer of false confidence, so we seem very much on plan.

And what might European captain Luke Donald have thought watching the Americans? And will any of it be helpful to him come next year?

Colgan: That his advantage in foursomes play — the thing that has allowed the Europeans to win two straight Cups under his watch — is still prolific.

Schrock: That he still has the upper hand on a talented American team that doesn’t know what to do in foursomes, where the Europeans bludgeon them.

Bastable: Lol, quite sure Donald isn’t too worried about what the Americans are up to; he has far weightier matters — like shampoo brands and thread counts — to sort out. Donald and Furyk will address the media on Tuesday. Maybe we’ll get some insights into LD’s Adare Manor planning then.

The foursomes thing is interesting, as there's a misconception that the Euros grow up playing the arcane format, which is only true at a handful of elite clubs.  But does anyone think that Asians grow up playing alternate shot?  So how does one fic this?  The Subpar guys had some interesting data:

Stoltz suggested that perhaps the pairings themselves aren’t the problem, but the Americans’ on-course strategy may be.

“In foursomes, there’s a mind-blowing stat where it’s like, since the 2023 Rome [Ryder Cup], on those four team events, we have gotten our asses handed to us,” he said. “We have made fewer bogeys during that time than our opponents in the matches that we’ve played. And we have made half as many birdies.

“So I don’t know if it’s, like, a strategy thing, we get in there, like, hey dude, it’s all shot, like just if we just play it safe, hit fairways, hit greens, two-putt, make par, let them beat themselves. If that is the strategy, it ain’t working, and typically that’s kind of the thought process I would say for alternate shot, is it not?

That is interesting.... Not exactly sure what you do with it...

This one has me laughing:

The unauthorized blueprint to save U.S. golf’s match play kryptonite

 You knew the solution was going to be in the last place we looked, no?

But if you know American team golf, you know that one excuse has proved stronger and more stubborn than all the rest — an excuse repeated by U.S. team captain Brandt Snedeker on the Golf

Channel after Friday’s all-too-predictable trouncing in foursomes play in Chicago.

“They just made more putts.”

Of course, Snedeker is right. The Internationals made more putts in foursomes play at the Presidents Cup in ’26. Just like the Europeans made more putts in foursomes play at Bethpage in ’25 and Rome in ’23, and just like the Internationals made more putts in foursomes play at Montreal in ’24. If there is a reliable throughline involving the American performance in each of these team events, something you could set your watch to, it is that they make fewer putts than their opponents in alternate shot.

And here’s the pesky part of this excuse: the data backs it up. Over the last four team events, the Americans have made half as many birdies as their opponents in opening foursomes sessions (96 to 50); and nearly twice as many bogeys or worse (24 to 13). In those same foursomes matches, the Americans typically start missing putts early — they trailed in 15 of 18 matches after just six holes — and they keep missing ’em until the playing is done. (In those 18 opening foursomes matches, the Americans are 1-17.)

But what if I told you Snedeker’s diagnosis was part of the problem precisely because he was right? After all, you can’t fix something like making fewer putts. You can’t will your team to make more putts, just as you can’t convince your opponents to make fewer of them. You can train like hell at your putting, and you can get better over a large enough sample size, but you can’t know that a larger percentage of your putts fall during the one week of the year when it matters most, in the one competitive format where you tend to struggle most. You just have to get lucky. And American team golf? Well, they’re unlucky.

In the end, this kind of thinking may be the single greatest boogeyman in golf over the last half-decade. And why? Because the idea that something as important as the Ryder Cup rests on something as trivial as putting provides a wonderful justification to do absolutely nothing about it. It allows the people with the power to change something the freedom to choose not to. It encourages inaction at the highest level, and in the case of U.S. foursomes play over the last half-decade, inaction has looked a lot like, well, losing.

But there’s a problem with blaming America’s failures on making fewer putts: It ignores the fact that America has some agency in the putts it makes. And blaming those same failures on rotten luck ignores another fact — one that every single player, captain, caddie, support staffer and locker room attendant knows to be true: In golf, luck is something you make.

Sorry for the long excerpt, but guess where the silver bullet is to be found:

As it turns out, America’s recent case of bad luck in team play is not specific to golf. American sprinters have faced a similar issue in team events, particularly in the men’s 4×100 relay, where the U.S. has failed to medal in five straight Olympics despite regularly possessing the fastest group of individual sprinters in the world.

When the Americans fumbled the baton handoff and a medal in the men’s 4×100 at the Paris Olympics in 2024, U.S. Olympic legend Carl Lewis unloaded a scathing critique of the entire American sprinting apparatus that sounded … a lot like the critiques recently aimed at U.S. golf leadership.

“It is time to blow up the system. This continues to be completely unacceptable,” Lewis wrote on Twitter. “It is clear that EVERYONE at @usatf is more concerned with relationships than winning. No athlete should step on the track and run another relay until this program is changed from top to bottom.”

What’s different is what happened to USA Track and Field after. Rather than paying lip service to Lewis, USA Track and Field actually did blow everything up. In 2025, USATF announced a new program called “One Team”—an initiative aimed at completely revamping the organization’s approach to the relay, with several targeted fixes to improve team performance in the biggest moments.

Got it.  So, just like USATF taught the guys how to make handoffs, the PGA should teach its players how to .....errr, putt?  Isn't that something they're already pretty good at?

It's a superficially similar problem, a superior group of athletes unable to perform.  I'd argue that relays involve a specific skill that can be honed, whereas foursomes play simply requires the use of already perfected skills, albeit in different circumstances.

I'm unclear as the path forward for the NOLA Tour event, i.e., will it still be a team event?  If so, I would argue that every player under consideration for that year's team should be expected to play in that event.  It's a stroke play event, so not comparable completely, but at least it might familiarize players with the odd nature of alternate shot.  

Or, yannoe, just get Scottie and Sam Burns to work on their baton handoff...

Have a great week.  I'll be back.....checking calendar...well, sometime.

Weekend Wrap - Empire Strikes Back Edition

Hey, kids, sorry for the one-day lag....  I had a busy Monday morning with something requiring actual thought and preparation, so better to defer to Tuesday when there's sufficient time.

My first comment is to complement the schedulers for picking Nor'easter season for the event.  If nothing else, I certainly saw a lot of the event....  Like, all of it.

I'm going to use Eamon Lynch's preview piece as my framing device, see what you think:

The worst-case scenario for the Presidents Cup is an International team upset

Well, that's certainly a hot take.....  though let's let him have his say:

The Presidents Cup isn’t among the most important projects in Brian Rolapp’s gut renovation of the PGA Tour, ranking somewhere after designing a split-level schedule, building media rights

revenue and installing a shredder for the perfumed letters sent by agents representing LIV Golf’s groveling refugees. But the matches at Medinah Country Club should remind him that the remodeling needs to go beyond the weekly stroke play product.

It’s been 32 years since the Presidents Cup was created to draft off the drama (and revenue) of the Ryder Cup, and more than 20 years since it became as stale as the offerings in a Pyongyang deli. When the U.S. was last defeated, Bill Clinton wasn’t yet halfway through his second term, the second-ranked golfer in the world was Mark O’Meara — now retired even from senior events — and Donald Trump was desecrating skylines to build monstrosities to honor his fragile little ego. Which is to say that a lot of things have changed since 1998, but not everything.

Debating the shortcomings of the Presidents Cup risks having the International team’s players and captains interpret it as an indictment of their effort. It isn’t, and it’s necessary. The Cup was intended to capitalize on a generational talent pool — Greg Norman, Nick Price, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els — but today finds itself swimming in the shallows of Si Woo Kim, Nico Echavarria, Ryo Hisatsune and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Fine players all, but not legends around whom one can market a compelling event. Many an accusing finger points at LIV for the Internationals’ lopsided losses in the last two Cups, but the exiling of Cameron Smith or Louis Oosthuizen doesn’t account for the eight successive American wins prior to the league’s launch. LIV is more excuse than explanation.

Eamon is correct that the 2026 International team seemed historically weak, certainly without anyone that might be considered a generational talent.  And yet, unlike Eamon, we have the benefit of hindsight, and we know that this band of misfits gave the Americans all they wanted...

How does this hold up?

As a competitive spectacle, the Presidents Cup is fundamentally broken, and the worst thing that could happen at Medinah is for Geoff Ogilvy’s International squad to pull off a shock victory. Sure, even some U.S. fans might enjoy a romantic underdog upset and a reversal of three decades of drubbings, but it would also embolden optimists and opportunists to hail the dawn of a new era of parity and it would set back an effort to fix things by a decade or more.

What that fix could look like is another matter.

But even Eamon knows the obvious fix isn't so....well, obvious:

There’s a good chance that by Sunday night we’ll hear the biennial cry for the Presidents Cup to become a co-ed affair, with six men and six women comprising each team. There are several arguments in favor of such. It would make it more competitive and perhaps even render the Internationals as favorites, since there are six eligible women ranked in the world’s top 10, five of them in the top six. It would clearly distinguish this event from the Ryder Cup, a lingering comparison that will always cheapen the pale imitation. And it would embrace a format that departs from the weekly fare, which the Tour has shown a willingness to do in rethinking the FedEx Cup playoffs.

But there are factors mitigating against such a seismic shift. The Presidents Cup is profitable and Rolapp likely isn’t incentivized to roll the dice with revenue when investors are watching closely. He also knows that his job is to create playing opportunities and money for his members, not for Craig Kessler’s constituents on the LPGA Tour, and that going co-ed would be dilutive to the core mission. And while it might generate social media brownie points from the woke folk, Rolapp can’t be eager to assume responsibility for marketing LPGA assets, a task that seems ever more onerous given the poor viewing ratings for the recent Solheim Cup.

It's a very funny state of affairs, but the real problem is on the ladies side.  The Solheim Cup is perfectly fine nad has the benefit of on asset the Prez Cup would die for, actual bad blood between the teams.  The structural problem is that the ladies can't mimic the men and create their own Faux-Prez Cup, because the U.S. vs. the rest of the world wouldn't be remotely competitive.  Heck, the U.S. vs. South Korea or Japan alone wouldn't be a fair fight.

But Eamon's points against are spot on, I'd only reinforce that, while the opportunity sounds great and I would definitely watch, you're limiting it to maybe six players of each gender, so it's not really viable.

While Eamon makes a perfectly valid point here, I don't think he actually has put much thought into his solution:

The other potential change is more incremental and focused on an area seldom scrutinized: ownership.

The Presidents Cup is wholly a PGA Tour product and the PGA Tour decides everything. Who captains both teams. Who’s eligible to play (or not) on both teams. Qualification criteria for both teams. How both teams are resourced and managed. And where the matches are held for both domestic and international venues. The latter might explain why two of the last five “foreign” Presidents Cups were staged within walking distance of the U.S. border, betraying a desire to keep this “global” event within North American time zones to maximize media rights value.

For an event that wants to emulate the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup does the exact opposite at every turn. Instead of cultivating a real rivalry, it feels like divisions of the same parent company meeting for a friendly off-site.

Rolapp should sell the International team, whether to a conglomeration of overseas tours, a wealthy individual who fancies being a player in the sport alongside a solvent partner, or to private equity. This is a platform with value but no direction. Let a new owner decide captaincies, eligibility, resources and foreign venues. Hanging a new shingle won’t necessarily make it more competitive, but it would at least mirror one crucial aspect of the Ryder Cup by granting the International team the self-determination necessary to give itself the best opportunity to succeed. But that would require Rolapp overcoming the control freak vapors that filter through the ducts in the building formerly known as the GloHo.

Except for the fact that there is no controlling legal authority on the other side.  There are tours in that part of the world, but this is where things are different from the Ryder Cup.  The Euros grew up through the Euro Tour and, most importantly, remain members of it.  But I'm pretty sure that Si Woo Kim isn't a member of the Korean Tour any longer, and it's hard to see how they play a role in this, even more so because you'd need to include 4-5 tours in a consortium.  Good luck with that.

I'm among the persuadable.  I'd love to see the Internationals more in control of their fate, captain, qualification and site selections most importantly.  The LIV thing certainly exposed some fault lines, and I think Trevor Immelman absorbed the worst of it, but I don't see the need to tear down the house.

In fact, I see the Prez Cup as being what the Ryder Cup has been for much of its existence, an entertaining exhibition.  Not only is the overall competitive balance out of whack, but we see the same patterns within each event, where the International rely on a handful of show ponies in order to build up enough of a lead before being worn down by the Yanks' superior depth.

So, shall we talk about the week?  We'll lede with the TC panel:

The U.S. was trailing by three points heading into Sunday at the Presidents Cup but

stormed back to win nine singles matches and tie another to claim the Cup, 17-13, for its 11 consecutive win in this event. What was more impressive: the Internationals’ play in the first two days, or the Americans’ play on the third and final day?

James Colgan: The International performance to start the Cup will stick with me far longer than the American performance to save it. Every conceivable indicator told us this iteration of the event was more lopsided than any of the (pretty lopsided!) versions we’ve seen over the last half-decade. Instead, the INTs gave the Americans everything they could handle.

Josh Sens: Agreed. Team play has a way of somehow disguising weaknesses — or, maybe, in the case of the Americans — exposing them. But when it reverts singles, and those dynamics of partner are stripped away, you’re left with talent and experience going head to head. There was nothing shocking about the U.S. comeback. It was just a bit surprising that they were down as far as they were heading into the final day.

Dylan Dethier: The U.S. comeback will stick with me because of its sheer force. When the red wave finally hit it obliterated everything in its way, crashing over each of those last seven matches, which each made it to 17 but yielded just one tie and six losses for the International side. Honestly, it was incredibly impressive but also a bit deflating — there was so much heart to the International side’s team-play performance that it was somewhat painful to see them go out in such tragic fashion.

For once, I think the writers did a pretty good job with a silly question, though my sympathies lie more with James Colgan than Dylan.  Team play is inherently more interesting, especially since we see it so seldom, so watching the scrappy underdogs school the favored Americans was a great pleasure for this viewer.

Who is your MVP for each side?

Colgan: Cam Young is quickly developing into a serial killer in these team settings. With Bethpage last year, that’s two straight events where he’s been the best player by a few miles on the U.S. side. Sungjae Im was equally brilliant for the INTs, delivering a rare Black Flag on Sunday when they needed it most.

Sens: Young was the pacesetter, to be sure. But I’d argue that Jackson Koivun came up even bigger in the rare match (against Si Woo Kim) in which the Internationals had the advantage on paper.. His comeback from two down was especially pivotal in flipping the momentum late in the day. If Kim had gone on to win that point, a couple of the other closing matches — I’m thinking, in particular, of Russell Henley against Nick Taylor, and Jacob Bridgeman against Min Woo Lee — would have taken on a different atmospheric pressure, with potentially different results.

Dethier: Tom Kim was the only man to pick up four points on the week and is my International MVP, especially after a gritty Sunday showing against Wyndham Clark. Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup are co-MVPs on the American side; when they finally teamed up on Saturday they kept the U.S. team in it.

There's a million articles grading players and separating into winners and losers, which allow for a bit more nuance.  For instance, this is one such winner offered up:

U.S. Presidents Cup rookies

The Americans' first-timers delivered when it mattered most at the Presidents Cup. Rookies Chris Gotterup, Jacob Bridgeman and Jackson Koivun all won their singles matches on Sunday, with Bridgeman providing the clinching point when he beat Min Woo Lee on the 18th green to secure his first win of the competition.

Gotterup and Koivun, meanwhile, finished the event a combined 5-1-1. Gotterup teamed with Cameron Young to get two dominating victories on Saturday and may have provided the U.S. a new formidable combination for next year's Ryder Cup in Ireland. Gotterup then outlasted Christiaan Bezuidenhout in singles to give the U.S. wins in four of the first six matches as part of Sunday's comeback.

Koivun, the 21-year-old rookie, produced perhaps the most unexpected result on Sunday when he rallied on the back nine to beat Si Woo Kim in singles. Kim entered the Presidents Cup as the International team's top player, according to the world golf rankings. Koivun didn't lose a match at Medinah, burnishing his reputation as a looming force in match play events and reinforcing the belief that he could be the PGA Tour's next star.

I think that's completely and will be way over-interpreted.  Those three rookies did great, but we've seen this movie before and results tend to be stubbornly non-linear.  Let's remember that one such rookie given an early cameo was Scottie Scheffler, whose career is compared to Tiger but who also sports a 1-9 record in foursomes.  

From that same piece, we won't be arguing against either of these "losers":

Adam Scott

Scott acknowledged before the Presidents Cup began that, at 46 years old, he wasn't sure how much longer he'd be able to qualify for this event. That reality made the International team's squandered lead on Sunday particularly painful, especially since he lost a singles match to American Patrick Cantlay. This was Scott's 12th consecutive Presidents Cup appearance, tying the record set by Phil Mickelson, yet he's never been part of the winning team.

Corey Conners

Conners lost five of the first six holes to American Justin Thomas in their singles match on Sunday and never was competitive in the third pairing to tee off. Thomas closed him out for a 5-and-3 win and the most lopsided result of the round and put American red on the scoreboard early to help get the U.S. comeback going. Conners was the worst putter on the course by a lot based on strokes gained, and lost more than 4.6 shots compared to everyone else on the Medinah green.

Adam's performance Sunday I found extremely hard to watch, because we wanted so much better for him (and, admittedly, he was up against my least favorite American).  I also think that, as thin as the roster was, five sessions for Adam was a big ask.

Back to the TC:

U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker weathered far more second-guessing (including from himself!) than International captain Geoff Ogilvy — and yet still came out on top. What was your assessment of how the American skipper handled his duties?

Colgan: Uhhh, poorly. He had a massive talent advantage on home soil and eked out a pretty narrow victory that appeared to be operating with little plan or bigger strategy. Just because he won doesn’t make him a “winning” captain.

Sens: I think it’s easy to second guess, but aside from sitting the best player in the world on Saturday afternoon, I’m not sure anything he did would have yielded different results. We’ve seen this over and over out of the Americans – they’re weaker in team play than they are in singles. On top of that, the Internationals got some exceptional play in those partnerships up and down the roster.

Dethier: The losing captain always takes too much flak in these things, and so I felt for Snedeker on Saturday night even though I disagreed with a couple of his decisions. But ultimately it’s a results-oriented position, and the U.S. team won by four, so whatever Snedeker did ahead of Sunday singles certainly worked.

I guess let me throw this Q&A into the mix as well:

The U.S.’s play in singles was dominant, but the team continues to struggle in foursomes, a format in which they went 2-7 this week, dropping their combined foursomes record in Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups since 2023 to 8-26. What is going on here?

Colgan: I spent a while looking into the numbers behind this yesterday, and the answer is that the Americans don’t show up ready to play in the format. Of 18 opening foursome session matches since 2023, the Americans are 1-17. Of those 18 matches, they’ve trailed after 6 holes 15 times. To me, that reflects a total lack of preparation. You can’t wait for the event to start to “turn it on.” You can’t wait for players to “get a feel for their partner.” By the time you’ve done that, you’re already in a hole.

Sens: I think James’ answer points in part to the deeper reason. If it is in fact a lack of preparation for early partner play, doesn’t that suggest that the stereotype is true: that Americans are more individualistic, more comfortable on their own, less inspired by collective action. I know it seems cliche to the point of being lazy to repeat that old saw. But I also don’t see much evidence that it isn’t true.

Dethier: You’d assume that some of those stereotypes — about Americans playing well on their own ball, but notably worse when they have to take turns — would be statistical noise. But this week seemed exaggerated on both fronts; foursomes went miserably and singles went beyond their wildest dreams. There’s obviously some randomness involved, but there’s also enough of a trend line that I’d offer next year’s Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk this special advice: make sure your guys practice alternate shot!

It's really hard to find the signal amid the noise on this issue, because it's not like the other guys play foursomes growing up.

The whole captain thing is interesting, as I found this dead wrong:

LOSERS

Geoff Ogilvy

The International team captain deserves credit for putting his golfers in position to have a lead going into the final day of the Presidents Cup, despite entering the competition as heavy underdogs to the Americans. But Ogilvy's strategy for singles ultimately didn't work. The decision to send out most of his inexperienced golfers helped the American comeback.

OK, but is the writer aware that Ogilvy had to use those players?  The criticism I assume is the order in which he sent them out, but that weakness was going to make an appearance.

It's funny to me that taking a squad of low-ranked players, absorbing a loss in the first session, he got them to go take a three-point lead into singles.  Was anyone watching Saturday when both sessions featured Americans ahead in all four matches?   I saw those teams patiently fighting back, which smells to me like a first class piece of captaining.  And don't we think he's the perfect guy for Kingston Heath?

On the other hand, can I just say that I found Brandt Snedeker to be a quivering idiot this week?  I'm sorry to be harsh, but I just felt like he couldn't get a sentence out even before the apology.  I understand he was trying to take his guys off the hook by taking blame, but it came across to me as useless blather, since we could all see their indifferent play.  If this was an audition for Ryder Cup captaincy, Hell No!

Before moving on from captains, Geoff has a post up that's mostly cautionary, but I was amused by his callout of a certain former captain:

Keegan Bradley. A year removed from an embarrassing loss where he failed the number one task of a Captain in an exhibition match—ensuring that sportsmanship prevailed—it really was something to see him at the table dictating ideas to Snedeker while covering his mouth as if anything he has to say is profound enough to steal.

Geoff, given that Furyk is getting a mulligan, how cnfident are we that Keegan won't?  Or Sneds... 

Match play, especially on such a high-pressure stage, reveals players’ character in a way that stroke play does not. What’s one thing you learned or saw in one of the 24 players this week that you didn’t know before the event?

Colgan: I learned that Jackson Koivun has the “it” factor in big moments. He was arguably the most important point all day for the Americans, and unquestionably the least experienced player in the field. Kudos to him for closing it out when it counted.

Sens: Koivun is a good call. Another telling sequence was seeing Scottie Scheffler concede what would have been a pretty much impossible par to his opponent, Nico Echavarria, after Echavarria had been heckled during his downswing on the tee. And then, moments later, seeing Wyndham Clark fail to concede a slam-dunk two-putt to his opponent, Tom Kim, that ended the match. Granted, they were different scenarios. But in terms of image-making, that underscored the public perception of Scheffler as a sporting gentleman, and Clark as, well, somewhat harder to like. Even the NBC announcers, who seemed allergic to saying anything even remotely critical all week, called out Clark’s decision as strange.

Dethier: This is about his golf game rather than his moral fiber, but still: If we’re drafting golfers for a team, I think I’m taking Cameron Young first. He was an absolute force this weekend and his tone-setting beatdown in the first singles match proved a sign of things to come.

Yeah, I'm gonna say that I learned that match play is fun, but it's really team match play that's da' bomb.

Shall we get to that elephant in the corner?

U.S. needs to follow up Presidents Cup with a Ryder Cup win

And typically they use Prez Cup and home Ryder Cup wins to assure themselves they've fixed their problems.  They beat an undermanned team, which should have alarm bells sounding about Adare Manor, but Jackson Koivun will save us.

Brandt Snedeker fires warning shot at Europeans that U.S. will 'be a problem' at 2027 Ryder Cup

 And this:

The 2027 Ryder Cup is less than a year away. Did this week make you feel better or worse about the U.S.’s chances against Europe at Adare Manor in Ireland next September?

Colgan: Worse. It showed me the Americans do a lot of talking about “changing things,” but have little to show for it in the setting where they’re worst: foursomes. Until we see some actual evidence of a shift in leadership, I predict the American alternate-shot woes will continue.

Sens: I wouldn’t say I feel better about the American chances, but that doesn’t mean I feel worse in general. I think it’s generally better for the Ryder Cup when the U.S. struggles and slips into an existential crisis. It adds more fuel to the rivalry and makes for a more exciting buildup and competition, all the while throwing water on the irritating assumption — which still lingers despite what has happened over the past decade plus — that the U.S. is somehow exceptional and entitled to win.

Dethier: Better, I’d say. These last two years have shown that, whatever their team-play deficiencies, these Americans work well enough on their own that no lead is insurmountable. I wouldn’t recommend they dig such a deep hole again, but they’ll never feel out of the competition regardless of score.

Wow, James, it's almost like you think Phil's Task Force was all BS.  

Or, yanno, maybe the guys just need to play better.

Just a couple f other hits from Geoff, items to muse upon:

The Snake Draft. The means of making matches differentiates the Presidents Cup and, because of possible strategies involved, led to some spectacular griping over the Captain’s decisions. The system of making match selections before or after the other team’s selection gives the Captain’s power to have a say in the outcome. (Assuming things go as planned…which they never do in golf). So in figuring the outcome would be close no matter what they did, International Captain Ogilvy and his fellow cart drivers chose to throw their weakest sticks to USA’s wolves and hope the stars would win it late. Ogilvy tried to take advantage of Snedeker’s curious choice to place Scottie Scheffler on the board instead of waiting to put the world No. 1 against one of Ogilvy’s best. The chess match proved so compelling that Golf Channel’s Live From crew questioned the strategy, then changed their minds after a few minutes when they practically declared Ogilvy the Einstein of team golf. And of course it didn’t work out even with Ogilvy’s left-to-slaughter guys acquitting themselves well—losing 3&2, 2&1, 1 Down—while his stars appeared to hit a wall in the same way that almost felled the Europeans at Bethpage.

It's a very different system, and in the past has been used to create marque matchups, think Tiger v. Ernie (they played each other that Sunday even before the OT holes, which one does in made-for-Tv events).

Here it was pretty interesting.  I did think the Scottie move felt odd, but at the same time I think each captain got what they wanted.  And we might want to remember that two hours in, it looked like Ogilvy had a chance of it working out.  It was an interesting way to play a bad hand, but we should remember how few face cards he had.

Dod begs to differ:

Data worship. Pundits working off of the numbers said this might be the greatest American team…on paper. “Miles better” than the opposition…on paper. The match that was the most lopsided…on paper. This, even though the International side is required to play the same Tour to be eligible where we’re regularly told anyone can win any given week. So it’s surprising how many smart people who play the game believe “win probabilities” based on stats hold deep meaning. You’d think after all these team events and data-driven declarations that the numbers would be seen as just one tool carrying a bit more weight than, say, the player’s astrological sign. So until we get daily stats that incorporate how a player is feeling after a 3 am wake-up call for a Saturday morning match, or quantification of their marriage health, or their Strokes Gained After Taking A Month Off Prior To A Team Matches, there are still only two stats that matter in pairings construction: steady ball strikers in Foursomes, and birdie-makers for Four-balls.

 And even on formats:

Four-ball needs to speed up. Modern professionals have been allowed to sully what can be a the most strategic team format. Thursday’s opening four-ball match featuring Scottie Scheffler/Sam Burns vs. Sungjae Im/Min Woo Lee took five hours and 23 minutes to complete 18 holes. While there are the usual caveats created by the time it takes to get around a 7500-yard-plus course with greens Stimping over 13, the opening four-ball had no lost ball searches, no waits on tees, and no complicated rulings. They are just slow. But four-ball in all team Cup events has become a five-hour-plus affair. This is sad since the format gives us intriguing moments not seen in any other part of the sport: players hitting shots they normally would not play in the name of helping their partner. Or forced decisions in key moments based on what the opposition is up to. That’s what makes the format so much fun on a remotely interesting course. But who can enjoy it when the average hole takes 18 minutes to play? If we’re lucky.

Foursomes needs a policy tweak. I get that spread-out routings often don’t allow for this suggestion, but it’d be nice to see Captain’s Agreements in future matches to encourage the players not teeing off at the non-par-3 tees to walk ahead with their caddie as happens in proper Foursomes. And no, in walking ahead don’t have to socialize with the enemy, as golfers do in a traditional foursomes play. But when the pace tips a few minutes over four hours as it did in Saturday’s idyllic weather alternate shot play featuring great golfers hitting good shots, it’s gotten too slow.

Fact is that Four-balls have become borderline unwatchable.  The guys don't make any bogeys, so they tend toward putting contests....

I shall leave you here.  Nothing set in stone, but for the next few weeks you might see me more on Tuesday than on Monday, not that much of importance will happen in our little golf world.  Have a great week. 

Weekend Wrap - Medinah Mulligan Edition

Did anyone watch any golf this weekend?  I mean, anyone?  Bueller?

Just a few quick notes and then I'll let you get on with your week.

The Cup That Can't Shoot Straight - I know, I typically save that one for the LPGA, but the Prez Cup, which is fine if one manages expectations, just can't be what folks want from it.  The missing ingredient is bad blood, Ernie Els just not being ale to channel his inner Seve.

It's team match play with 24 great players, so it ought to amuse at the very least.  Of course, if they set as their objective to take the event to the dreariest venues possible, then I have good news for all.  Mission Accomplished!  But Medinah isn't just uninspired, it checks off so many boxes, also being the site of the U.S. team's most humiliating collapse, so I guess, "Bygones"!  And while perhaps there's a case to be made for Medinah as a gritty, old-school U.S. Open style Bataan death March, did it show itself as a worthy strategic match play venue in 2012?  Have you finished laughing?

Let's drop in with thoughts from the Tour Confidential panel:

The Presidents Cup begins Thursday at Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago, with the Americans attempting to win their 11th straight. The U.S. holds a 13-1-1 all-time record in the event and is the favorite once again. What has to go right for the Internationals to pull off the upset? And will they?

Dylan Dethier: On paper it looks as lopsided as ever — perhaps even more so than usual. But this event does have a habit of getting slightly closer than you’d expect, at least until late on

Sunday. It would be awesome for the Internationals to contend; their blueprint for getting there is channeling the energy of Si Woo and Tom Kim plus the unpredictable nature of match play. Look, they have plenty of good golfers too; why not Adam Scott, Min Woo Lee, Ryan Fox, Hideki Matsuyama and Co.? I dunno. I’m hoping desperately for a fun Sunday finish.

Josh Schrock: They need their top players — Hideki, Si Woo, Tom Kim and Adam Scott — to be a firewall and then hope that the match play variance works in their favor in singles. If their big names get beat up, they don’t have a chance.

Zephyr Melton: They need … a miracle? Only kidding (kind of). But without the talent they lost to LIV, along with being without stalwart Jason Day, I just don’t see a path to victory for the Internationals.

Typically we go into these things thinking there's quite a bit of talent on the International Team and, given the vagaries of match play, there's no reason they can't compete.  But as the writer's note, this year's team is, well, less familiar:

Si Woo Kim 

Hideki Matsuyama 

Ryan Fox 

Tom Kim

Min Woo Lee 

Adam Scott 

Sungjae Im 

Nico Echavarria 

Corey Conners 

Nick Taylor 

Christiaan Bezuidenhout 

Ryo Hisatsune

Doesn't blow you away at the top of the list (the first six were the automatic qualifiers), and I'll bet that Captain Ogilvy struggled a bit to come up with six names.... Of course, they're still pretty good and we keep expecting to find a chip on their shoulder....

Take your pick: Which players will be the respective MVPs for each squad, and which one player might we be sleeping on who has a big week at Medinah?

Dethier: The U.S. team will be anchored by Sam Burns, who doubles as the U.S. sleeper. We are, as always, sleeping on Sam Burns. Ryan Fox is your man on the International side; this is somehow his event debut, and I’d expect him to go all out.

Schrock: The internationals will be anchored by Tom Kim, and the Americans will lean on Xander Schauffele, who I feel is close to being back to top form. I think we’re sleeping on Chris Gotterup’s potential to have a big week and make everyone re-debate why he should’ve been at Bethpage.

Melton: U.S.: Wyndham Clark (with a hot putter). International: Si Woo Kim. As far as sleepers go, I could see Jacob Bridgeman and Ryan Fox having solid weeks.

The U.S. choices were maybe a little more interesting, but no votes for the kid?  That's got to be the pick that Sneds will be judged by, no?   Especially because of this:

'Odd man out' J.J. Spaun got snubbed, so he went to Wentworth and took down everyone, including Rory McIlroy

I'm not a fan of calling such things snubs, since Spaun didn't play well enough to lock down a spot, so that chip on his shoulder is something he is just using for his own purposes.  All athletes do this, at least all who watched Michael Jordan, but we also might not that had he found that chip earlier in the year....

Shane Ryan performs a dubious public service with this:

Presidents Cup 2026: Myth-busting the 12 most common tropes of team match-play golf

Spoiler Alert: The answer to all twelve tropes is, "Well, it depends."  

Trope 1: Always pick the hot golfer

Explanation: Captain's picks (six per side) should be used on players who have shown very good form in the past month or two.

Aquino's take: It depends on what you mean by hot. Are you just considering the last four weeks

and the guy who won two tournaments in that stretch? In that case, the answer is no. With captain's picks, you're looking at a much larger body of work, plus fit for the golf course and fit for potential pairings. If you won on a course that bears no resemblance to the course you're going to play, how relevant is that?

And you have to be so careful, because some players can be feast or famine, and you don’t want to risk catching a guy at the tail end of his feast period. Lucas Glover in 2023 is a good example. (Glover had five top-6s, including two wins, in a seven-week stretch in July and August before the Rome Ryder Cup), where even before the end of qualifying it looked like he might be reverting to the mean.

For my team and most analytics professionals, we don't put a lot of stock in a flash in the pan, even if it's three weeks before the competition. Now, if you widen the sample size to at least a full season, even a little longer, and show me sustained form and consistency over that period, we can have a conversation.

This is laugh-out-loud funny, not because it isn't a valid dilemma, current form vs. a total body of work, and I mostly come down on the latter.

The reason it's so funny is obviously when you look at where these cups are on the calendar.  Recency bias is a real thing, but there's no recency in late September, because the last real golf was in August.  Forget who the captain picks, our idiots in Rome didn't even realize the problem that none of their twelve guys had played in the last six weeks.

Trope 4: Winning partnerships should stay together

Explanation: Across sessions, formats, and even across multiple Ryder Cups, two partners who win should stay together.

Aquino's take: I think of foursomes and fourball as two very different games, so to keep guys together between formats reflexively without any regard to what wins in either format is foolish. I

remember when we got criticized for splitting up Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele in '21 after foursomes, and sending Xander out with Dustin Johnson in fourball. They ended up rolling, so the criticism died down quickly, but people get anxious for some reason when it comes to splitting guys up between foursomes and fourball. But they're so different, and, also, from a practical standpoint, you have to split them up at some point if you plan to rest guys.

We've realized it's better to get guys into the matches early, get them feeling that pressure, because the longer you wait, the more the pressure builds. It doesn't help their preparation to keep them off the field. Add in the fact that guys need rest. Why even have a bench of any depth if you're afraid to use it? Another thing I can tell you is that we found a pretty firm relationship between a stressful match in the morning and not playing as well in the afternoon. I'm not going to define what we mean by a "stressful match," but you can kind of guess. And it makes the argument for having a rotation, which means splitting up even successful pairings to get fresh legs in.

I would never be dogmatic or axiomatic about whether one team's success in one format will translate to the other. It can, but you have to do the analysis.

As for keeping winning partnerships together cup to cup, it sometimes works out that way and it’s a great bonus if we can do that, but again, you have to do the analysis. Analytically, partners won’t necessarily be the same players they were two years ago any more than they will be the same players two years from now. Their fit together changes over time and as venues change. So it’s no surprise to see pairings work for a while—until they don’t.

So, no resolution of the pending Reed v. Spieth matter....

Luke Kerr-Dineen demands solutions, and he's got a couple.  Though we'll let him frame the issue:

The Presidents Cup has a systemic flaw. Here are two ways to make it fair

 Is it unfair now?  

This is going to sound like I'm being a Presidents Cup hater. But I'm not. What I am is a Presidents Cup realist.

I like the Presidents Cup … well, the idea of it at least. What I don't like is the systemic flaw in its design that means one team dominates year after year. The overall record in this match that dates back to 1994 is 13-1-1 in favor of the Americans. Even if the International Team pulls off a historic upset this year at Medinah No. 3, the competitive imbalance would remain.

I played around with a bunch of different variations, and these were the two fairest.

Keep an open mind, and let's get into it.

You are gonna love his Plan A, which is really a Plan B:

Option 1: International Team vs. USA-B Team

Again I'll give you a moment to stop laughing....

Here's his B-Team:

 

First things first. I need a volunteer to break the news to J.J. Spaun that he also failed to make the B-Team....that chip isn't getting any smaller.

Secondly, is LKD aware that this event is televised and that they're hoping to draw an audience?  Because, except for Rickie, I don't think most of us could pick these guys out from a post office wanted poster.

The second one is far more promising, although really only in a theoretical sense:

Option 2: A mixed-team event

I can already sense some executive in a suite somewhere shaking his head, dismayed at the thought of having to cut the LPGA Tour into a PGA Tour asset and make less money because of it.

But the thing is, this idea really does make sense! If you took the six highest-ranked men and women on each side, here's how the International Team would look:

It does match strength and weakness perfectly, it's just never going to happen.

Geoff is up with some thoughts on the Spaun "snub", which he attributes to a fave cause:

“It was disappointing to be left off,” Spaun said after his second-round 66 at Wentworth. “I kind of hung my hat on my experience with the Ryder Cup last year. I made it to the Tour Championship this year. I won in San Antonio. I kind of did everything I could. I was the odd man out.”

Spaun was 2-1 in his Ryder Cup debut. Presuming he was healthy and the Presidents Cup is serving as a springboard to next year’s match at Adare Manor, Spaun should have been an easy choice given his strengths and America’s dreadful foursomes play.

• Americans have gone 3-13 in foursomes in the last two Ryder Cups and are 13-24-1 in the last five matches.

• Spaun’s fairways-and-green consistency would seem like, at least to most upright golfers, a massive plus in foursomes (11th in 2026 SG Tee-to-Green) where nothing unravels a partnership faster than a wayward striker.

• Spaun has an easygoing personality that makes him easy to pair up in foursomes, another vital element in a format that can create stress between golfers not used to alternating shots.

• Spaun has two more tournament wins this year and one more career major than Cantlay.

he did WD from East Lake due to a shoulder issue, so you'd think Sneds might have hung his hat on that issue.

But it all comes down to Phil's Phucking Ryder Cup Task Force:

Snedeker may have caught a rare hybrid case of Task Force Loyalty and Youth Derangement Syndrome by picking Cantlay, Koivun and Jacob Bridgeman (who saved the Captain by winning this week’s new PGA Tour Biltmore Championship Asheville).

The latter two players are viewed as “the future” for America’s Ryder Cup hopes, and there have been rumblings that Tour leadership pushed for the Koivun pick in the name of servicing the coveted demo (Michael Thorbjornsen and Ryan Gerard had better years and would have been worthier choices if “new blood” was the goal). Snedeker’s picks may still pay dividends if the young Americans go on to make next year’s Ryder Cup team. But his decision to leave off Spaun highlights another instance of the United States trying to mimic Europe in a situation that’s not necessarily comparable (Luke Donald selecting Ludvig Aberg for the 2023 Ryder Cup).

We couldn't just let Cantlay go to LIV?  he fits in wonderfully wit that group....

Geoff covers a lot of ground here:

The sportsmanship of these “amateurs” landed in contrast to USA’s Solheim Cup team of professionals. Just a year after Keegan Bradley and others suggested Bethpage’s greens were too slow, America’s Solheim Captain seemed to insinuate that green speeds were artificially rigged against her team and that a dearth of strokes gained data hampered the effort. The other side feasted on a social media video of Captain Angela Stanford serving beer on the bus ride home to fuel another European Sunday celebration. Turns out, there were non-alcoholic options and Stanford was purportedly plying the caddies with a nice libation after the long 36-hole day. One that culminated in a stunning win driven by over 100 feet of Jennifer Kupcho putts that will forever be remembered in Solheim Cup lore.

But because organizations remain absurdly obsessed with feeding the social beast, down to showing every moment short of morning constitutionals, a Saturday night bus video showed a presumptuous team celebrating the day and an inevitable victory in Singles. Those perennial European underdogs—even with the continent 12-5 in Solheim and Ryder Cups since 2010—pounced.

The Saturday episode also served as another reminder of why the documentation of every single moment is unfair to non-USA male professionals getting paid. Cup players in the Solheim, Curtis and Walker Cups are playing for free on their own time. They deserve some element of protection and privacy when putting themselves on the line.

I love his rants, but maybe a little more focus would be useful.  I mean, a big difference between the young ams at Lahinch and the grizzled vets at the Solheim.

From a prior Geoff post, some quotable quotes:

Vice Captain Mel Reid on Europe’s win. “We’re just happy that we’re the ones now to take two crates of beer on the bus. They drink on Saturday. We drink on Sunday.”

Rory McIlroy when asked if he’d seen much of the Solheim Cup while playing the Irish Open. “I saw the Americans drinking beer and chanting on the bus on Saturday night. That was interesting. I honestly didn't, but obviously a great result for the European side, after what we did in Bethpage, what the Walker Cup guys did. All we need now is the Internationals to do it in a couple of weeks. That would be great.”

As usual, Rory has life bass ackwards.  The Prez Cup is the best thing that's ever happened to the Euros, and Rory seems to ignore what is, at worst, quite the correlation.  To me, the Prez Cup wins have given the U.S. a false sense of comfort.  The last thing the Euros should want is to face a U.S. team coming off a Prez Cup humbling....

Hopefully, it will be a fun, competitive week at Medinah.  There's a shortage of bad blood so methinks it's not likely to blow us away, but perhaps it can entertain.  Have a great week.