MONTREAL — A simple but sometimes neglected axiom in team competitions is that you need your best players to, well, be your best players. It seems obvious, really.
But in the aftermath of last year’s U.S. defeat at the Ryder Cup in Paris, much of the angst focused on the poor performance of some of captain Zach Johnson’s at-large picks. And to be sure, that was also an issue.
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But dig down and you see that the entire team, save for Max Homa, had a tough week. Homa is the only player who had a winning record on the U.S. side.
Which brings us to this week’s Presidents Cup, which begins Thursday at Royal Montreal. The U.S. team is a prohibitive favorite to win the competition for the 10th straight time.
And it’s interesting to note that the Americans’ best player, Scottie Scheffler, has been rather ordinary at the last two team competitions, going 0–2–2 last year in Rome and 0–3–1 at the Presidents Cup two years ago.
“After the Ryder Cup last year, it was obviously pretty disappointing, but I don't know how to compare that to anything else,” Scheffler said of how his performance hits him following a team event compared to individual disappointment. “That was a week in which I was hoping to play well and I wasn't able to get it done. It kind of felt like missing the cut at a major championship would be a good comparison for that, but I really don't know. I treat each one of them individually.
“My two alternate-shot matches that week, I remember not playing great. Then in the best-ball match with Brooks (Koepka), when we played (Jon) Rahm and somebody else (Nicolai Hojgaard), both of us—all four of us played some really solid golf. I think Rahm made like a 40-footer for eagle on 18 to tie us.
“There was a big difference if his putt that was going pretty far by the hole/lips out versus hitting the back and popping up and going in, it's a totally different story in the match.”
“That's why I try not to focus too much on results. Especially in the team events, things can be a little bit flukey. I would say last year, the alternate shot, I didn't play my best. Other than that, I played some pretty solid golf.”
Scheffler had one of his biggest disappointments, losing in foursomes (alternate shot) with Koepka to Ludvig Åberg and Viktor Hovland 9 and 7 in the Saturday morning session. That defeat left Scheffler in tears and sort of epitomized the week.
It was a somewhat surprising performance given Scheffler’s strong 2023 season, one that he doubled down on this year by winning the Masters, the Players Championship and a total of eight events, including Olympic gold.
Scheffler is expected to excel this week but it doesn’t always work out that way. Last year’s Ryder Cup is a glaring example. And he wasn’t alone.
Patrick Cantlay, such a strong partner in team competition with Xander Schauffele, went 2–2. Schauffele was 1–3. Collin Morikawa was 1–3.
Sam Burns (1–2), Wyndham Clark (1–1–1) and Brian Harman (2–2) are other U.S. Ryder Cup players who are on the Presidents Cup team this week.
Of course, it’s a different year, a different venue and a different opponent.
U.S. captain Jim Furyk, who was the losing Ryder Cup captain in France in 2018, was also an assistant last year and has seen his share of team competitions as an assistant and as a player, having competed in nine Ryder Cups and seven Presidents Cups.
“I’ll run this team a little different,” Furyk said. “I'll draw from some good experiences that we've had in the past.
“The biggest question I always get asked from ’18 is would you—if you had the chance to go back and do something differently, would you? First time I heard the question, I started laughing. My answer was very simple: How arrogant would you have to be to say, ‘nope, we didn't win, but I wouldn't do anything different at all.’ Of course I would. I'd go back and change it.
“So I'm trying to implement some of those changes and kind of put those in for ’24 has been kind of a big push for me.”
The bottom line for the Americans: they have the stronger team, with all 12 members ranked among the top 25 in the Official World Golf Rankings. The International side has just four players among the top 25.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The U.S. Is the Stronger Side in the Presidents Cup and Now Just Has to Play Like It.
