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LIV Golf is continuing its survival fight in courtroom (Joaquin Corchero/Europa Press via Getty Images)

If there was any doubt as to how LIV Golf would react to the news earlier this week that its players would not be permitted to become DP World Tour members, an attorney made its position clear that the battle is far from over.

On Wednesday in U.S. bankruptcy court, LIV’s attorney Robert Fitzgerald said that the recent move by the European circuit “was a clear attempt to interfere” with LIV’s plans to relaunch, describing anti-competitive concerns.

Fitzgerald also said in the New Jersey court that the league will know by the end of the month whether it will cease operations or be able to continue plans for LIV 2.0, but it was his threat of continuing litigation that stole the headlines.

“It also raises a lot of the same anti-competitive concerns that LIV has expressed previously regarding the way competing leagues have sought to box out and punish market participants — namely these players — from participating in LIV and really only LIV,” he said.

“Player freedom is the reason LIV Golf was created, and it’s the foundation of LIV Golf 2.0, a league built around its players. LIV has been vocal in its belief in free agency and that the best players should have greater flexibility to compete across the ecosystem. It’s unfortunate that another tour is taking an opposite view and pressuring our players with a false choice.”

Last month, the DP World Tour said it would no longer give conditional releases to its members who wanted to compete in LIV Golf events. It went a step further this week when CEO Guy Kinnings said in statement that it would be more restrictive, telling players they had to choose between the two circuits and risk expulsion if they choose LIV.

“Players need to make a choice,” Kinnings said. “As we have said for many years, we have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour.”

Several players competed in both tours over the past few years but were subject to fines and suspensions when they teed it up in competing events. The DP World Tour relaxed those rules for nine players this year, including Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, who had to settle previous fines and agree to play extra events in exchange for releases not being needed.

Now, players such as Rahm and Hatton — who competed in the 2025 Ryder Cup despite being on LIV and are prime candidates to be part of the 2027 team at Adare Manor — would be prohibited from playing LIV Golf without having their DP World Tour membership rescinded. That would make them ineligible for the Ryder Cup.

“We’re continuing to monitor this situation very closely, and we’re quite concerned by it, frankly,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re reserving all rights and remedies and respect to these statements that are made. Frankly, the timing in particular strikes us as a clear attempt to interfere with our process, with our players, and potentially our reorganization writ large.”

The bankruptcy court judge, Michael B. Kaplan, said he was aware of Kinnings’ comments and said “they do raise concerns.”

How the DP World Tour’s London-based tour has any impact on a U.S. bankruptcy court is an interesting sidelight to all of it. But Fitzgerald used the opportunity to push back against the DP World Tour’s decision.

Also in today’s DD …

• Zalatoris will miss another season in 2027 after third major back surgery

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Of course, there was much to unpack from Wednesday’s court drama.

When LIV Golf first launched in 2022, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan declared LIV events to be “unauthorized” for PGA Tour members. He cited the PGA Tour’s regulations, which included the long-standing inability for its members to get conflicting-event releases within North America. Of its first eight events, LIV had scheduled five of them in the U.S..

The DP World Tour also sought to enforce its rules and in 2023 won a UK arbitration panel decision that declared it could enforce its rules via fines and suspensions that have continued throughout the five years of LIV Golf.

Kaplan noted player freedom which is a frequent talking point but typically leaves out an important aspect: LIV players are contracted and have been required to play every event on the league’s schedule. That doesn’t allow them to choose a PGA Tour or DP World Tour event instead, if that were possible.

For argument’s sake, what if it was possible to make a choice? LIV tournaments in 2026 were scheduled the same week as both the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship. LIV’s mandatory play rules would have forbidden them from teeing it up in two of the PGA Tour’s biggest events.

So much for “player freedom.”

The DP World Tour clearly has had enough. Its members have been unavailable for a good part of the season while competing for LIV and it felt that the league’s attempt to poach some of its longstanding venues and international opens as part of a new LIV 2.0 was going to negatively impact its business.

Also, DPWT members having equity in a competing league also would appear to be problematic.

Thus Kinnings made a decision to force players to make a choice. A decision looms in three weeks — even though there might have been little reason to do both, anyway.

Without a LIV schedule, it is impossible to know what events might conflict, but assuredly there’d have been at least a few that LIV events played the same week as DP World Tour events. In that case, a DP World Tour player would need a release to play for LIV, one that would not likely be given. In that case, the player who then plays the LIV event anyway would be subject to a suspension of fine, some of which ran in the $100,000 range per event.

When LIV Golf was paying those fines, it was but a nuisance. Now that money would be coming out of the player’s pocket, making it expensive — and perhaps not worth it? —to attempt playing both tours.

Ahead of the DP World India Championship, Rory McIlroy — who is a member of both the DP World and PGA Tour — weighed in on Kinnings’ hard-line approach to future LIV players.

“As the DP World Tour are a members’ organization, just as the PGA Tour is the members’ organization, every year before you play your first event you sign up to abide by the rules and regulations of that members’ organization,” McIlroy said.

“The leadership or the management of those membership organizations, they have e right to change and adapt the rules and regulations where they see fit to protect their business or their rights.

“This is what the DP World Tour are doing. I think with the way the golf landscape is, I know the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour are working really hard to find like a suitable landing to continue with the strategic alliance.

“I think while they’re doing that, LIV is in such a state of flux that — you know, I think the DP World Tour have been more than accommodating to LIV players. They’ve had to maybe do some things that have been conditional to their membership, like play a couple extra events this year, but I think this was always coming down the line. I think the DP World Tour have made a good decision, because the golf landscape, I feel like it’s been constantly changing for the last four, five years. It’s now got to the point where guys are going to have to make a decision and what’s important to them and what they really want to do.”

Meanwhile, Kaplan approved LIV’s procedural motion to reject 19 current contracts, which the league said would not be compatible with the new pay structure. Among those players were Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Smith, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson.

The judge also approved LIV Golf’s amended restructuring agreement, which would see BC Partners provide as much as $300 million in financing for the new version of LIV, including an initial loan of $4 million to keep the organization going through the bankruptcy process.

LIV is hoping to get players involved who would get equity in the league and in teams.

Previously, the organization said it would have a streamlined 10-event schedule with 75-player fields, 36-hole cuts and purses between $5 million and $9 million. That’s far less than the $20 million individual purses of the last five years, but it’s better than most tournaments on the DP World Tour. A Financial Times report this week suggested LIV would play 17 events, but so far the league has not commented on that validity of that report.

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Will Zalatoris’ back has broken his career since 2023 (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Zalatoris out for ’27 with another back surgery

Will Zalatoris just turned 30 two months ago. Next month, he will shut down his 2027 season before it even starts to undergo his third major back surgery in as many years.

Zalatoris rose as high as No. 7 in the world in 2023 before withdrawing from the Masters with a back injury that prompted his first surgery, a microdiscectomy. The rising superstar who before he turned 26 had finished runner-up in a Masters (2021), U.S. Open (2022) and PGA Championship (2022) came back in 2024 to play 22 events.

But his back issues arose again in 2025, as he shut it down again in May after 11 starts to undergo an artificial disc replacement surgery to repair two herniated discs.

He returned late in 2025 for one DP World Tour start, but after only four PGA Tour starts in 2026 injuries derailed him again. He withdrew from the Cognizant Classic in March citing an ankle injury that he said was related to his back issues. “It was basically the nerve that, the sciatic nerve going down — basically from the ankle down I couldn’t feel anything,” he said. In April after the Valero Texas Open, he was sidelined for the rest of the season by a partial tear of the hip labrum.

On Wednesday for a media day promoting the PGA Tour’s new fall event in Austin, Texas, Zalatoris said he plans to play for the first time in more than six months but will then shut down for all of the 2027 season to undergo a spinal fusion surgery.

“I’ve been through four years of hell so it’s good to have something that will hopefully correct it,” Zalatoris said. “It’s not something you want to do, but when you have three tour physical therapists tell you it needs to be done at some time, you go ahead and do it.”

Zalatoris said he reinjured the back in his last start in Texas and that all of his injuries are related to the same underlying back problem.

“It’s all connected together and I just want to get it fixed,” he said. “I can’t promise anybody anything because of what I’ve been through. I’m the oldest 30-year-old you will ever meet.”

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The deadline for LIV 2.0’s survival in 2027 and beyond is fast approaching (Scott Taetsch/LIV Golf)

As LIV Golf heads to another court appearance on Wednesday related to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, the league’s future remains in considerable doubt as a restructuring deal that would see BC Partners invest $300 million still needs to be sorted.

The Monday news that the DP World Tour will not allow its members to compete in LIV events in 2027 came as another blow to the league, which earlier this year lost its Saudi-backed funding and is attempting to put together a LIV 2.0 with a streamlined schedule and purses.

There remains plenty of speculation as to how this will work, but the Financial Times reported that Ted Goldthorpe, the head of BC Partners, is bullish on the possibilities because he believes there is interest from other investors.

That story also reported without confirmation that LIV will have a 17-tournament schedule. CEO Scott O’Neil has been pushing a 10-event schedule with several international destinations, but clearly more events are necessary to entice players who are unlikely to have other big-tour options and need places to play.

Also in today’s DD …

• Jim Furyk’s second-guessing of 2018 mistakes will fuel his 2027 captaincy

• Rory McIlroy weighs in on welcoming back LIV stars and rival league’s missteps

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With proposed purses between $5.5 million and $9 million, LIV Golf is touting prize funds that are more than a majority of DP World Tour events. Still, getting buy-in from players is proving difficult with an Oct. 25 deadline for player commitments looming and several already expressing their intent to leave the league.

“Our goal is to facilitate LIV Golf’s emergence from the restructuring process on sound financial footing,” Goldthorpe said recently.

A good bit of speculation for BC Partners interest in LIV centers around the company’s desire to take advantage of tax loopholes. Known as net operating losses (NOL), it would allow BC Partners to write off LIV’s past losses going forward.

A certified public accountant named Robert Pike wrote a lengthy social media post entitled “Why the NOL Won’t Save LIV Golf (and Why the Players Probably Won’t Either)” on the subject in which he questioned whether or not the tax benefits are as valuable as has been reported. It’s a complicated subject and worth a read.

Pike is suggesting that unlocking NOL value is not simple. On the other side, BC Partners would know all about it as that is what it does. Certainly it has thought through a strategy to maximize these possibilities.

Meanwhile, LIV Golf is going to need players. Keeping Bryson DeChambeau — who has been very quiet of late — would obviously be an important piece as so many other players including Jon Rahm seem to be departing.

Getting players to commit, putting together a schedule, announcing whatever team format is in place, getting more investment, adding sponsors, having someone televise this ... there remains a good bit to navigate.

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Furyk and Ryder Cup second-guessing

Jim Furyk is undoubtedly going to use his experience as a Ryder Cup captain in 2018 and a Presidents Cup captain 2024 as he formulates a plan for his captaincy at Adare Manor next year. Furyk will become just the eighth U.S. captain to hold the position more than once, joining Davis Love III and Walter Hagen (who captained the team the first six times) as the only U.S. captains to get another chance despite a defeat.

The 2018 Ryder Cup with Furyk presided over at Le Golf National in France turned out to be quite the disaster for the U.S. side. After taking a 3-1 lead in morning four-balls the first day, the U.S. was swept in foursomes in the afternoon — sound familiar? — and never recovered. By Sunday, the Americans trailed 10-6 and could not mount a singles challenge, getting trounced, 17½-10½.

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DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings and Jon Rahm (Warren Little/Getty Images)

After five years of serving as a soft alternative option for LIV golfers, the DP World Tour is taking a hard-line stance against the bankrupt league.

Much like its strategic partner, the PGA Tour — which drew an immediate hard line banning anyone who played for the rival league — the DP World Tour says that it will no longer permit its members to be part of the new version of LIV that is expected to emerge after bankruptcy proceedings.

The hard-line change was first reported on Monday by BBC Sport and The Telegraph.

“Players need to make a choice,” said DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings in a statement. “As we have said for many years, we have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour.”

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This could prove to be a huge hurdle for LIV Golf as it attempts to reinvent itself after the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund pulled its financial banking after the 2026 season. LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil has secured an agreement with BC Partners to invest $300 million into a scaled down, 10-tournament version of the league in 2027, offering equity in the league and teams to players who join.

The DP World Tour has previously allowed its members to play on LIV, subject to suspensions and fines for conflicting events. In 2026, it offered a deal to nine LIV golfers, including Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, that would not require releases and would waive fines in exchange for all previous sanctions being settled and adding additional DPWT events to their 2026 schedules.

That provision is now off the table. Players when seeking 2027 membership for the DP World Tour will be asked to disclose by Nov. 1 which tours they plan to compete on in 2027. The European circuit said it will expel any player who goes back on their word, making them ineligible for next year’s Ryder Cup.

The DP World Tour is leaning into its proposed future collaboration with the PGA Tour that is expected to offer more co-sanctioning of events and a stronger fall international schedule.

The choice for a player like Tyrrell Hatton — who has played in both leagues since joining LIV in 2023 and maintained eligibility to be part of the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black — is to sign up for a new LIV 2.0 or committ fully to the DP World Tour. LIV 2.0 has yet to be fully vetted and will have only 10 events with purses expected to range from $5 million to $9 million. The DPWT offers a deeper, full-season schedule, access to the Ryder Cup for European members and a pathway to the PGA Tour. It also has predominantly smaller purses with just eight events this year that were more than $4 million.

LIV’s O’Neil has said previously that “we shouldn’t live in a world where one group of golfers is uniquely restricted from playing elsewhere.” He has attempted to sell a plan that would give LIV players this smaller, streamlined schedule with the idea that they could also play tours around the world.

LIV players have never been permitted to play PGA Tour events since the league’s inception in 2022. And now this new restriction will take away the possibility of the world’s second-largest tour.

Would Joaquin Niemann take DPWT up on non-affiliated deal and ditch LIV? (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

The DP World Tour is taking a similarly hard line with its non-members. As the Daily Drive reported Monday, an offer is on the table to players like Joaquin Niemann to get sponsor invites via the DP World Tour beyond the maximum allowed, providing that are no longer affiliate with LIV Golf.

The offer is to non members of the DP World Tour — players such as Niemann, Lucas Herbert, Jose Ballester, Caleb Surratt, Dean Burmester, Carlos Ortis and Abraham Ancer.

Today’s Golfer reported last week that several players were set to exit LIV via the DPWT plan. The offer has been in play for more than a month, going back to early September when the DP World Tour made it clear that conditional releases for LIV golfers would not be available in 2027.

At the time, the DPWT said: “Given the high volume of inbound interest and enquiries we have received in recent weeks, we are exploring the terms on which we are willing to accommodate players provided they are free from third party contractual restrictions and are willing to abide by our membership regulations. Our Tournament Committee has approved the process we intend to follow and we expect further enquiries in the days ahead.”

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Would Joaquin Niemann take DPWT up on non-affiliated deal and ditch LIV? (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

As LIV Golf players await the fate of the league, several of them are being afforded an opportunity to get sponsor invites via the DP World Tour beyond the maximum allowed.

The catch is that they not sign up for LIV Golf 2.0 or have any lingering contractual obligations to the league.

The offer is to non members of the DP World Tour, and although names have not been disclosed, players such as Joaquin Niemann, Lucas Herbert, Jose Ballester, Caleb Surratt, Dean Burmester, Carlos Ortis and Abraham Ancer would be likely candidates as they are currently not DPWT members but so far not publicly committed to the new version of LIV.

There is one important caveat: this is not necessarily a pathway to the PGA Tour in 2028.

Also in today’s DD …

• Forrest is Masters worthy; Blades PGA Tour bound; Brennan top-20 material

• When he is clear of LIV, how might Rahm fit back into the PGA Tour ecosystem

• Was LIV Golf worth it? Chart illustrates just how much everyone benefitted

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Today’s Golfer reported last week that several players were set to exit LIV via the DPWT plan. The offer has been in play for more than a month, going back to early September when the DP World Tour made it clear that conditional releases for LIV golfers would not be available in 2027.

At the time, the DPWT said: “Given the high volume of inbound interest and enquiries we have received in recent weeks, we are exploring the terms on which we are willing to accommodate players provided they are free from third party contractual restrictions and are willing to abide by our membership regulations. Our Tournament Committee has approved the process we intend to follow and we expect further enquiries in the days ahead.”

This didn’t appear to impact someone such as Tyrrell Hatton or Jon Rahm, players who are already DPWT members and could, in theory, do both — subject to DP World Tour fines and suspensions for playing in conflicting events.

But both the BBC Sport and Telegraph reported Monday that the DP World Tour has taken a stricter stance and will revoke membership of anyone who joins LIV 2.0.

“Players need to make a choice,” Guy Kinnings, CEO of the DP World Tour, told BBC Sport. “We have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour.”

Niemann — who has made four recent DPWT starts including the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on sponsor invites — might find the sponsor exemption offer appealing because based on the report, he could receive “a specific number of tournament invites, which for some could run into double figures based on their value and the amount of space available into events.”

The invites would not immediately permit players into the Rolex Series, the five marque events on the DP World Tour schedule.

For someone like Niemann, it would offer the ability to at carve out somewhat of a schedule beyond the seven exemptions that are typically allowed. Currently ranked No. 34 in the Official World Golf Ranking, he is in good shape to be exempt for the Masters and PGA Championship next year and can solidify and maintain a top-50 ranking with good finishes early in the year. (He’s already exempt into next year’s U.S. Open.)

What Niemann can’t assure, however, is being able to take part in any DP World Tour pathway that through this season has offered the top 10 players not otherwise exempt on the season-long Race to Dubai points list earn a spot the following year on the PGA Tour. That pathway is only available to DPWT members (and it has not been determined how many spots, if any, will be available in 2027 for the new Championship Series that begins in 2028.)

Niemann cannot gain DPWT membership without a victory in 2027. If he were to earn enough affiliate member points throughout the season, he can then gain full membership on the DP World Tour for the 2028 season. The only way to get it earlier is to win.

Niemann — who has a record nine LIV victories over five seasons — won twice on the PGA Tour before leaving for LIV in 2022 and won the 2023 Australian Open. He also recently won his native Chilean Open. He tied for seventh at the 2026 U.S. Open.

On his way to a victory in Chile, Niemann did not rule out a return to LIV but acknowledged the difficulty in coming to a decision without scheduling and league details determined.

Spain’s David Puig, a member of the DP World Tour, has also expressed a desire to leave LIV Golf.

“I don’t see myself playing in the LIV 2.0,” Puig told reporters at the Open de España last week. “It’s a decision I’ve made. I hope to play the European Tour next year, which I really enjoy, with a fuller schedule.”

Meanwhile, LIV Golf continues to wade through bankruptcy court with more details to come by the end of the month.

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Grant Forrest earns his first invitation to play in the Masters (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

This week in golf …

• Open de España: Scotland’s Grant Forrest buried a 4-footer for birdie on the final hole to win by one in Madrid and secure spots in both the 2027 Masters and Open Championship. He edged out Spain’s Eugenio Chacarra and France’s Viktor Perez. “I was close at the Amateur Championship 11 years ago now, but you could have a great career in this game and never get to go to Augusta — I cannot believe it,” Forrest said. Chacarra climbed to No. 50 in the OWGR and No. 2 in the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai standings, essentially securing a 2027 PGA Tour card for the player who chose LIV Golf after his standout Oklahoma State career before leaving the breakaway tour after three seasons because it wasn’t earning OWGR points as promised. Perez, who joined LIV Golf in 2026, missed a 10-footer for birdie on the last. Denmark’s Jacob Skov Olesen, the 2024 British Amateur champion who forfeited his spot in the 2025 Masters to turn professional, and former English grocery delivery driver Joe Dean stumbled home to miss their chances to reach the Masters.

• Baycurrent Classic: Michael Brennan won his third PGA Tour event in just more than a year, shooting final-round 68 at Yokohama CC in Japan to edge out Jacob Bridgeman and Keith Mitchell by one shot. Brennan — who also won last fall’s Bank of Utah Championship as a sponsor exemption and the 2026 Wyndham Championship — climbs to No. 20 in OWGR.

• Korn Ferry Tour Championship: Austin Hitt was undeterred by the steady rain, shooting a final-round 66 at the Federal Club near Richmond, Va., to sail past teenager Blades Brown and win the final event of the KFT season to move up from 22nd and secure a 2027 PGA Tour card. Brown (19 years, 4 months, 20 days) becomes the youngest graduate in Korn Ferry Tour history, breaking by seven months the previous record established in 2007 by Jason Day. Davis Lamb made three birdies in his last five holes to finish solo eighth and move up from 23rd to 20th to claim the last card. Nick Gabrelcik’s 65 was one shot shy of securing his card. On the wrong end of the math was Cole Hammer, who fell from 20th to 22nd after a final-round 73. Ross Steelman was T12 in Richmond to overtake Sandy Scott to clinch the No. 1 position on the KFT Points List, earning exemptions for the 2027 Players Championship and U.S. Open.

  Brown’s runner-up finish on Sunday was one of three top-three finishes this season, helping him secure the ninth position in the final KFT standings. He will be a fully exempt player on the PGA Tour in 2027, meaning he will get starts in all non-signature events he enters except for the WM Phoenix Open. He can accept sponsor invites, which he will undoubtedly get, into some of the bigger tournaments, thus giving himself ample opportunity to finish among the top 100 players and earn a spot on Championship Series in 2028. Because he earned special temporary membership on the PGA Tour this year, he is eligible for the remaining FedEx Fall events. So far this season, Brown made 11 PGA Tour starts and 17 KKT starts, making a combined 24 of 28 cuts. He finished third at the at the Puerto Rico Open on the PGA Tour and tied for ninth at the Myrtle Beach Classic.

• Constellation Furyk & Friends: Senior circuit rookie Vaughn Taylor claimed his first PGA Tour Champions victory with a birdie from 7 feet on the second playoff hole of the Ocean Course at Hammock Dunes in Florida. Taylor and Germany’s Alex Cejka found themselves in a playoff when Michael Wright made double bogey on the final hole to blow a one-shot lead. Taylor’s last of three PGA Tour victories came on the opposite coast 10 years ago at the 2016 Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

• Aramco Korea Championship: Japan’s Miyu Yamashita won for the fourth time since June on her third different tour, firing a course-record 63 on Sunday at New Korea CC to win the LET event by three shots over Czechia’s Sara Kouskova. The world No. 5 who won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open also won the Meijer LPGA Classic and CPKC Women’s Open this summer along with a Japan LPGA event.

• Hainan Open: Dutchman Lars van der Vight won his second HotelPlanner Tour title of the season and vaulted into a DP World Tour promotion place with a two-stroke victory at the Hainan Open in China.

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Jon Rahm collected more than $108 million in prizes and bonuses (Pedro Salado/LIV Golf)

How Rahm might fit back into PGA Tour plans

Now that Jon Rahm is on a path to leaving LIV Golf — there is a separation agreement still be worked out in the coming days — there is all kind of speculation as to whether or not he will be offered a chance to return to the PGA Tour.

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Not including signing contract, Jon Rahm made $108 million in LIv prizes/bonuses (Mateo Villalba/LIV Golf)

The news that Jon Rahm won’t be returning to LIV Golf in 2027 hardly came as a surprise on Wednesday. It was all but evident going back to May that the two-time major champion who rocked the golf world when he signed with LIV in December 2023 was not too keen on the controversial league’s future.

Another question — which might not ever be properly answered: Was Rahm ever really into LIV Golf?

Sure, the big money signing bonus was the ultimate reason for the Spaniard jumping in the first place. And there’s no denying that money in nearly all of the cases — stated or otherwise — was behind the decision of many players to join LIV Golf.

But did Rahm ever really believe and buy into the team concept, even though his signing including adding a team that he captained and for which he was due equity?

Did he believe in traveling around the world to golf-starved markets as a way of “growing the game” and leaning into places that would be financially beneficial to the league.

And most of all, did he believe that his 2023 signing with LIV would hasten an agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund that never materialized?

Also in today’s DD …

• Stray Shots looks at highlights from LIV bankruptcy hearing Wednesday

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LIV Golf 2.0 is obviously headed to a much leaner version of the original concept, with purses that are far smaller and with a condensed schedule as well.

Rahm seemed to enjoy the idea that less is more. So why wouldn’t a leaner LIV be appealing?

Well, it’s got to be the money, right? The reduced purses. The possibility of miniscule Official World Golf Ranking points. The knowledge that he can likely return to being part of the PGA Tour’s Championship Series in 2028 if he leaves now.

Otherwise, a reduced schedule, seemingly, would be appealing. Rahm has not gone out of his way to play DP World Tour events, actually balking at the idea of adding to the minimum number of four events needed to retain membership when the DPWT made an offer that eight of his LIV peers could not refuse earlier this year. That allowed them to avoid conflicting-event releases and fines.

Rahm, however, stood firm — until it became clear that LIV was in trouble and his future in the league was in doubt. When the PIF pulled its funding in April, Rahm quickly made a deal with the DP World Tour so he could meet his membership minimum this year, be eligible for the 2027 Ryder Cup and have a place to play in 2027.

All of that could have still been possible in a streamlined LIV, even if he was owed millions he wasn’t going to see as part of bankruptcy.

If Rahm believed in the concept, playing for reduced prize money should be no issue. In just three years, Rahm made more than $108 million in prize money and bonuses alone. Of that total, a whopping $44 million came in the form of a season-long bonus for winning the league individual points title each year. (He received $16 million in 2024 and 2025 and $8 million this year.)

To put it in perspective, Rahm’s three-year total haul trails only three players in the history of the PGA Tour in career earnings: Scottie Scheffler, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

And none of that includes his signing bonus, of which he still owed a considerable sum but was clearly in excess of $100 million collected.

Bottom line: Rahm is doing fine financially. If he believed in LIV, a 10-event schedule for 2.0 and also adding in a small DP World Tour slate would suit him just fine.

And yet … he’s moving on.

Rahm withdrew from this week’s Open de España because his wife, Kellie, is expecting the couple’s fourth child. But his lawyer, John Beck, spoke at a LIV bankruptcy hearing on Wednesday and said that Rham had “independently reviewed the proposed terms of LIV 2.0 … and has determined that those terms are unacceptable to him, and he will not be participating going forward.’’

That is surely a blow — even if expected — for LIV Golf, which has also lost fellow Spaniard Sergio Garica, whose contract was voided in bankruptcy court. Garcia, you might recall, was highly critical of the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour on his way to LIV Golf.

How the breakaway league survives remains to be seen. It continues on a path toward a transaction with BC Partners, which has agreed to invest in the league and help transition to the future. On Monday, it announced its intention to invest $300 million — subject to court approval but still far from complete.

At a Sportico Invest conference in London in which LIV CEO Scott O’Neil was in attendance, BC Partners’ Ted Goldthorpe spoke positively about the future.

“We’re super committed,” Goldthorpe said. “As Scott said, we’re going to start hiring back employees and planning for next year’s events. All systems go. The next 22 days will be about signing up the players, and I feel very good about that. We’ve had a lot of constructive dialogue with them. We obviously have a deadline now, but that’s the next big step for us.”

For now, BC Partners has extended a player commitment deadline to later this month as part of the negotiations with LIV. And it is working on a separation agreement with Rahm, which his attorney said they hope to have completed later this month.

So what now for Rahm? What are his playing options going forward?

He remains a member of the DP World Tour, so it is likely that is where he will play in 2027. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp has consistently said there is not an immediate path back for LIV golfers, that the “returning member program” offered and accepted by Brooks Koepka is no longer an option.

But Rolapp also said the tour needed to be sure that LIV’s players were no longer under contract before commenting on paths back. So perhaps that now changes in Rahm’s case. If Rolapp holds Rahm to the year-long ban that other LIV players have faced, he could return sometime in the fall of 2027 and be fully exempt on the 2028 Championship Series — based on his 2023 Masters win.

Rahm is expected to play the DP World Tour’s event next month in Abu Dhabi to attempt to meet his tour minimum.

Now free from LIV, it will be interesting to see how he squares all of what has occurred over the past three years.

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Jim Furyk will try to wrest the Ryder Cup from Luke Donald and Europe (Damien Eagers/PA Images via Getty Images)

The Ryder Cup is a year away, which was the point of the celebratory affair over the last few days in Ireland, a chance to promote an event at Adare Manor that really doesn’t need any extra hype.

The captains and their families spent a few days at the Irish venue that will host the 2027 Ryder Cup when it celebrates its 100th anniversary of the biennial matches.

The hype weekend is mostly ceremonial, but in a news conference with U.S. captain Jim Furyk and European captain Luke Donald, it is clear preparations are well under way.

For Furyk — fresh off a stint as an assistant to Brandt Snedeker at the Presidents Cup where the Americans showed plenty of flaws in victory — it was clear the challenge ahead and the changes he needs to implement in order to see a different result.

The Americans have lost the last two Ryder Cups and were outplayed badly in the team format at both Marco Simone near Rome in 2023 and Bethpage Black in 2025. The U.S. will have gone 34 years since its last victory in Europe (1993 at the Belfry) when it arrives in Ireland next year. And it will face a European team captained for the third straight time by Donald, who seemingly has made all the right moves over the last two competitions.

Furyk, who captained a losing Ryder Cup effort in France in 2018 before leading the U.S. Presidents Cup team to victory in 2024, should know all the flaws. He’s been part of nearly every team as a player or captain/assistant going back to his first as a player in 1997.

Also in today’s DD …

• Jordan Spieth ready to play this week in Japan after seven weeks off

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After years of American Ryder Cup futility, especially on the road, Furyk clearly needs to bring something different to this effort.

“I’m going to ask this team to do more than any other United States team has in the past,” Furyk said.

Asked to elaborate, Furyk obliged.

“I guess, in short … to absolutely be here at Adare Manor next summer would be first and foremost. But I think a lot of it is in preparation. It’s in the lead up. It’s the veteran players taking the younger players under their wing. It’s looking at this not as a group of 12, but a Team USA — a larger group, a program that we can build for the future and leaning on some veterans to lead the way.

“We’ve got a number of really talented, young American players that are going to give them a run for a spot on this team. So it’s exciting for me as a captain and I’m looking forward to that process.”

Furyk didn’t need to be reminded of the U.S. record of late in foursomes — the alternate-shot format that has absolutely killed them in four straight international competitions, including going 2-7 two weeks ago at Medinah and 2-6 at Bethpage last year.

Overall, the numbers are even more stark — 6-28 in all team competitions over the past four years including 3-13 at the Ryder Cup.

“I know those numbers very, very well. I’ve lived them the last four,” Furyk said. “It’s not an anomaly. There’s some issues. We understand that. Not something I’m very happy with. I plan on making some changes. I would say, one, as captains, we need to do a better job, not only put the folks into good pairings in good positions but I don’t think we are preparing for those matches in a proper way.

“And I will promise you, we will be prepared. I’m going to ask this team to do more than any other United States team has in the past. We’ll be prepared. We’ll be ready to

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LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil has worked to keep bankrupt league alive (Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The LIV Golf League got some good news Monday as it attempts to relaunch in 2027, officially entering into a restructuring agreement with BC Partners which will provide supplemental financing as part of an initial $300 million investment that will help the golf tour restructure its business.

The deal requires court approval as part of LIV Golf’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Sept. 9, with a hearing set for Oct. 14. Approval would allow the league to move forward with plans for LIV 2.0 in 2027.

“Our goal is to facilitate LIV Golf’s emergence from the restructuring process on sound financial footing and with renewed momentum heading into the 2027 season,” said Ted Goldthorpe, partner and head of BC Partners Credit, in a statement. “Just as importantly, we want the players who make this league what it is to share in what they help build. Giving players real and actionable ownership in the league and the teams is a unique opportunity in professional golf, and it aligns everyone around the long-term success of the product for the game and for the fans.”

Under what is called an amended restructuring support agreement (RSA), BC Partners agreed to extend to Oct. 25 a deadline for player commitments to the league, allowing more time for league representatives to meet with players and agents to gauge their interest in the league and a 2027 schedule, which CEO Scott O’Neil has floated as a 10-event slate with at least half of the events to be played outside of the United States.

Players would become equity partners in the league as well as its teams.

Also in today’s DD …

• K&K: Koivun joins Koepka on new Motor City TGL team

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O’Neil has spent most of the last six months trying to hold LIV Golf together in the wake of the Public Investment Fund’s April decision to pull its funding from the league following the 2026 season.

The Saudi wealth fund was the league’s benefactor since its launch in June of 2022 and had spent some $5 billion via lucrative player contracts, purses and staging of events before abruptly changing course in the wake of a change in priorities that was hastened by the Iran war.

Despite its pledge to continue funding through 2026, LIV Golf canceled two tournaments, including its season-ending Team Championship, and endured numerous complaints about unpaid bills, fees and payments to various entities, some of which will be determined in court.

“This investment is an important step forward for LIV Golf, and I want to thank Ted Goldthorpe and the entire BC Partners team for their conviction in what we’re building,” O’Neil said in a statement. “We believe deeply in the future of this league and in the opportunity to build something distinctive alongside our players.

“We’re delivering on our major milestones, and while there is still work ahead, today marks meaningful progress toward a player-owned, team-focused, truly global league that complements the wider game and creates new opportunities for players, fans, partners and the next generation of golfers.”

The Chapter 11 filing revealed estimated assets of between $100 million and $500 million, with liabilities of ​between $500 million ⁠and $1 billion. It also listed several players — including Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Cam Smith and Dustin Johnson — as creditors who are owed considerable sums through the third quarter of this year.

In order to continue, BC Partners had stipulated a certain buy-in from players contracted to the league. So far, many players have been left waiting for clarity on the future.

Joaquin Niemann, 27, is among those who has yet to decide his future. The Chilean golfer, who holds the league record with nine victories, told the outlet Latercera prior to winning the Chilean Open over the weekend that he was still weighing “whether I want to stay and believe in what’s happening in the league or go play more in Europe and from there tty to get on the PGA Tour,” he said in comments translated from Spanish.

Niemann told the publication that he understood the positive of possible equity in the league and “knowing that it’s something that I think could take a couple of years. I don’t know if it’s something I want to do at this stage of my career. So, these are questions I have to ask myself before making a decision.”

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Koivun joins Motor City TGL team

Brooks Koepka has a new teammate. The former Smash Golf Club captain when he was with LIV Golf was the foundational member of the expansion Motor City Golf Club with the TGL simulator league. Now he has his first Motor City teammate — Jackson Koivun.

Fresh of an unbeaten debut in his first Presidents Cup, the 21-year-year Koivun has been named to the Detroit expansion team’s inaugural roster for the upcoming 2027 TGL presented by SoFi season.

Koivun went 2-0-1 — including a come-from-behind 2-up singles victory over Si Woo Kim — as the U.S. team overcame a three-point deficit on the final day to beat the International team 17-13 at Medinah.

Koivun has rapidly risen to star status since taking up his PGA Tour card via PGA Tour University in June. He earned his first PGA Tour victory at the 3M Open in July, winning in his third professional start. At Auburn, he became the first player to twice sweep the Fred Haskins, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus awards as the nation’s top collegiate golfer.

Koivun also brings an extensive record of success in team golf. He helped Auburn win NCAA Division I team championships in 2024 and 2026 and has represented the United States in the Junior Presidents Cup, Arnold Palmer Cup, Walker Cup and Presidents Cup.

“Some of my best experiences have come while playing team golf, from winning national championships at Auburn to representing the U.S. at the Presidents Cup,” Koivun said.

“I am a huge fan of TGL and love how it brings new fans and an arena experience to golf. I’ve been to SoFi Center, and it’s unlike anything I’ve experienced in the game. I’m excited to join Brooks, compete in a new environment and help build a team Detroit can passionately support.”

Michael Hamp, the team governor of Motor City Golf Club, was thrilled to tout the signing.

“Jackson showed at the Presidents Cup that he is built for the big moments. What an unbelievable performance,” Hamp said. “His competitive spirit, grit and the energy he brings to a team are exactly what we envision for Motor City Golf Club. With Jackson and Brooks, we have an amazing foundation for what we are trying to build.”

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Tom Kim’s gold medal in Asian Games earns him South Korean military reprieve (Zhe Ji/Getty Images)

Tom Kim left Medinah in a hurry after winning his singles match to finish his week at the Presidents Cup 4-1-0. His singular effort, unfortunately, was not enough to lift his International Team to victory.

The reason for his quick departure was to get to Japan for the 2026 Asian Games where he would represent another team, South Korea. Winning a gold medal there would hold even more significance than lifting a Presidents Cup trophy.

Winning gold in the Asian Games (or any medal in the Olympics) earns any able-bodied male recipients an exemption from a mandatory 18- to 21-month stint in the South Korean military. For a tour golfer, that’s the kind of impediment that can derail a professional career.

Just ask another former Presidents Cupper, Sang-moon Bae, who hasn’t been able to get his game back to where it was after having to enlist just weeks after the 2015 Presidents Cup in South Korea. He was ranked No. 68 in the world when he left (the two-time PGA Tour winner had been as high as 26th) and came back ranked 1,869th.

Nearly two years out of golf took its toll. He returned to the PGA Tour fulltime in the 2017-18 season, making only five cuts in 17 starts en route to losing his card. He regained it for the 2018-19 season by winning the 2018 Albertson’s Boise Open on the Korn Ferry Tour, but was unable to retain it making only eight of 22 cuts. He’s never climbed higher than No. 327 in the world.

“I’ve kind of lost my feel how to play golf. Not how to swing — I forgot how to play golf,” Bae told the AP in 2018.

Also in today’s DD …

• PGA Tour pushes for permanent Daylight Saving Time

• This week in golf: Meronk takes Dunhill; Smotherman wins in Utah

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Kim knew what was at stake when he arrived in Japan on Tuesday morning for the Asian Games. Individual or team gold would let him avoid lengthy military service and require only four weeks of light basic training instead. He shot 67-66-65-64 to shoot 18-under and win by three shots over Japan’s Higa Kazuki, China’s Wenyi Ding and Thailand’s Sadom Kaewkanjana.

Kim said he received a text message from his Jupiter Links TGL teammate Tiger Woods before the final round: “Just be you. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Come on!” Kim roared as his knocked in his 4-footer for par at the last at Kasugai CC’s East course. His South Korean teammates joined him on the green and draped him in a Korean flag, even though they lost out on earning military exemptions themselves by two shots to the team from China. It proved particularly costly for fellow PGA Tour pro S.H. Kim, who struggled with nine bogeys in the final round to shoot a 73 and cost him his own exemption. S.H. Kim is 28 and out of chances to avoid reporting for service.

“It’s a crazy feeling. I’m just glad it’s over,” Kim told Reuters. “This day was the longest day I think I’ve ever had in my life. It’s only been six, five hours but it is definitely the longest, and I’m just glad it’s done.”

Kim told the Associated Press that he tried not to banish the stakes from his mind during the final round: “I tried not to think about it. I just tried to play (the) best for my country. It’s a big stepping stone. I think the pressure that I felt this week, I’ll be able to implement it in my upcoming seasons.”

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Brian Rolapp chatted with Donald Trump at Medinah (Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Rolapp’s plea: let there be light

It turns out that PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp was doing more on the final day of the Presidents Cup than just taking up space at the back of the first tee alongside President Trump at Medinah.

There was more than small talk going on, based on Trump’s own social media post on Saturday in which he released the contents of a letter that Rolapp had written to him at the conclusion of the week.

The subject? Daylight Saving Time.

Specifically, the “Sunshine Protection Act,” which is a bill that has passed the House that would mandate a permanent Daylight Saving Time in the United States, with the clocks no longer “falling back” to International Standard time each November.

After pandering with the trite and overused phrase “growing the game” in lauding Trump for attending the Presidents Cup, Rolapp got down to business in his letter: “I also wanted to put in writing what I expressed to you personally: the tour’s strong support for the Sunshine Protection Act.”

Rolapp went on to explain why he is advocating for passage of the act — because it gives recreational golfers more time to play golf at the end of the day. He also noted

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What shape will a new PGA Tour/DP World Tour alliance take? (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

When the PGA Tour announced its exhaustive list of qualification criteria for the new Championship and Challenger Series model that begins in 2028, there was one significant “TBD” — exemptions for DP World Tour players.

As part of the Strategic Alliance that exists between the London-based DPWT and the PGA Tour, 10 players from the Race to Dubai standings have been earning full exemptions onto the PGA Tour for the past three years.

That qualification category is in flux likely due to myriad factors, but could one of them be the financial toll the relationship is putting on the PGA Tour?

The alliance is set to expire at the end of 2027 and PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said at the Tour Championship in August that the two sides are working on extending the agreement. Signs point toward that happening, with plans to co-sanction the Australian Open in future years and a new mutual working relationship with the Asian Tour.

But a new deal is not done and financial disclosures recently released by the DP World Tour show a rather concerning picture for the European circuit, which relies heavily on support from the PGA Tour.

Also in today’s DD …

• Second guessing captain’s decisions

• 2027 Masters and Open exemptions

• The 67 players currently qualified for the 2027 Masters

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According to year-end financial figures for 2025, the PGA Tour contributed more than $77 million to the PGA European Tour, which operates the DP World Tour. That contribution is part of the strategic alliance and is up from $24 million in 2024.

The deal between the two tours was made in 2020 and saw the PGA Tour get a 15 percent ownership stake in European Tour Productions. That’s scheduled to increase to 40 percent by the end of 2027. Sports Business Journal had a summary of the report this week.

Revenue for the DP World Tour also decreased by $12 million from 2024, although its profit-before-tax figure was actually more than $3 million.

Cash reserves of nearly $110 million also make the financial picture look better.

But why would any of this be a concern to the PGA Tour?

Because as part of the strategic alliance, it has agreed to underwrite purses, which is why the DPWT has reported record purses in 2025. Basically, the PGA Tour has agreed to a year over year percentage increase in purses, regardless of how many events are played or if sponsors are lost.

For an entity such as the PGA Tour that now operates under a for-profit model, annual high eight-figure payments to its European counterpart might be reason for pause. Nobody has suggested a deal won’t get done but the competitive aspect of the situation is on hold pending a resolution.

“That’s all being discussed,” Rolapp said in June when it came to giving PGA Tour cards to the highest Race to Dubai finishers not already exempt. “It hasn’t been decided. We’ve had a really successful relationship with the DP World Tour, inclusive of those cards.

“I think as we create this new model — and the timing is very good because we’re having current discussions with the DP World Tour — that’s one of the many things we’re speaking out.”

The competitive aspect would seemingly be top of the list. So, too, would be the idea of co-sanctioning events, such as what’s already in place with the Genesis Scottish Open. The idea of more collaboration around fall national Opens is also on the table.

So too, however, must be the financial aspect of the partnership — a very interesting wrinkle in of all this. Getting it sorted soon is imperative because players need to know what they are playing for in 2027.

As for some of the reasons why revenue figures were lower for the DP World Tour, it cited a shorter media rights deal signed in 2024 due to the uncertainty of the men’s game with the emergence of LIV Golf. The DPWT has since done new deals with Sky Sports through 2029 and Golf Channel through 2030.

The DPWT said its sponsorship revenue was up more than 100 percent from pre-pandemic figures and had $260 million in sponsorship and consumer revenue, in part due to it being a Ryder Cup year (even though it was played in the United States).

The DP World Tour operates under a far different financial model than the PGA Tour, which sees all of it tournament purses covered via title sponsorship and media rights. The DP World Tour’s purses are not necessarily covered by a title sponsor and it relies heavily on Ryder Cup revenue, especially the years in which it hosts.

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Tradition like every other: second guessing

There is nothing quite like the questioning of captain’s picks, especially the minute something goes wrong. Last week it was easy to wonder about Brandt Snedeker leaving world No. 12 J.J. Spaun off the U.S. team. Spaun — who won the U.S. Open last year and went 2-1 in his first Ryder Cup — finished 10th in the points but was bypassed.

Then last week on the eve of the Presidents Cup, Spaun won the DP World Tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Snedeker said when asked prior to matches at Medinah. “I told all the guys that didn’t make the team, like your job is to go make me look like an idiot as quick as possible. So I fully expect Ryan Gerard, I fully expect Gary (Woodland) to win, fully expect Akshay (Bhatia) — all these guys that were around the cusp of making this team — to go out and make me look stupid. That’s why they’re the best golfers in the world. Give them something to go set their sights on, they’re going to do it.”

Spaun didn’t hide his disappointment over not getting a pick, suggesting he felt he had all but been assured one. But Snedeker had a defense for not taking him, which he did not use: Spaun pulled out of the Tour Championship with a shoulder injury. He also earned more than half of his Presidents Cup points in 2025. So there were reasons to leave him off.

If you want to nitpick some of the U.S. struggles, it was mostly in foursomes. Spaun did not play the format at the Ryder Cup last year and said he had never played it previous to that either.

Could he have helped the U.S. side? Quite possibly, but it’s impossible to say for sure. The best reason to add him would have been if you expect him to be part of these

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U.S. captain staff celebrate comeback win, but they have a lot to still figure out (Ben Jared/PGA Tour via Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — Brandt Snedeker deserved to revel in the aftermath, his U.S. Presidents Cup team having performed at a historic level by rallying from three points down to win on Sunday with an emphatic singles thumping of an International side looking to pull off a big upset.

The U.S. won 17-13 after earning 9½ of 12 points in Sunday’s singles session, a remarkable outcome after the Americans dug themselves a 10½-7½ hole through three days of foursomes and four-balls.

Amid the euphoria, Snedeker declared that “this team is going to be a problem in Ireland” when the 2027 Ryder Cup comes around at Adare Manor. And while there is no issue with a bit of boastfulness following such an accomplishment, the hope for the American side has to be that such a comeback on Sunday doesn’t mask the problems that the U.S. side still faces.

Also in today’s DD …

• The PGA Tour and Trump organization makes for strange bedfellows

• Stray Shots on what’s right and what’s wrong with the Presidents Cup

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By the time the American side gets to Adare Manor in Ireland next September, it will have been 34 years since any U.S. Ryder Cup team has won overseas.

Along the way there have been myriad issues, not the least of which has been simply a stout European side that might have been difficult to beat regardless of any tactics employed by U.S. team captains and their assistants.

The feeling here has always been and should remain that the best way to win these things is to play better. There are countless times we can point to American players simply not stepping up to their previous levels of talent in these team matches.

Still, to ignore the obvious flaws the U.S. consistently displays in team play would be malpractice at this point.

This is four straight international team competitions now that the U.S. has dug itself a massive hole in the foursomes portion of the event. That it managed to win two Presidents Cup in that span is down to the fact that, yes, the U.S. has a ton of good players and has consistently used its superior depth to outperform the International side in singles.

But that is a dangerous strategy. To expect to win the 8 of 12 points on Sunday is folly. The Americans did, sure. But the International stars can also share in some of that. Veterans Hideki Matsuyama and Adam Scott — with 19 Presidents Cups between them without a victory — craved for such a Sunday scenario. Neither delivered in his match.

Neither did Si Woo Kim nor Min Woo Lee, International players slotted at the perfect spot in the lineup with a chance to change the outcome. Credit to the down-ballot Americans, but there was enough poor play on the other side to suggest that this could have easily gone the other way.

Which brings us back to the format that has haunted the U.S. side going back to 2023 in Rome, when the Americans were wiped out 4-0 in the first morning session and never recovered. They were beaten 7-1 in foursomes.

Last year at Bethpage, it was nearly a repeat. A 6-2 drubbing in foursomes left the Americans again trailing by a staggering 11½-4½ margin heading into Sunday’s 12 singles matches. Amazingly, the U.S. lost just one singles match and came within a missed putt or two of pulling off the biggest comeback in international team history.

There are only 8 foursomes points at the Ryder Cup, along with 8 four-ball points. The Americans typically hold their own in the better-ball format, but the alternate-shot style has stifled them in recent years and it’s puzzling why more time hasn’t been devoted to figuring it out.

Six of the eight players who were wiped out 5-0 on Friday at Medinah played foursomes at Bethpage. The format is not new to them, and the excuse that they didn’t grow up with it is just that — an excuse.

Snedeker was understandably questioned for sitting world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler on Saturday afternoon, but Scheffler is 1-8-0 in his Ryder/Preidents Cup career in foursomes — a perplexing stat given his otherwise amazing abilities. And he didn’t play particularly well in his winning four-ball matches with Sam Burns, though he came through just enough when he needed to.

The bigger issue is why Snedeker and his assistants didn’t work on some partner alternatives to Burns. The two are friendly, sure. But they came into the Presidents Cup 0-3 in foursomes together and the last time they played it was at the 2023 Ryder Cup. Finding a foursomes partner for Scheffler seems imperative going forward. You can’t sit the No. 1 player in the world, regardless of his record.

Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay have proven to be good at foursomes, with a winning record across cups dating to 2019. It’s important to find the right fit to at least be competitive and not allow for such a lopsided outcome next year, where winning on the road for the first time in nearly four decades is going to be immensely more difficult than it was Sunday.

Jim Furyk, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain in 2027, was an assistant last week for Snedeker. So was 2025 Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley. All are likely to be involved in plotting next year’s strategy.

On Sunday night, Furyk was asked a question about any lessons learned from the week. He didn’t really answer it, praising the team for coming back, pointing out the play of the rookies and acknowledging how hard it is to get so much to go right in singles.

For the American side, you hope that he takes more from the Presidents Cup than that and devises a better gameplan for handling partner play.

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PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and President Donald Trump (Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The PGA Tour and the president

Since the event’s inception in 1994, the PGA Tour has invited the U.S. president to take part in home Presidents Cup matches in an honorary role and has also done so for international leaders when the competition is held abroad. It’s called the Presidents Cup, after all.

President Ford was the honorary chairman at the inaugural event in 1994 and various presidents throughout the years have not only taken on that role but even attended the competition.

In 2017 at Liberty National, past presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were all in attendance early in the week before Donald Trump, in his first term as president, attended on Sunday and was part of the trophy presentation.

As is protocol, President Trump was invited again this year and decided to attend, with the reported stipulation that he be allowed to speak in advance of the first tee shots on Sunday at Medinah Country Club. It ended up being less than 30 seconds and the event carried on. While he presence prevented fans from lining both sides of the first fairway as they had the first three days, all was well as Trump greeted players and caddies before and after.

But it is interesting to see how the PGA Tour deals with the current president. CEO Brian Rolapp was seen standing next to Trump behind the first tee as play began and before the trophy presentation. And the tour has again returned to Trump’s property at Doral in Miami, where this year’s Cadillac Championship was played and will be a Championship Series event going forward.

It is always great for the game when a U.S. president is interested in golf. Presidents Clinton, Bush (both of them) and Obama played their share of golf while in office.

But none of them had a high-profile golf business, too.

The tour made a point to go back to one of his properties despite the Trump organization’s continued embrace of LIV Golf and his own inflammatory words about the PGA Tour leadership a few years ago.

When LIV Golf played its first event at Trump Doral in 2022, Trump played in the pro-am and spoke to reporters afterward. At the time, he was out of office and had clearly sided with the Saudi-backed league. And he didn’t hide his displeasure with the PGA Tour or its leadership.

“The tour mishandled it so badly,’’ Trump said of its decision not to work with LIV while suspending players who participated in LIV Golf events. “The people at the top … something should happen with them. They mishandled it so badly. They not only

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The U.S. team mobs captain Brandt Snedeker after a dominating comeback (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — The consternation, the soul-searching, the head-scratching decisions will have to live in the background for now.

The U.S. Presidents Cup team undoubtedly has issues moving toward Ireland and the Ryder Cup next year but there was no denying Sunday’s singles dominance at Medinah Country Club, where the Americans started the day on the verge of an epic defeat and ended up cruising to a decisive victory.

In a different kind of “Miracle at Medinah” from the one that went against the U.S. at the 2012 Ryder Cup, the Americans put forth a dominant performance by winning 9½ of 12 singles points to erase a three-point deficit and win by four.

The 17-13 victory was the 11th straight in a lopsided series that with the U.S. running its all-time record to 14-1-1.

“I knew these guys were special,” said U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker. “I knew they were close. I saw it last year at the Ryder Cup, how hard those guys fought for Keegan (Bradley) on Sunday. I was just trying to get them to fight for me the same way. Super proud of them, man. Super proud of all these guys.”

Also in today’s DD …

• Tom Kim checks out early to seek military exemption with Asian gold

• This week in golf: Matt Fitzpatrick cruises in France

• About Charley Hull’s new hair color

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Snedeker pointed a finger at himself on Saturday night in a raw leadership assessment, questioning some of his own decisions that put the U.S. team in a 10½-7½ hole through three days of team play. Some of those recurring issues will need to be studied a bit more in coming days and weeks as needing 8 of 12 points in singles to win the Presidents Cup is not typically going to be a productive strategy.

Bradley was part of his assistant crew at Medinah as was Jim Furyk, who will be the captain next year for the U.S. Ryder Cup team in Ireland. Best not to let an unlikely final-day eruption mask some of the inadequacies that continue to haunt the U.S. team.

Among the bright spots for the Americans was 21-year-old rookie Jackson Koivun, and it was perhaps fitting that one of Snedeker’s controversial captain’s picks got a key victory on Sunday over one of the International team’s top stars, Si Woo Kim. Or that another pick, veteran Justin Thomas, went out early and thumped Canada’s Corey Conners, 5 and 3.

On the other side, it was a bitter defeat for an International squad that has put considerable thought and inspiration behind an effort to change the narrative despite its debilitating lack of comparative depth.

Captain Geoff Ogilvy’s team seemed to push all the right strategic buttons, buoyed by a 5-0 foursomes record on Friday and holding its own through two sessions Saturday to emerge with a 10½-7½ lead. But the issue of depth facilitated by not being allowed to pick quality players who left for LIV Golf did the International side no favors on Sunday.

“Obviously pretty disappointed,” said Oglivy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion and an Australian who could very well captain the International side again in 2028 at Kingston Heath in Melbourne. “We had a pretty good Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We put ourselves in a really good position (Sunday). I thought we had some pretty good matchups out there, and I thought we did all that stuff pretty well.

“It was just one of those days; it just felt like it was sort of right on a knife edge for a massive part of the day. If you hole a couple of putts at the right time and get a bit more yellow on the board at the right time, the momentum, and the crowd sort of stays out of it a little bit. Just sort of started drifting away for us in the last few hours.

“Pretty disappointed, but pretty impressed with this group of guys. They were pretty committed to this this week. They all put in. The spirit in the room is great. The energy is amazing. They’re all incredibly motivated to come back in ’28 and do it again. We gave it a good crack. We nearly got there, but pretty disappointed for sure.”

Ogilvy lamented how difficult it is to beat the Americans at singles while playing in the U.S. It’s actually difficult, anywhere. That is not the problem for the U.S. side.

The singles dominance on Sunday is in keeping with recent international team play. The last time the Americans lost a singles session was at the 2018 Ryder Cup. Since then, they’ve won the Sunday session six times and tied it another. Even in Ryder Cup defeats in 2023 and 2025, the Americans did not lose at singles.

Ogilvy seemingly made the right moves to get solid Sunday matchups, but a couple of his veterans let him down. It was perfectly set up for Hideki Matsuyama, Adam Scott, Si Woo Kim and Min Woo Lee to decide the outcome for him. All four lost in the seventh though 10th matches.

Matsuyama missed a 2-footer in his 1-down loss to Collin Morikawa, who rallied and won the 18th with a par. Scott never led against Patrick Cantlay but was never down more than two holes and yet was never able to tie it after the first hole. Kim led the rookie Koivun through 11 holes but could not finish him off and lost 2-up. Lee also missed a short putts on 16 and 17, allowing rookie Jacob Bridgeman to win 1-up with a par on the 18th.

“From my experiences, the environment is definitely getting tougher to play, and this was a tougher environment,” said Scott, 46, who played in his 12th consecutive Presidents Cup and posted a 1-3 record. “There are no excuses, but we’ve got to learn from that and be ready for it.

“I think as I look at the group on the whole, all these guys are going to be much better players in two years. So I like where it’s going for the International team. The American team, it’s a tough lineup. For me, playing for the week, I think I played okay, but okay doesn’t win a lot of points against an American team.”

That U.S. team deserved to revel in victory Sunday night. They were heavily favored, were beaten badly on Friday and dug a big hole to climb out of on the final day. The 17-13 score may be viewed down the road as another yawner when it was hardly that.

“I’m tired of hearing how these guys aren’t close. I’m tired of hearing how we can’t play team golf. Guys just proved it right then and there,” Snedeker said on TV afterwards, brushing over the fact his team trailed the “team” portion by three points.

“This team is going to be a problem in Ireland. A problem.”

It is best for the U.S. brass not to go to sleep on this result and start providing bulletin-board material before trying to end a nearly four-decade road losing streak in the Ryder Cup. This was far from easy and there is plenty to learn from, even in victory. That is good to keep that in mind amid the celebration.

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Tom Kim did all he could for International cause by winning four points (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Tom Kim checks out early after doing his part

Tom Kim didn’t hang around long enough to suffer disappointment with his teammates. The International team’s leading points earner with a 4-1 record left Medinah late Sunday afternoon and headed for Japan to compete for his native South Korea in the Asian Games.

“I’m excited to go back to Asia. I haven't been to Asia for so long, so I’m excited to go back home and see some friends and hopefully have a good week,” Kim said after his 3-and-2 victory over U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark in the second match moved the International team to within four points of winning with 10 matches still undecided.

The Associated Press first reported on Saturday that Kim would make a quick exit after playing in the second match of the day. South Korean law requires most able-bodied men to perform 18 to 21 months of military service by the time they turn 28. Special exemptions are granted for athletes and artists who excel in certain kinds of international competitions tied to national prestige. For a golfer, that means any medal at the Olympics or a gold medal at the Asian Games.

Kim, 24, would be eligible for an exemption should he win gold at the Asian Games. He missed out on reaching the Olympics podium in Paris and he’ll be 26 when the next Olympics are held at Riviera in Los Angeles.

So he’ll go for gold in Japan at the Asian games after a standout performance in the Presidents Cup.

“This is probably my best Presidents Cup yet. I think this was one of the hardest ones,” Kim said. “The crowd definitely enjoyed picking on me a little bit. It was great. The fans of Chicago were so amazing. It’s a really cool sports city, and they really showed up for the U.S. this week.

“I’m very honored to be a part of the week, and I’m very grateful. But I’m glad that I did my best for my team, and four points this week hopefully goes a long way.”

“The Kims make an incredible pair,” Ogilvy said Sunday. “They’re fun to watch. They bring so much energy to this team. And they’re very reliable and they win us a lot of points. We love having them on our side.”

It didn’t go quite far enough.

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World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler sat out the afternoon foursomes Saturday (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — Scottie Scheffler put the “sat” in Saturday afternoon.

The best player in the world sat on the sideline Saturday afternoon, cheering on his teammates but unable to do much else at Medinah Country Club, where he will need to summon some of his greatness on Sunday and get help from others in order to avoid a monumental Presidents Cup upset.

Meanwhile, U.S. captain Brandt Snedker second-guessed some of his own decisions and blamed himself for a 10½-7½ deficit heading into the final session — the biggest ever at home for the Americans at a Presidents Cup.

Snedeker didn’t exactly channel his inner Ben Crenshaw — who in 1999 told the masses on Saturday night at Brookline that he had a good feeling about his team’s Ryder Cup comeback the next day — but he did his best to deflect attention from his players and set up a Sunday surge.

“I tried to work my tail off to put these guys in the best situation possible, and I don’t think I’ve done a very good job this week to be where we are right now,” said Snedker, the U.S. captain who was part of the American Ryder Cup team that blew a big final-day lead at Medinah in 2012.

“I hold myself to a high standard. I don’t think I’ve put these guys in situations where I was trying to, I should say, or wanted to, to give them the comfort level they needed. I mean, there’s several different ways, whether it’s through matchups, whether it’s through whatever. There’s a thousand different ways I can think of right now. I’ve been honestly second guessing myself a lot to be in this situation.”

Also in today’s DD …

• Presidents Cup Sunday singles pairings

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Snedker said it was a tough decision to sit Scheffler in the afternoon foursomes session. He got a bit defensive when questioned about the foursomes pairing of Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman, who lost twice in the format. And it’s fair to wonder if he should have put Scheffler and Burns together in Friday foursomes considering they were 1-3-1 in the format before this week.

While it’s odd to not have the top-ranked player in the world competing in every session, Scheffler was not himself on Saturday morning during a four-ball match that he won with partner Burns over Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune.

Scheffler made just two birdies playing his own ball — the second with a critical putt on the 15th hole to square the match — and the Americans needed to birdie the last three holes to rally for a 2-and-1 victory. That gave them a 2-1-1 advantage in the morning session and pulled them a point closer (8½-5½) following Friday’s foursomes 5-0 wipeout that built a 7-3 International lead.

With the alternate-shot format looming — Scheffler is stunningly just 1-8-1 in international team foursomes including that Friday loss — it seemed reasonable to give him a break.

It marked the first time Scheffler has sat out a session at the Presidents Cup. Aside from his first Ryder Cup in 2021 when he was the last player selected to the team as a rookie, Scheffler has missed only one session at a Ryder Cup, sitting the afternoon out on Saturday in Rome following a morning 9-and-7 beating along with Brooks Koepka in foursomes.

The Internet didn’t hold back on Scheffler’s benching (Source: X)

“We’re always prepared for anything,” Scheffler said in a TV interview following his four-ball victory Saturday morning. “I’ve played a lot of golf this year. I’ll just sit there and cheer the boys on. Look forward to watching Sam, he’s one of my favorite players to watch. And get some rest and get ready for tomorrow.”

While Scheffler watched, Burns (his partner for three sessions) and Wyndham Clark lost to Ryan Fox and Min Woo Lee, 3 and 2, after holding an early 2-up lead that saw them still tied through 12 holes.

In the other key foursomes match, Canadians Corey Conners and Nick Taylor twice rallied from 3 down deficits — they were 3 down after the first three holes and again through 10 — to win 1 up over Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman.

The Canadians won four of five holes from Nos. 11-15 to take a 1-up lead. At the 18th, Conners poured in a 5-footer for par to preserve the 1-up lead and the three-point advantage going into singles.

Had the Americans won the hole and halved the match, the score would be a more manageable 10-8.

“Nick and I battled hard all day, especially towards the end,” Conners said. “I just tried to stick to the routine. It was a pretty straight putt, just get it rolling, and felt good to see that one go in. Get the point on the board for the International Team, having come back the way that we did.”

The Americans managed just two of the four afternoon points despite leading in all four matches through seven holes. The U.S. also led in every match at one point in the morning session but only managed to chip one point off the International lead in the end.

“We had to sort of weather the storm early in both sessions, and it was amazing for the boys to sort of get us out of the day relatively unscathed,” said International captain Geoff Ogilvy.

Saturday extended the U.S. team’s foursomes misery in international competitiob, which has now seen them go 2-7 at Medinah, 2-8 last year at the Bethpage Ryder Cup and 1-7 at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome. They were also 3-6 in the format at the 2024 Presidents Cup.

In the other afternoon matches, Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele came off a morning rest and got back on their strong foursomes track (now a career 8-5) with a 2-and-1 victory over the top International partnership of Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim, who were 3-0 together going into the match.

Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup put on a masterful performance, making six birdies and an eagle in alternate-shot through 14 holes to easily dispatch Adam Scott and Sungjae Im, 6 and 4.

The Internationals, whose lone victory in the Presidents Cup came in 1998 (the U.S. is 13-1-1 overall), need just 5 points out of 12 to win.

As for Scheffler, Snedeker said the decision was not pre-planned to sit him.

“It kind of unfolded,” the U.S. captain said. “I had some ideas about Scottie — he puts the world on his shoulders and he puts his whole team on his shoulders and takes a lot on. I was really trying to get him some energy for (Sunday). I know (Sunday) is going to be a big day.

“It’s obviously a tough decision, really hard decision to sit the best player in the world and probably one of the best players I’ve ever seen in person. I just want to put him in the best situation tomorrow to go out there and have a great day and get some rest.”

Scheffler will go off fourth Sunday in singles and it was a curious decision Snedeker made in putting his name up and allowing Oglivy to match up who he wanted against the 22-time PGA Tour winner. Ogilvy countered with statistically his worst player, Nico Echavarria, who sat out all day Friday and Saturday after a Thursday four-ball loss. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain putting a player in a matchup you don’t expect to win anyway.

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Americans need 8 of 12 to win back Prez Cup

With a front-loaded singles lineup, U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker hopes his team can build momentum and rally from a three-point deficit on Sunday at Medinah No. 3.

The Americans need to double their score thus far to forge a tie with the International team. Unlike the Ryder Cup, the previous winner doesn’t get to retain the Presidents Cup in the event of a tie, so the two teams would share the golden prize. A team needs to get to 15½ to win the Cup outright.

So needing to win two-thirds of the 12 singles points available on Sunday to get there, Snedeker isn’t holding back his stars.

Cameron Young will lead off against Japan’s Ryo Hisatsune to try an give the home team an immediate spark. Right behind him might be the most interesting matchup of the day, with U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark taking on South Korean sparkplug Tom Kim.

Justin Thomas, the emotional leader for the U.S. side, is out third against Canadian Corey Conners, who has won two of four matches this week but lost to Thomas in the opening four-balls on Thursday.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler — fresh from his afternoon off — will bat cleanup in the batting order and face sacrificial lamb Nico Echavarria of Colombia, who hasn’t played since Thursday. It was a massive miscalculation by Snedeker to put Scheffler’s name out first and let International captain Geoff Ogilvy counter with his least productive player to save his better stars for more critical matchups. Anything Echavarria achieves against Scheffler would be gravy for the Internationals.

“(Nico) was pretty motivated when he found out he wasn’t playing today,” Ogilvy said of Echavarria. “He’s excited to go out tomorrow. He didn’t know this was going to happen, so he’s learned this now in the team room. We hope he’s really excited. It’s a big opportunity for him to play the best player in the world, and we feel like he’s ready for it.”

The middle four matches feature a meaty menu of opponents: Sam Burns against Korean Sungjae Im; Chris Gotterup against South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout; Collin Morikawa against Japanese veteran Hideki Matsuyama; and Patrick Cantlay against Australian Adam Scott.

“We led pretty heavy; we’ve got some studs up there at the top of the lineup that are going to go out there and hopefully put a bunch of red on the board, get this crowd behind us,” said Snedeker. “We’ve got some studs throughout the whole lineup. We’ve got some guys in there to do what they’re meant to do.

“I know what kind of players we have in there. We’ve got a bunch of guys that have won a lot of golf on the PGA Tour. They’ve won major championships. They know what championship golf looks like. This is a championship type golf course. It’s going to play tough tomorrow. They’ve got the mettle it takes to go out there and do the right things.”

With the captains alternating picking their singles players through the 12-man lineup, allowing the opposing captain to counter with the matchup he wants, Ogilvy had the luxury of mixing in his stars where he wanted them.

“We would imagine that Brandt would have led pretty strong because in their situation he has to lead pretty strong. So we had some ideas,” Ogilvy said of his placement strategy. “You can kind of have a little bit of control with half of this pairings thing, but you can lose control pretty quick as the whole thing — it’s like a snake draft. That’s interesting. We had a sort of general idea, but we just let it unfold as it goes.”

On paper it looks like the International team might have the upper hand in a few of the late matches.

Jackson Koivun, the 21-year-old rookie, will face the Internationals top points earner Si Woo Kim of South Korea in the ninth match.

The winless American tandem of rookie Jacob Bridgeman and disappointing veteran Russell Henley will face, respectively, Australia’s Min Woo Lee (2½ points so far) and Canada’s Nick Taylor (2 points). Henley was in a similar pivotal late position in last year’s Ryder Cup and blew a late lead against Ireland’s Shane Lowry, who buried a cup-clinching putt for a halve on the 18th green after Henley left a makeble chance to win the match short.

If anything is still left in the balance at the end, the anchor match pits two Open champions against each other — Xander Schauffele and New Zealand’s Ryan Fox.

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Si Woo Kim celebrates during his foursomes win with Tom Kim (Luke Hales/Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — The format that baffles and bemuses American golfers in international team competitions continued its irritating trend on Friday at the Presidents Cup, where the International side swept the foursomes and emerged with a rare lead entering the weekend at Medinah Country Club.

By winning all five foursomes sessions on Friday, the Internationals took a 7-3 lead into Saturday’s marathon double session and left the Americans wondering once again what it is about the alternate-shot format that continually haunts them.

“It’s the million-dollar question, right?” U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker said of the Americans’ historic foursomes troubles. “I don’t know. I know our guys are committed to it. Our guys practice it hard leading up to this. I feel like we had the right matchups … and some days the ball just doesn’t want to go in. I can’t put my finger on it. I really wish I could. I tried my best to do it, and we have another session to go out there and try to figure it out.

“I think these guys are ready for that challenge, but to answer your question, I don’t really — it’s such a hard question to answer because I can’t really point to one specific thing of why it’s not happening.”

Also in today’s DD …

• Presidents Cup Day 3 morning four-ball pairings

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It is true that unless you make a habit of playing Muirfield in Scotland — where foursomes is required for the majority of its play — the alternate-shot format is awkward and a style you’d rarely otherwise see because it requires you to rely on a partner to play your shots instead of playing your own ball.

It can be maddening, as U.S. teams continue to lament their results in the format. It has often been the kryptonite for U.S. road teams in Ryder Cups, but even lately the Americans have stumbled at home, too.

They did again Friday, extending an alarming trend in these competitions that has seen them get dominated.

“It’s such a small sample,” said Xander Schauffele, who along with Patrick Cantlay, has considerable foursomes experience with a 7-4 together before Friday’s loss. “Give me 200 looks and let me know what my record is after that. I’m going to die before that happens, so unfortunately, we’re not going to get that look.

“You do feel — whether you put pressure on yourself to make something happen or a couple weird things happen on the course — you’ve only got 12 holes to like regroup and try to get something done. There’s something to be said about getting off to a good start and being in sync early and then kind of riding the wave through.”

The Americans were never able to get much going Friday. They won just 12 holes and were only leading following six of them.

Americans Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler fall to Canadians Corey Conners and Nick Taylor (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler saw his overall foursomes record fall to 1-8-1 after losing 1-down with partner Sam Burns to Canadians Corey Conners and Nick Taylor. It was Taylor’s 151-yard 9-iron on the 18th hole to 2 feet for a conceded par that sealed the 1-up win after his poor drive forced Conners to pitch out. Burns’ 15-foot birdie chance to tie the match lipped out.

“That was just a poor swing at the wrong time,” Taylor said of his tee shot. “I went and peeked at what Corey was dealing with but knowing if we just give ourselves a chance at 4, it was pretty difficult pin. We knew they were in the first cut, so it was going to be tough to hit it close. To redeem myself was a nice thing.”

Sungjae Im and Hideki Matsuyama put the first gold win on the board in the second match with a 3-and-2 victory over Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman. Adam Scott and Christiaan Bezuidenhout were also 3-and-2 winners over Justin Thomas and Cam Young, closing out the match with a long birdie from off the green on 16 by Bezuidenhout.

The South Korean juggernaut of Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim avenged their foursomes defeat in 2024 to Schauffele and Cantlay in commanding fashion with a 4-and-3 win in the last match out.

It was Open champion Ryan Fox who preserved the foursomes sweep with a nervy 5-foot par putt on the 18th hole for a 1-up win with partner Min Woo Lee over Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark. Fox and Lee were the only International team to trail on the back nine but flipped the match with Fox birdie putts on 15 and 16.

“I think sometimes in match play it’s nice being the one to be able to put some pressure on,” Fox said. “I hit two really, really good putts. I was probably glad the one on 16 hit the hole, and I think Min wanted the one coming back, but it doesn’t matter now. It’s amazing what can happen if you put a little bit of pressure on.

“It was one of those things that I felt really good over the putter most of the day. Those were probably two of the putts that I felt good over, and it was great to see them go in, and then knocked a pretty important one in on the last as well.”

To blame the Americans’ poor showing in foursomes on lack of familiarity would be misguided. Seven of the eight Americans who played Friday afternoon have foursomes experience. Only Bridgeman had never played foursomes previously at this level and six of the other U.S. players took part in foursomes last year at the Ryder Cup.

Of course, last year’s Ryder Cup foursomes was a nightmare, as the Americans managed just a 2-6 record against Europe, digging a hole that was too big to emerge from despite a valiant Sunday singles charge. In Italy in 2023, the U.S. went 1-7 in foursomes play, getting swept in the opening session. At the 2024 Presidents Cup in Montreal, the U.S. was also swept 5-0 in Friday foursomes.

Going back to 2023, the Americans are now 6-24 in foursomes. Take it back a year to the 2022 Presidents Cup, when Scheffler played the format for the first time, the record is 12-27. That year, when the U.S. went 6-3, is the last time the Americans won foursomes overall in a cup competition.

More perplexing: it’s not like the International side has more experience playing the format.

“Personally, I really enjoy the format,” said Scott, who played with his 20th different partner in Bezuidenhout across 12 Presidents Cup appearances. “I think I’ve had better success in this format than the other. But I have to probably give credit to the support staff who work on pairings and captains and the assistants, of putting the best pairings they can out.

“I don’t really know the secret sauce that they have, but they’ve done a helluva job.”

All of which makes you wonder what the Americans are getting wrong.

The 7-3 deficit is the biggest the U.S. has faced as this point since 1998 at Royal Melbourne — the only American defeat in 15 previous Presidents Cups. It is the team’s largest deficit at home since trailing 6½-5 ½ in 2005. The Americans also trailed 6½-3½ to the Internationals through two days in 2019 at Royal Melbourne.

“We obviously had a great day,” said International captain Geoff Ogilvy. “Didn’t expect that to happen, but I guess we’ve got experience from 2024 having a Friday like that. …

“It’s obviously enjoyable to have a day like that on the golf course, but we reset and start again.”

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U.S. has 8 matches to chip away at deficit

Saturday morning will send out four four-ball matches starting at 8:02 a.m. ET on Golf Channel followed in the afternoon by four foursomes matches on NBC at 2:15 p.m. ET.

With so much at stake in a four-point hole, U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker is putting faith in his 21-year-old rookie Jackson Koivun and veteran leader Justin Thomas in the lead-off four-balls match against the International pair of Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im. Koivun and Thomas won together on Thursday while Lee and Im let a potential point slip away in the first match of the week.

Out second for the Internationals is the unbeaten South Korean pairing of Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim, who will put their 2-0 mark this week on the line against American double-major winners Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark who are 1-1 with a four-ball win this week.

Snedeker shook up his third pairing, putting together Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup who have seven PGA Tour wins between them in the last 14 months but have yet to pick up a point this week. Ogilvy kept the chemistry of the Canadian duo of Corey Conners and Nick Taylor, who picked up a foursomes point on Friday.

After leading off the first two sessions, American heavyweights Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns will go off last in the morning against the Japanese pair of Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune, who are a combined 3-0 this week.

“Obviously, it didn’t go great,” Snedeker said of the Friday sweep that leaves his favored team in a 7-3 hole. “I feel like our guys played pretty well, all in all. I know the scoreboard doesn’t reflect it, but we’re only one-third of the way through this thing. There’s a lot of golf left to play.

“We’ve got a lot of high-character guys in our room. I love the way the guys competed today. It’s a long golf tournament. I keep telling those guys this is a football game and we’re not even at halftime yet. We’ve got three more sessions to go, a lot of golf in front of us. I’m really confident in our guys. I’m really confident in what they bring to the table.”

Ogilvy was an assistant in 2024 when the Internationl side swept the Friday session to climb back into a tie heading into the weekend. So he isn’t reading too much into where things stand with two-thirds of the points still at stake.

“You’ve got to acknowledge that we had a really good day and you’ve got to feel good about it and build some confidence out of that, but you also have to acknowledge that there’s 20 points left on the board,” Ogilvy said. “(Saturday) is a very long day. It’s one of the longest days in golf. They say to qualify for the U.S. Open is a long day, but Saturday at the Presidents Cup is a very long day. So energy conservation and sort of resetting to go is probably the order of the day. So we do both.”

Ogilvy opted to sit major winners Adam Scott and Ryan Fox along with Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Nico Echevarria in the morning. It’s the first session that 12-time Presidents Cupper Scott, 46, will sit out since the Saturday four-ball session in 2017. On Friday, Scott played in his record 53rd Presidents Cup match, surpassing Phil Mickelson for the most in the event’s history.

Snedeker benched his historically power pairing of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay in the morning along with Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman.

Four afternoon foursomes matches will follow the morning session on NBC. After Saturday’s matches, 18 of the 30 points in the competition will have been contested. The U.S. needs 15 points to retain the Presidents Cup and the International side needs 15 ½ to win the Cup.

Sunday will feature 12 singles matches on NBC starting at noon ET.

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Wyndham Clark got the U.S. team off to a good start on Thursday (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — A foolproof method of winning American hearts and turning haters into fans? Win points in U.S. international team competition.

Wyndham Clark has spent the better part of two years pushing back on the notion that he is some kind of a bad guy. A couple of behavioral incidents in 2025 led to that reputation — a good deal of it deserved. He’s repeatedly apologized and attempted to move on.

Fans, however, aren’t always so forgiving. Even a strong run of success that brought Clark back to the forefront of the game this year couldn’t turn the tide. He still suffered from the fallout of his actions in 2025, enduring a good bit of unwarranted abuse on his way to winning his second career U.S. open at Shinnecock in June.

When he added the BMW Championship last month in addition to his earlier victory at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, he had a player-of-the-year type season that perhaps only Scottie Scheffler can top.

Winning over the fans, however, has remained elusive.

“I think if it happened throughout my career, it would maybe be a bummer because even though I’m maybe — the media has made me out to be the villain, if you will. … I don’t feel like I’m that person,” Clark said this week at Medinah. “Eventually it would be nice if people were rooting for me and someone else was the underdog, if you will.”

Queue the Presidents Cup, where nationalism can turn any villain into a hero if he’s on your side.

Also in today’s DD …

• Presidents Cup Day 2 foursomes pairings feature a tasty rematch from 2024

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Clark, 32, tried his best to win over the home crowd during the opening session of the 16th Presidents Cup at Medinah Country Club on Thursday, teaming with Collin Morikawa to post a 3-and-2 victory over the International tandem of Ryan Fox and Adam Scott. Clark birdied the first hole to give the Americans a lead they never relinquished and added another at the fourth and eighth holes.

“We started off great — 3-up through 4 — and then we missed some putts,” Clark said. “Collin played really awesome kind of in the middle stretch and just didn’t have some putts fall. I kind of lost my groove a little bit and then finished strong. Yeah, it was a great day.”

Their victory loomed important as the first-day four-ball competition ended 3-2 for the Americans, including a 1-up victory for Scheffler and Sam Burns over Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im and a realtively easy 4-and-3 win for veteran Justin Thomas and rookie Jackson Koivun.

The duo of Scheffler and Burns won their first match in five partnerships in international competitions dating to the 2022 Presidents Cup, having previously gone 0-3-1 together. It came with some help from their International opponents, who both made sloppy bogeys on the 17th hole to fall one down after earlier missing close chances to go 2-up. It was the only match out of the five that went to the 18th hole.

In the International team’s win column, the Japanese pair of Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune defeated Cam Young and Xander Schauffele, 3 and 1, while the anchor pairing of South Koreans Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim defeated Chris Gotterup and Patrick Cantlay, 3 and 2.

Clark’s previous team experience was not much to get excited about. He went 1-1-1 at the 2023 Ryder Cup where the Americans lost to Europe in Rome. In that lone match victory, he was a virtual bystander during the much-discussed “hat-gate” showdown with Patrick Cantlay carrying most of the load in a contentious 1-up win over Rory McIlroy and Matt Fitzpatrick. He lost his singles match to Robert MacIntyre the next day as part of a 16-11 European trouncing.

Two years ago in the Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal, Clark went 1-2-1, winning and losing a four-ball match with Keegan Bradley and losing at foursomes with Tony Finau before a singles tie.

Last year during the depths of his slump, Clark didn’t qualify for the U.S. Ryder Cup team and didn’t get much consideration for a captain’s pick as the U.S. was defeated 15-13 at Bethpage.

“I was obviously pissed I didn’t make the team,” Clark said of last year’s home Ryder Cup. “I didn’t watch the first couple days because I was a little sour about it — not because I didn’t get the pick, it was just more that I had such a bad year.

“Then as the guys were making a comeback on Sunday, I watched. Of course I’m friends with all these guys, and I was rooting for them hard. It’s always a motivation to make the teams. I was really happy I made this team, and I’m hoping this is one of many.”

Missing last year’s Ryder Cup was all part of a forgettable year for Clark that saw him involved in two high-profile anger management issues at both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open. The latter occurred after missing the cut at Oakmont, where he damaged his locker in the historic clubhouse and one of the Oakmont members leaked photos of it. He later received a letter from the club stating that he was banned from the premises. Clark made restitution for the damage he caused and has repeatedly apologized for his behavior.

It has taken him some time to rehabilitate his image in the eye of the golf world, something even a torrid summer with three victories and a major couldn’t fix. He’s moved back to fifth in the Official World Golf Ranking after falling as low as 78th ahead of the Masters in April.

But team competition has a way of getting people on your side. And Clark hopes to take full advantage of the opportunity to win back some fans.

“There’s never more fun in golf than doing what we do this week and at the Ryder Cup because it’s not something that’s really in golf,” Clark said. “We all have a lot of fun. Normally we’re trying to beat each other’s heads in, and now we’re good buddies trying to root each other on and for one goal, to win the cup.”

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Day 2 picks up the pace with foursomes on tap

Today’s second session of the Presidents Cup will send out five foursomes matches starting at 2:05 p.m. ET. Golf Channel will provide full coverage of the session.

All eyes may be on the anchor match, as the U.S. will reprise the long-standing partnership of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay against the familiar International team of Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim.

Schauffele and Cantlay hold an 8-7 record together across international team play, but they have proven particularly formidible in foursomes with a 6-3 record in the alternate-shot format. That includes a memorable showdown against the Kims in the 2024 Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal, in which Si Woo Kim raced around the 16th green in the Steph Curry “night-night” celebration after squaring the match with an unlikely hole-out from a steep rough-shrouded wall. Undeterred, Schauffele and Cantlay won the 18th hole and took the match 1-up.

U.S. rookie Jacob Bridgeman will get his first taste of action with Russell Henley in the session’s second match, facing off against International veterans Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im.

The rest of the U.S. pairings look pretty familiar. Scheffler and Burns will lead off again against the Canadian duo of Corey Conners and Nick Taylor. Taylor sat out the opening four-balls.

Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark will be trotted out again in the third match to try to collect another win, this time against Australian Min Woo Lee and New Zealand’s Ryan Fox.

With American rookie Jackson Koivun sitting out, Justin Thomas will reprise his 2025 Ryder Cup partnership with Cameron Young. This will be their first time together in alternate shot, as they went 1-1 in four-balls together at Bethpage Black. They will face Adam Scott and Christiaan Bezuidenhuit, marking the South African’s first session this year after going 3-1-1 in two prior Presidents Cups.

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Adam Scott has been an International stalwart through “lot of disappointment.” (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — Adam Scott is not asking for sympathy and would undoubtedly shudder at the very mention of it. Professional sports — especially golf — come with a good bit of defeat and despair for even the best.

Scott, 46, has seen a bit of everything in his career. He made his professional start 26 years ago after a brief collegiate stay at UNLV. He observed Tiger Woods up close during his most dominating years and Rory McIlroy as he came of age. Scott won a major and lost a few others, reaching as high as No. 1 in the world. Now he’s competing against and getting to see the rise of this generation’s greatness player, Scottie Scheffer.

Scott just contended at the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship — tying for second along with McIlroy — and is ranked No. 45 in the world as he prepares to play in the Presidents Cup at Medinah Country Club.

It’s his 12th consecutive Presidents Cup.

Think about that. Scott played in his first Presidents Cup in 2003 before U.S. rookie Jackson Koivun was born.

Also in today’s DD …

• International team diminished most by LIV Golf ban

• Presidents Cup opening session four-ball pairings

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He’s played in 54 matches for the International team and had 18 different partners in the four-ball and foursomes portion of the competition, winning a total of 23 points.

But he’s never played on a winning Presidents Cup team.

In that first appearance in 2003 in South Africa, the Internationals tied the Americans in what was an epic competition. It had captains Jack Nickalus and Gary Player. It featured a dramatic playoff involving Woods and Ernie Els that lasted three excruciating holes before finally being declared a draw that is still talked about to this day.

Since then, Scott and the Internationals have suffereed 10 subsequent losses. Most expect that losing streak to go to 11 this week at Medinah against a heavily favored American team.

“Well, I mean, that’s just a lot of disappointment, really,” Scott said. “There have been some close calls in there. Of course, I think a lot gets made of a couple big defeats and that it’s been so dominant. But when I look back on it closely there have been some really close calls that I’ve been involved in and it’s come down to the last hole several times. And they can go anyway and it hasn’t gone our way.

“For me, of course I want to win one desperately and I don’t know how many more I can possibly play in. But it’s a team effort to do it. We’ll all have to want it so badly. And I would just say everyone should want it for themselves as much as anybody else on the team. I think it would be an amazing experience for us all to win this Cup.”

Making the case for competitive balance, of course, remains difficult. Yes, there have been some close calls. Woods’ captaincy in 2019 is remembered much for his 3-0 playing record that week but sometimes it’s forgotten that the International side led 9-5 after the Saturday morning four-ball competition and took a 10-8 lead into singles. The Americans won six matches on the final day but the difference proved to be four ties in a 16-14 win.

That was definitely close, as was the 2015 competition in South Korea, where it came down to the final singles match. Bill Haas, the son of U.S. team captain Jay Haas, clinched the 15½-14½ victory with a bunker-save par on the final hole against Korean Sangmoon Bae.

International captain Geoff Ogilvy points to other close calls. He noted the 5-0 International second-day wipeout of the Americans two years ago and that his team actually won more total holes despite a rather lop-sided 18½-11½ U.S. victory at Royal Montreal.

Given the U.S. team’s ongoing struggles in the Ryder Cup, American players are not likely to find a soft spot in their hearts for Scott, despite their glowing respect for him. There are five players on the current U.S. Presidents Cup team who were on the teams that lost to Europe in 2023 and 2025 at the Ryder Cup.

“I really like Adam Scott,” said Xander Schauffele, who is competing in his seventh straight international team event dating back to the 2019 Presidents Cup. “No secret there. He doesn’t want anyone’s feelings on it. He’s a competitor and he wants to get it done. He’ll tell you that all he needs is one to make it feel really sweet, probably something along the lines of what he’d say.

“So I love competing with him. We share the same physio week to week on a normal tour schedule. So it’s been nice to get to know him a little bit better. He’s definitely inspiring to me — aside from the Presidents Cup. Just being that competitive at his age, at this time where golf is, is really, really impressive. So nothing but respect for Adam.”

Asked about the “old guy” on his squad, fellow Australian Ogilvy was at first taken aback as Scott being referenced that way.

“He’s obviously a big inspiration,” said Ogilvy, who is only three years older than Scott. “He played his first Presidents Cup in 2003. Some of these kids — a lot of these kids — weren’t even playing golf in 2003. He’s a big inspiration.

“It’s a cool journey he’s taken. When he first got into that room, he was playing with Ernie Els and Vijay Singh and Nick Price. He was the young one in the room, and now he’s the guy they all look at.

“Certainly, you would have thought if you were going to play all 12 in a row from 2003, that he would have won one by now. So it would be fantastic for the team, and I know everybody feels that way, that he’s a big part of the inspiration they want to win for.”

Scott’s overall match record is 20-28-6 which is actually quite respectable considering he’s never been on a winning side. For this squad to prevail, he probably needs to be successful along with other veterans such as Hideki Matsuyama (seventh Presidents Cup), Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim. His partner on Thursday will be Presidents Cup newcomer Ryan Fox, a 39-year-old New Zealander coming off a major victory at the Open Championship.

“He’s part of the international furniture now,” said South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhuit of Scott. “He’s played in 12 of them. He plays as good as what he played 25 years ago. So, I mean, all of us would love to win the Cup, but it would be so much more special if we can do it while Adam is still in the team as well.”

It’s a tall task, for sure, but Scott at least provides that aspect of motivation.

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LIV ban inflicts damage to Presidents Cup

There is a fair bit of irony in the fact that LIV Golf’s launch was in many ways based on the belief that fans wanted more team golf and that the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup were prime examples of that appetite.

LIV Golf’s existence, of course, has greatly impacted the Presidents Cup — and where you lay the blame likely depends on your bias. While LIV players have been permitted to play in the Ryder Cup for both sides, they are not permitted to play in the Presidents Cup because the event is owned and operated by the PGA Tour.

When LIV Golf first launched in 2022, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan declared LIV tournaments as “unauthorized events” for its members. And anyone who competed in LIV tournaments has not been allowed to play in PGA Tour events for a period of time afterward. That even includes an exhibition such as the Presidents Cup.

International captain Geoff Ogilvy said that when he first took the job nearly two years ago, he inquired about the possibility of inviting LIV players as captain’s picks. He was told that any chance depended on how things unfolded over the two years between Presidents Cups. At the time, the PGA Tour was still in the throes of trying to work out an agreement with the Public Investment Fund, which backed LIV Golf until announcing earlier this year it would be pulling its funding. Such a deal never materialized and the PGA Tour has stuck to its suspension rules.

“I guess it just hasn’t unfolded to the point where they’re ready to, sort of, let that happen,” Ogilvy said.

While it’s difficult to say how much impact that has had on the competition — LIV players such as Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka were kept off the 2022 and 2024 U.S. teams — it’s certainly fair to wonder if some international players would have helped.

Chile’s Joaquin Niemann, who has the most victories in LIV Golf history, certainly could have been a factor in 2024 and this year. Australian Lucas Herbert could have been nice option for Ogilvy coming off a strong year including contending at the Open Championship. Aussie Cam Smith was denied the year he won the Open and Players in 2022. Others such as South Africa’s Dean Burmester, Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz and Australian Marc Leishman might have been considered as well.

For an international side that lacks experience and depth, there is an argument to be made that the lack of LIV player eligibility hurts, even though it is also fair to add that the International side was losing Presidents Cups before the launch of LIV Golf.

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Presidents Cup tees off with four-ball session

Today’s opening day of the Presidents Cup will send out five four-ball matches starting at 12:35 p.m. ET. Golf Channel will provide full coverage of the session.

U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker will send of world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler first with close friend Sam Burns. It marks a big opportunity for the International tandem of Sunjae Im (6-7-2 record in three previous Presidents Cup) and Min Woo Lee (0-1-1) to build momentum against the biggest American pairing.

Snedeker split up the long-standing successful partnership of Xander Schauffle and Patrick Cantlay. Schauffele will head out with Cameron Young in the second match against the Japanese duo of Hideki Matsuyama (9-13-5 in six prior Prez Cups) and rookie Ryo Hisatsune.

Cantlay will team up with in the anchor match with rookie Chris Gotterup against the experienced (and emotional) partnership of South Korea’s Kims — Si Woo and Tom — who went 1-1 together on Saturday in 2024 at Royal Montreal including a memorable foursomes showdown that Cantlay and Schauffele won 1-up.

Jackson Koivun, the 21-year-old American rookie, will play as expected with veteran Justin Thomas against Canada’s Corey Connors and Colombia’s Nico Echavarria in what could be a pivotal middle match.

The fourth match is the only one featuring four major winners, with 12-time Presidents Cupper Adam Scott and New Zealand rookie Ryan Fox against the first-time U.S. partnership of Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa.

On Friday, five foursomes matches will begin at 2:05 p.m. ET, also on Golf Channel.

Saturday morning will send out four four-ball matches starting at 8 a.m. ET on Golf Channel followed in the afternoon by four foursomes matches on NBC at 2:15 p.m. ET.

Sunday will have 12 singles matches on NBC starting at noon ET.

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Sam Burns may get the nod again to partner with No. 1 Scottie Scheffler (Luke Hales/Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — The age-old dilemma for U.S. international teams remains as perplexing now as it was back then — getting the best out of its top players. More specifically, THE top player.

Nobody doubts the greatness of Scottie Scheffler, who a month ago capped another incredible season by winning the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup and most likely his fifth consecutive PGA Tour Player of the Year.

But as this week’s Presidents Cup unfolds, it will be interesting to see if that great play continues and if Scheffler can carry the U.S. team to victory.

He certainly doesn’t need to do it all. The most he can contribute is five points and the heavily favored Americans need to win 15 in order to retain the Presidents Cup.

And yet, it is so important for the best players to be the best, to establish momentum and not give the other side the boost it so often gets from toppling a marquee star.

Also in today’s DD …

• Medinah puts Chicago back in the golf spotlight with Presidents Cup

• How to watch the 16th Presidents Cup

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It remains perplexing that U.S. teams couldn’t fare better in the Ryder Cup under the likes of superstars such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who repeatedly underwhelmed against Europe. The same sort of quandary exists now with Scheffler.

“I don’t really know, to be honest with you. I think it’s a great question,” said U.S. Presidents Cup team captain Brandt Snedeker. “I think Scottie Scheffler being Scottie Scheffler is the most important thing for us as a team. We can’t ask him to do more than he can do.

“I don’t want him to take a burden on. He’s not going to win or lose us this Presidents Cup. The Presidents Cup is won or lost by 12 people. Hopefully not the captain, hopefully the 12 guys.”

It is deflating when the best player gets beaten. It’s not the sole reason U.S. teams have struggled, but it is amazing to consider that Woods played on just one winning Ryder Cup team in eight appearances and went 12-21-2. Mickelson played on three winning teams out of 12 appearances and went 18-22-7. (Both players had winning Presidents Cup records.)

Scheffler, meanwhile, has been mostly a disappointment in team competition.

He went 2-0-1 in his very first Ryder Cup in 2021 at Whistling Straits — defeating Jon Rahm in singles in a U.S. victory — all before his first PGA Tour victory. But since then, his results have been spotty at best. Scheffler is 3-5-1 overall in the Presidents Cup and 3-6-3 at the Ryder Cup.

Last year at Bethpage Black, he went 0-4 in partner play prior to winning his singles match against Rory McIlroy in a 15-13 U.S. Ryder Cup defeat on home soil. It’s not hard to see how a difference in one or two of those foursomes and four-ball matches might have tilted the outcome. Scheffler can’t do it all, but him losing so often was clearly a decisive blow to the U.S. side.

“When you take the best player in the world and put him on a hard golf course and you play for 72 holes, there’s maybe one guy who beats him or ties him on average. It’s ridiculous,” said Russell Henley of Scheffler. “That’s over 72 holes. That’s a normal golf tournament. When you’re playing 18 holes and you have a partner, that’s just a lot different.

“So (his record) is surprising because he’s so good. But it’s also like just part of it with match play. I don’t know what Tiger’s record was in match play, but I would imagine he was probably tough to pair with because he’s such a world star. But match play is just so different than stroke play.”

Woods played with 14 different partners in 29 international team matches, never winning more than two matches with any single player.

Henley has been paired with Scheffler the most, going 0-2 last year at the Ryder Cup and 2-1 two years ago at the Presidents Cup. One of those victories is the only time that Scheffler has won a foursomes match, which is seemingly an issue the U.S. needs to resolve going forward.

In five Cup competitions, Scheffler has played with six different partners. He’s 1-1-1 with Bryson DeChambeau, 0-1-1 with Brooks Kopeka, 0-3-1 with Sam Burns, 1-0 with Collin Morikawa, 0-1 with J.J. Spaun and 2-3 with Henley.

“It’s a challenge,” Snedeker said of finding the right parter for his top star. “I think you look at the best players throughout history that have played in these events, it’s always been a challenge to kind of match them up. I think there’s an inherent kind of — not fear for the guy they’re playing with, but a feeling of ‘I’m letting him down. He’s the best player in the world. He’s so good at everything; no matter what I do isn’t going to be good enough.’

“So trying to find someone who can handle that and be themselves and not try to be someone else is super important. These guys are elite athletes, the best players in the world because they’re unique. Scottie Scheffler, Tiger Woods, Jack (Nicklaus), the history of these guys, they’re unique. So trying to find the best way of matching them personality-wise, matching them up with guys they feel comfortable with is our challenge as captains.”

One intriguing possibility would be to put Scheffler with rookie Jackson Koivun, whose played a grand total of seven events as a pro. Perhaps Scheffler could be to Koivun what Seve Ballesteros was to José María Olazábal all those years ago when he helped his fellow Spaniard and they became one of the most formidable Ryder Cup pairings of all time. They went 12-2-1 over 15 matches together.

It is perhaps more likely that Koivun is paired with Justin Thomas as the two players have become friendly. “He’s looked up to Justin for a long time, and Justin has taken him under his wing long before this process started,” Snedeker said.

That still leaves someone to match with Scheffler, who would undoubtedly like to improve his team record. He played with Burns — a close friend — during practice on Tuesday at Medinah where they were in the same group with frequent partners Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay.

“I think you can always play better,” Scheffler said. “I always feel like — every time I go out, I feel like I can always play better. That’s part of what’s great about our game is to continue to try to figure stuff out and continue to improve.

“In the team format, when you look at best ball and alternate shot, there is a little bit of flukiness there for sure. Sometimes you’re up against guys that have played really good. It’s very easy after tournaments to play armchair quarterback and feel like you can do things differently. Going into this one, I feel like my game’s in a good spot. Feel very comfortable with the direction our team’s heading, and just excited to get the week started.”

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The Daily Drive’s Bob Harig appeared on Sirius XM radio’s “Gravy and the Sleeze” show this week from Medinah, discussing with host Drew Stoltz how the Presidents Cup can close the competitive gap between the American and International teams and whether the International team should have more freedom from the PGA Tour to run its franchise as it sees fit.

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Tohatsu has a history that spans more than a century and covers the building of engines for air, road and water. Northeast Marine offers a selection of Tohatsu outboards, as well at C-Hawk and Mitzi Skiff boats with special financing programs available.

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The Geoff Ogilivy redesigned Medinah No. 3 gets back in the game (Quinn Harris/PGA Tour)

Second City takes center stage

For just the second time in six years, the Chicago area has a PGA Tour-affiliated golf event with this week’s Presidents Cup at Medinah. (LIV Golf had Chicago area events from 2022-25.)

After the Western Open morphed into the BMW Championship and became a FedEx Cup playoff event in 2007, the event started moving around the country after being anchored in Chicago since 1962.

Starting in 2008, the BMW has left the Chicago area 10 times, including this year’s event at Bellerive in St. Louis won by Wyndham Clark. The BMW was last played in Chicago at Olympia Fields in 2023 and was last at Medinah in 2019.

Medinah — which has undergone a massive redesign by International team captain Geoff Ogivly and his design firm — has been a long-time fixture in Chicago golf. It played host to the Western Open in 1939 (won by Byron Nelson) and twice in the 1960s. It was the stage for the famous “Miracle at Medinah” when Europe rallied to win the 2012 Ryder Cup. It has also been home to three U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships, both won by Tiger Woods.

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Tiger Woods-Francesco Molinari tie costs U.S. a tie in 2012 at Medinah (Fred Vuich /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

MEDINAH, Ill. — All these years since the European’s “Miracle at Medinah” and it remains difficult to escape an admittedly odd hangup: why didn’t Tiger Woods grind to forge an overall tie on the last hole of the anchor match he was winning in the 2012 Ryder Cup?

With the Presidents Cup on tap this week at Medinah’s No. 3 course, it’s difficult to see the ornate clubhouse and the massive property or even type the word “Medinah” without thinking back to what was one of the more remarkable golf events in history.

No matter your rooting interest, it would be impossible to dismiss the drama of the final day 14 years ago that saw the Europeans storm back from a 10-6 deficit to produce a stunning 14½-13½ victory. That comeback was only made possible by rallying to win the last two matches on Saturday to avoid an even deeper hole.

From Rory McIlroy arriving barely on time his singles tee time to the Europeans winning several early matches to spark momentum to the late turnarounds by Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia to tilt what seemed like sure victories for Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk, respectively, into defeats, it was an amazing ride of emotion for both sides.

And then there was the final singles match between Woods and Francesco Molinari — the only match that ended all square that day. The Europeans won eight matches and the U.S. three and to reach the 14-point mark that guaranteed Europe retaining the Ryder Cup it won by one point two years before in Wales.

When Martin Kaymer rolled in a putt on 18 to secure a 1-up win over Steve Stricker and spark a European celebration, Woods was left watching from the fairway where he was 1-up on Molinari, whose drive was in a fairway bunker. If he just tied the last hole with pars, the final tally would have been 14-14, marking only the third tie in Ryder Cup history.

Woods made bogey from the middle of the fairway, lipping out a greenside chip for birdie before ultimately missing his 4-footer for par and conceding Molinari’s 3-foot par putt that squared their match and handed Europe the outright win.

Why does it continue to rankle? Because had Woods played it out properly and just tied the final hole — which he was easily in position to do — it would have salvaged a tie and denied Europe an outright victory. And while the Europeans would have still retained the Ryder Cup, a tie is still better than a loss and there’s no point in keeping a final score if a tie doesn’t matter — which it clearly does.

Woods didn’t appreciate the distinction.

“It was already over,” he said after. “We came here as a team this is a team event. And the Cup was already been retained by Europe, so it was already over.”

Also in today’s DD …

• J.J. Spaun gets spicy about Prez Cup snub after Wentworth triumph

• Stray Shots on Presidents Cup snubs and Dubs

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A disclaimer: I’ve written about this in the past and questioned several of those involved about it, and most blow it off as Woods did at the time. The ultimate goal is to win the Ryder Cup, they say, and a tie doesn’t matter. So, typically, the argument is not won by me. And that’s fine.

But it still seems worth noting that the only two ties in Ryder Cup history were both a huge deal — even though the team that forged the tie didn’t win the trophy. And the only tie in Presidents Cup history — in 2003, and famously involving Woods who didn’t want to declare a stalement in his pressure-packed playoff with Ernie Els — was a pretty big deal, too.

Europe clinched the Cup that day at Medinah during the second-to-last match on the course when Germany’s Kaymer holed a dicey 6-footer for par that clinched a 1 up come-from-behind victory over Stricker. That assured a 14th point and a European victory, and a wild celebration ensued on the green, which was understandable.

Woods and Molinari watched it unfold from the fairway, and had they decided to simply walk in from there with Woods leading 1-up, the match would have ended at 14-14. Molinari had actually considered conceding, but European captain José María Olazábal understood the value of an outright win and didn’t want the Italian to concede the point. So after the green cleared, they played on.

“I thought about giving him the half in the fairway, but then the captain was there; they told me, it’s not the same, winning or halving, so get focused and do your best,” Molinari said. “And that’s what I did. So I basically just tried to win the hole, to win the tournament, basically.”

Having been on the bad end of Justin Leonard’s long putt and subsequent celebration in 1999 at Brookline that capped an American comeback from a 10-6 deficit, Olazábal was perhaps in no mood to do any conceding. But it speaks to his desire to win rather than tie. In his mind, it mattered. Why wouldn’t it?

For some reason, however, Woods was no longer fully engaged at this point. The stakes had changed right in front of his eyes, and the man who once called finishing runner-up “first loser” had lost his incentive. Surely he wanted to win his own match, right? Especially given his level of pride and the fact he was 0-3 at that point with three team losses alongside Stricker. But it seems he never really considered the notion of the entire match ending in a tie if he could simply make par and halve the hole to win the full point. It seemed obvious by the way he answered questions about it.

His dispirited approach flared right of the green and came to rest on the fringe behind some sprinkler heads. His chip up lipped out and rolled 4 feet by, just outside of where Molinari’s long cross-green birdie putt had come to rest.

Woods said he rushed the par putt because he didn’t think it mattered anymore, missing the cup entirely. He then conceded Molinari’s par and thus the hole, leaving the match all square with each player getting a half point.

“It’s pointless to even finish,” Woods said. “I’ve been out there twice when that’s happened, and it’s a tough spot to be in because you know you’ve got to finish out the match, even though it’s useless because our team didn’t get the Cup and they did.

“So 18 was just, ‘Hey, get this over with.’ Congratulations to the European team. They played fantastic today and they deserve the Cup.”

Nobody disputes that fact. Europe earned it. But a tie is better than a loss. And wouldn’t rookies on the team such as Keegan Bradley, Brandt Snedeker, Jason Dufner and Webb Simpson — who had no role in the 2010 defeat in Wales — prefer a tie over a loss on their résumés?

“I think it’s very awkward,” U.S. captain Davis Love III said later of the zombie-like conclusion after the Ryder Cup was already retained. “I saw some confusion on both sides. What do we do here? It’s over. There was a lot of disappointment, a lot of emotion on our side. I saw Molinari looking around, ‘what do I do here?’

“I just think when it’s over, we all shake hands and go. It doesn’t really matter the score. They had the Cup, and they knew it. They were celebrating while we were trying to get out of Tiger’s way and Molinari’s way to hit shots. It was very awkward.”

Only twice in Ryder Cup history has the event ended in a tie, and the circumstances were far different. But it’s unquestioned that the Great Britan & Ireland team was thrilled with the 16-16 score in in 1969 even though the Americans retained the Ryder Cup.

That was the famous “Concession” when Jack Nicklaus gave a putt to England’s Tony Jacklin on the final green at Royal Birkdale. Had Jacklin missed the short putt, he would have lost his match to Nicklaus and the U.S. would have won outright. Instead, they halved the match and the overall Ryder Cup ended in a tie.

Since GB&I had not won since 1957, it was a huge accomplishment to even tie. Sam Snead, the U.S. captain, was said to be furious with Nicklaus for conceding. The Golden Bear has been hailed for his sportsmanship for the better part of 50 years. Over a tie.

But a tie doesn’t matter?

In 1989, the Americans won the last four singles matches to earn a 14-14 tie at the Belfry. Europe retained the Ryder Cup based on their 1987 victory but the Americans took pride in their comeback. Who got the Cup had been decided but not the overall match. Lanny Wadkins defeated Nick Faldo 1 up in the second-to-last match. Curtis Strange defeated Ian Woosnam 2 up. Both matches went to the 18th hole of a decided Cup. But it didn’t matter?

“Damn straight, it did,” Strange said a few years later. “We were very much aware of the score. We weren’t just going to walk off.”

In the early days of the Presidents Cup, there was a playoff stipulation that came to fruition in 2003 in South Africa. After the teams finished in a tie, Woods and Els — the two biggest players in the world — went out for a riveting sudden-death playoff. The pressure was excruciating, and both players matched each other shot for shot, putt for putt for three holes. The drama helped put the Presidents Cup on the map. Encroaching darkness eventually prompted captains Nicklaus and Gary Players to agree to share the Presidents Cup.

Woods considered the intensity of that playoff the most pressure he’d ever felt in golf.

“I read my par putt from behind the ball and all I could see was nothing but a sea of red. The whole team together,” he said. “I miss this putt, I lose it for all of them. And that’s an experience I’ve never felt as an individual.

“Ernie and I, when we were done, we put our arms around each other and said, ‘Let’s never do that again. Let’s go have a beer.’ ”

Winning the Cup is always the main thing, obviously, but the PGA of America’s record book accounts for tie in the Ryder Cup. The U.S. leads the overall competition 27-16-2, as the two ties were not credited as a victory for either side even though each side retained the Cup. If so, the record would read 28-17.

The Presidents Cup record also accounts for ties: 13-1-1 for the U.S. But that lone tied was considered a shared victory by both sides instead of the U.S. retaining the Presidents Cup because it won the previous competition in 2000.

Snedeker is the U.S. Presidents Cup captain this week. He’s joined at Medinah this week by three assistants who were part of that 2012 Ryder Cup defeat — Bradley, Simpson and Furyk, who will captain the U.S. Ryder Cup team next year in Ireland.

It’s an interesting tidbit that all four lost their singles matches that day at Medinah. Bradley, who went 3-0 that week with Mickelson, infamously has never opened his Ryder Cup bag from that week, waiting to experience a victory which has never come his way in another chance as a player and in 2025 as captain.

It is also fair to suggest that none of them has spent much time lamenting a tie that could have been for the Americans.

Is this a big deal? Not at all. But it’s difficult not to consider the meaning of a tie as another big international team event takes place this week at Medinah.

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J.J. Spaun had something to prove in winning at Wentworth (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

A spicy Spaun and the Presidents Cup

J.J. Spaun’s victory on Sunday at the DP World Tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship came with a good bit of saltiness afterward as the 2025 U.S. Open champion made it clear he was not pleased at being left off of Brandt Snedeker’s U.S. Presidents Cup team this week.

Spaun finished 10th in the final points standings that were official through the BMW Championship and then withdrew on the first day of the Tour Championship with a shoulder injury. A few days later, Snedeker added six players to his team, including rookies Jackson Koivun and Jacob Bridgeman, who, like Spaun each had one PGA Tour victory in 2026.

Bridgeman validated the pick with a second victory last Sunday at the Biltmore Championship Asheville, the PGA Tour’s first fall event, where Koivun finished tied for fifth. Patrick Cantlay, who was 13th in points and hasn’t won a tournament in four years, was another pick that made Spaun bristle.

“It was disappointing to be left off,” Spaun said after the second round of the tournament at Wentworth. “I kind of hung my hat on my experience with the Ryder Cup last year (he went 2-1). 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 said he had a brief conversation with Snedeker on the Monday after the Tour Championship. The captain never noted the injury excuse in media interviews, and it’s fair to wonder if that was part of his thinking. It’s also true that Spaun earned more points in 2025 when he won the U.S. Open and finished second at the Players Championship. Points are based on FedEx Cup points and the formula gives 1.5 points for 2026 events and 2 points for majors and the Players.

Over 26 events, Spaun earned 5,023 points, but more than half (2,794) were earned in 2025 when he had his breakout season. Call it a flaw in the system, but his year that saw him have four top-10s in 2026 wasn’t as strong as last year.

“I was pretty determined this week to kind of prove for something,” Spaun said after winning at Wentworth. “My whole career, I’ve kind of had to do that. I wasn’t given scholarships. I had a walk-on. I had to earn my PGA Tour card the hard way. I was never given sponsor invite opportunities. I just had to do everything the hard way.

“You know, being left off was obviously for a reason. I don’t know what that reason was, but I’m here now and there was a reason why we’re here. My caddie kept telling me that, and it’s crazy how this has happened. You know, everything does happen for a reason. I’m just super happy.”

Spaun is now likely to take up DP World Tour membership again after briefly holding it following his U.S. Open win.

Bridgeman certainly did Snedeker a solid by winning in Asheville, North Carolina, giving him a boost coming into this week’s competition.

“My goal to start the year was to win, make East Lake, and make the Presidents Cup, so I hit all those and hit the win category twice,” said Bridgeman, who won the Genesis Invitational at Riviera and qualified for the season-ending Tour Championship.

“Pretty amazing. Super excited about Presidents Cup. I’m very pleased with how I’m playing rolling into it, and I think everyone else is just as pumped as I am. Jackson and I were talking this week. We played the first couple days. It’s real now. We’re getting really stoked about it. Pumped about it.”

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Brian Rolapp wanted a simpler system based on merit (Ben Jared/PGA Tour via Getty Images)

Somewhat overlooked last week among the PGA Tour’s unveiling of its qualification criteria for its Championship Series model, which is to begin in 2028, is the actual change to the competitive structure of the season-long points race.

While someone who dominates the way Scottie Scheffler has on recent years will still prosper in the new system — which has yet to be named or tied to a corporate sponsor — it will be considerably more difficult to run away with any points title.

Several of the changes are impactful., with a premium placed on making cuts.

For example, in the current version of the FedEx Cup points structure, there are different points levels given for the major championships, signature events and regular tournaments. A major winner gets 750 points, signature winners receive 700 and regular event winners 500. The points taper down to every player who made the cut.

Also in today’s DD …

• This week in golf: Spaun’s European vacation; Bridgeman primed for Prez Cup

• DP World Tour official speaks out about countering LIV’s intended incursion

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Starting in 2028, the winners of all Championship Series events — including majors and the Players Championship — will receive 300 points. Every event is the measured same, which means there is no advantage to be gained playing only the majors or big events. In terms of the PGA Tour’s competition, this will, in theory, make it more difficult to skip any tournaments.

For example, if a player wins the RBC Heritage (300 points) but skips the new Championship Series event in Greensboro and the Truist Championship, a player with consecutive third-place finishes (worth 150 points) would catch him in only two events and without winning. So it’s going to be easier to catch up and harder to maintain a lead without continuously padding it.

As it stands now, there is a wide gap between the top and the bottom in FedEx points structure. The winner of a regular event gets 500 points and a player who makes the cut gets in the neighborhood of 4 points. In other words, there’s not much difference between finishing at the bottom of the pack or missing a cut. You’re also not making up much ground right now making a cut and finishing near the bottom of the field.

That will change significantly in the new model, The range in points goes from the 300 for a winner to 30 for 65th place. That’s only 10 times more points for the person who wins over the person who makes the cut and finishes last, which will make for a much more compact points list throughout the season.

Sustained good play will undoubtedly be rewarded but there is less volatility based on one top result. A player who finishes 10th one week (100 points) and then misses the cut the next is in the same spot as someone who had consecutive 45th-place finishes (50 points each).

And the number of points given to the last-place finisher is also important because it is putting a premium on making cuts. If you survive to the weekend, you are guaranteed 30 more points than someone who misses.

There are several desired reasons for all this. One is to have a competitive race for the season-long champion. Another is to have heightened interest in the 32 players who qualify for the two-week Tour Championship, especially in the last Championship Series event.

And, of course, the race to finish among the top 90 who will qualify for the last regular Championship Series event (believed to be the BMW Championship), thus earning a chance to not only qualify for the Tour Championship but also avoid being relegated to the Challenger Series the following season.

That is the plan anyway. We’ll have to see how it all shakes out in 2028.

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J.J. Spaun surged to the top of elite field at Wentworth (David Cannon/Getty Images)

This week in golf …

• BMW PGA Championship: Confessed Anglophile J.J. Spaun ends his London vacation with a 5-under 67 and a two-shot victory in his debut in the DP World Tour’s flagship event at Wentworth. Rory McIlroy tied for second with Adam Scott, Aaron Rai and Manuel Elvira, drawing 532 points closer to leader Patrick Reed in the Race to Dubai after the American retired with a wrist injury in the second round.

• Biltmore Championship Asheville: Jacob Brdgeman tuned up for his Presidents Cup debut by shooting a final-round 61 to win the PGA Tour fall series opener at The Cliffs at Walnut Grove by two shots over rookie Ben James.

• Pure Insurance Championship: Zach Johnson won for the second straight week on the PGA Tour Champions, surging to a two-shot win over Henrik Stenson, Rory Sabbatini and Steven Alker at Pebble Beach. Johnson’s sixth win ties Gil Morgan (1997) for the fourth most wins by a senior rookie, behind the trio of seven-time rookie winners Bruce Fleisher (1999), Lee Trevino (1990) and Bruce Crampton (1986). There are still six more tournaments in the 2026 Charles Schwab Cup season.

• Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship: Scotland’s Sandy Scott’s closing 65 caught John Marshall Butler for a one-shot win in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals event at Ohio State’s Scarlet Course in Columbus, Ohio. Scott climbed to second in the season-long KFT points standings and follows Ross Steelman, Doc Redman, Ian Holt, Alistair Docherty, Alvaro Ortiz and Cole Sherwood as the seventh player declared PGA Tour bound in 2027.

• ATB Classic: England’s Charlie Crockett won the PGA Tour Americas event in Edmonton, Alberta by two shots over Americans Justin Biwer, Matthew Kress and Charlie Nikitas.

• European Legends Cup: Sweden’s Johan Edfors shot a final-round 64 to rally from four shots back and win his second Staysure Legends Tour title of the season. He finished three shots clear of Steve Webster and Robert Coles at at Fontanals Golf Club in Spain.

• Open de Portugal: Sebastian Friedrichsen of Denmark shot a final-round 62 to overtake Scotland’s Marc Warren to win the HotelPlanner Tour event by three shots in Lisbon.

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DPWT official speaks out

After it became apparent that the Public Investment Fund would be pulling its backing of LIV Golf — and likely the International Series on the Asian Tour — the DP World Tour and Asian Tour officials engaged in conversations to again collaborate on a working arrangement that would see co-sanctioning of events and Asian Tour players earning spots on the DP World Tour.

Golf Digest’s Evin Priest detailed the timeline just after the Masters when Ben Cowen, the DP World Tour’s chief tournament and operations officer, called Cho Minn Thant, CEO of the Asian Tour, to discuss a new deal after it appeared the Asian Tour’s LIV Golf alliance might be imperiled. LIV signed a $300 million deal with the Asian Tour in 2021 to fund International Series events with $2 million purses.

Cowen detailed some frustration over LIV’s framing of the golf ecosystem. LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil has sought to strike a more collaborative tone than his predecessor Greg Norman and made inroads with the Official World Golf Ranking as well as the U.S. Open and the Open Championship.

But Cowen took issue with LIV’s desire to bring some national opens under its banner. He noted that LIV had infringed into DPWT territory in such places as Spain, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“Look, it was a constant battle for the last five years with (LIV) going after events that were on our schedule, going after venues that were on our schedule, going after sponsors that were part of our schedule as well,” Cowen told Golf Digest. “Everyone can say that’s fine, that’s business. We spent a lot of time talking to our partners and explaining to them why they should stay within our ecosystem as the global tour. The global TV distribution we have, the players that we have who have proven themselves when they get a card onto the PGA Tour. We were the ones that were providing the real value and that value has really been there for over 50 years as the European Tour, now the DP World Tour.

“There were a lot of rumors, that a lot of national opens, including Australia, were going to go to with LIV. It was great when we were able to announce (the Australian Open) continuing with us in partnership with the PGA Tour. That’s taken a lot of hard work, a lot of time and effort. It’s been a rocky road, but I feel we’re in a really good place.”

The DP World Tour schedule already shows co-sanctioning for 2027 with the Hong Kong Open and the Singapore Open. The Singapore event is going to Sentosa Golf Club, where LIV has played the last several years. Still to be determined is an extended agreement on its strategic alliance with the PGA Tour.

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Brace for Dubai? DPWT players raise concerns

The DP World Tour’s two-tournament playoff series in Abu Dhabi and Dubai remains on the schedule despite questions over whether the events can go on due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Tour officials have said little on the matter other than that they continue to monitor the situation, which is clearly a challenge.

The Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship (Nov. 5-8) at Yaz Links plays host to the top 70 players in the season-long Race to Dubai standings. The top 50 advance to the DP World Tour Championship (Nov. 12-15) in Dubai and Jumeirah Golf Estates.

Matt Fitzpatrick, who won last year’s DP World Tour Championship, expressed concerns about heading to the region in a press conference ahead of the BMW PGA Championship.

“Being completely honest, as things stand right now,I would say I’m not that comfortable,” Fitzpatrick said. “No, I wouldn’t be that comfortable. A few things have obviously changed for me, perspective and stuff. I’ve had a child in August, and that obviously kind of changes things a bit more.

“Obviously I know the tour has been on this for a long time. It’s obviously frustrating that the decision hasn’t been made so you can plan what’s going on. But I understand there’s obviously a lot of moving parts to that, and it’s obviously difficult to make these decisions. … As things stand right now, I wouldn’t necessarily be too keen on going.”

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It’s Presidents Cup week

For the 16th time, the Ryder Cup’s little brother — the Presidents Cup — will take place, with the American and International sides competing at Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago.

The event mirrors the Ryder Cup in that it has a match-play format, there are 12 players on each side and there are four-ball, foursomes and singles competitions.

The differences: 30 points instead of only 28 at the Ryder Cup. And four days of competition instead of three.

The U.S. leads 13-1-1 and it has posted 10 straight victories in the series since a tie occurring in 2003 in South Africa. The Americans suffered their only defeat in 1998 in Australia, when Tiger Woods was a Presidents Cup rookie.

On Thursday, there will be five four-ball matches starting at 12:35 p.m. ET. Friday will have five foursomes (alternate shot) matches beginning at 2:05 p.m. ET. Golf Channel has coverage both days.

Saturday morning sees four four-ball matches starting at 8 a.m. ET on Golf Channel followed by four foursomes matches on NBC beginning at 2:15 p.m. ET.

On Sunday, the 12 singles matches will be on NBC starting at noon ET.

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Brendan Valdes made his last official start at the RSM Classic last November (Mike Mulholland/Getty Images)

The golf year for Brendan Valdes is only beginning now, having previously stopped before it could get started. The former star at Auburn who was about to begin his first full season on the Korn Ferry Tour in January never even got to the first tee.

An illness that started as a cold and then was believed to be bronchitis turned out to be much more serious than that. A mass was discovered in his chest and Valdes — just 23 and otherwise always healthy — was diagnosed with primary mediastinal lymphoma, a fast-growing type of non-Hodgkin cancer that starts in the chest area behind the breastbone from abnormal immune cells.

“We were trying to get everything dialed in for this year, getting flights, getting hotels, getting ready for the 2026 season,” Valdes said in a phone interview in advance of this week’s Biltmore Championship Asheville. “I went to the hospital and they found a nine-centimeter tumor. And all the golf stuff goes right out the window.

“It was definitely surprising. I’ve always kept myself in pretty decent shape and tried to stay healthy. It was definitely a bit of a shock.”

Also in today’s DD …

• DPWT 2027 schedule doesn’t leave much room for LIV to avoid conflicts

• WTGL will pack its inaugural season into tight Nov. 8-Dec. 23 window

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Valdes gave credit to his fiancée, Rachel Gourley, who insisted he get to the emergency room on New Year’s Day in Orlando after he had been coughing up blood.

A biopsy led to the diagnosis. From the middle of January until mid-June, Valdes endured chemotherapy treatments, six rounds that saw him have one week on the medication and then two weeks off.

“It was a continuous drip for one week,” he said. “I definitely wasn’t feeling my best. During the week I’m hooked up and I can’t do anything. Next four or five days, I don’t think I left the house. Then I’d started to feel decent enough to where I go out and maybe go for 10-mintue walk for four days.

“And then the five days before I went back in I started feeling okay, enough to work on some putting. Or go to a chipping green for 20-30 minutes. And then after that I’d be too tired to do much of anything else.”

Given all that, it is somewhat remarkable that Valdes is playing this week. He received a sponsor exemption to play in the new PGA Tour event in North Carolina that is kicking off what is called the FedEx Fall. It is a series of eight events through the RSM Classic in November that will help players achieve status — or lose it — for 2027.

Valdes isn’t necessary concerned about that. He’s happy to be back playing again and has a full medical exemption for the 2027 season on the Korn Ferry Tour.

A three-time all-American at Auburn who along with Jackson Koivun helped the Tigers win the 2024 NCAA title, Valdes finished second behind David Ford in the 2025 PGA Tour University class and competed in 11 Korn Ferry events, making four cuts.

He also played in three PGA Tour events in 2025, making the cut in all of them including a tie for 20th at the 3M Open.

This year, he didn’t begin hitting full golf shots until late June and needed time to work on his stamina. But when he played his first round of golf — using a cart — at Isleworth in Orlando, he shot 69.

He shot a 65 at a course near his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and slowly began to regain some confidence with an eye toward competing again.

“Luckily, the golf game didn’t leave me,” Valdes said. “I will say I was wiped out after

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Tiger Woods helped forge the new competitive model with CEO Brian Rolapp. (Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

Tiger Woods hit golf balls on Tuesday at Liberty National in New Jersey as part of a clinic for his foundation. It was the first public instance of him swinging a golf club since his legal troubles in March led to a rehab stint and recently having his driver’s license suspended.

Woods, 50, has not played an official golf tournament in more than two years amid his various physical issues and the recent off-course problems. But the sense is that he would always try to play again, even if in limited appearances.

But his path to the Championship Series in 2028 — a new competitive model that he helped create — won’t be a smooth one. At least not by the written letter of the eligibility requirements at this point.

Woods, who serves on the Future Competition Committee that put together the PGA Tour’s new two-tiered model that will launch in 2028, would need to take a one-time career money list exemption to be able to compete on the upper level circuit that year. And he’d need to play 15 events in 2027 to be eligible to do that.

Also in today’s DD …

• How will the DP World Tour fit into PGA Tour’s new competitive model?

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That latter stipulation can probably be circumvented by a medical exemption. But what about beyond 2028? Woods would need to qualify by virtue of winning a tournament or finishing among the top 90 points earners, neither of which is going to be easy playing what is expected to be a limited schedule, if at all.

The Tour officially unveiled its eligibility criteria on Tuesday for the Championship and Challenger Series. CEO Brian Rolapp, chief competitions officer Tyler Dennis and senior vice president Kirsten Burgess all took part in a media conference call announcing it.

For now, the PGA Tour has not put forth a special carve-out for Woods — as is the case now for signature events — but didn’t exactly shut the door on the idea.

“What we announced is how that’s going to work, generally speaking,” Dennis said. “You saw the general parameters. There’s still work to do on that to finalize the exact calculations and everything. Obviously, Tiger would be part of that.”

Rolapp added that Woods’ role as chairman of the committee was such that he was acting in terms of the overall competitive goals of the new system. Rolapp and the Tour have leaned into a “meritocracy” narrative that was borne out by the various qualification criteria.

“There wasn’t once about ‘do we need to change rules for Tiger?’” Rolapp said. “His focus had been on trying to make the PGA Tour live way past any of us, so that was clearly his orientation as well as the rest of the committee.”

It is hard to envision Woods advocating for himself in this instance. Still, we’re talking about a 15-time major winner who is tied for the all-time lead in PGA Tour victories with 82. That legacy makes Tiger pretty much able to play any event he wants to now.

In 2024, the PGA Tour implemented a rule specifically for Woods which allows him to compete in any signature event with the stipulation that a player has to have won 80 times on the PGA Tour. Only the late Sam Snead shares that 80-win distinction with

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