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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
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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.”
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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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.
