Greetings!
Is the Presidents Cup actually going to be … interesting this year?
The International team has been down a combined 9-1 after the last two Thursdays at this event so trailing 3-2 might feel like they’re leading. It’s their best first day since 2019 when they actually led 4-1 after Thursday, and the U.S. had to win singles 8-4 to avoid its first loss in this event this century.
Let’s get to what happened on Thursday and what’s in store for Friday’s round.
Name drops today: Anderson Varejao, AI (the basketball player, not the machine learning experience), Eliud Kipchoge, Noah Lyles, Brad Pitt, Duff Foreman, K.H. Lee and Jon Rahm.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Cobra.
According to Wyndham Clark, crowds at Medinah lacked juice on Thursday.
The noise “just kind of dissipated as the day went on,” said U.S. captain, Brandt Snedeker. It was quiet all over the golf course, which means you could probably hear some sounds we love to hear.
Like Si Woo Kim flushing his Cobra OPTM LS Titanium fairway wood to the tune of a 3 and 2 victory over Patrick Cantlay and Chris Gotterup.
Or Hideki hitting his Cobra King RadSpeed Tour 5-wood (which Jason tells me is club is based on the the legendary Cobra Baffler from 1975) and beating Cam Young and Xander Schauffele 3 and 1 in their match on Day 1.
I’m not going to look up whether anyone else in the P Cup is using a one-off Cobra club like these two. Instead, I’m going to choose to believe that Cobra was the only undefeated entity on Thursday, going 2-0 in its matches — both against the U.S. side.
May it hold up over the next three days, and may you also also take a gander at that fairway wood Si Woo was gaming. So good you’re gonna be doing the night night in your own matches the rest of this fall.
And now, onto the news.
1. Early on, I though the U.S. looked extremely comfortable, especially compared to early on at the last two Ryder Cups. This is not surprising. The Presidents Cup is a much less competitive environment than the Ryder Cup.
But the difference between the two is a bit shocking.
There are still nerves in the Prez Cup because you don’t want to be the first time since 1998 to lose. You don’t want to go full Allen Iverson and 2004 Dream Team, which lost to Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina en route to a bronze medal. Its third, fourth and fifth losses in Olympics history.
On the flip side, the U.S. should still be relatively confident in the Ryder Cup. They get guys like Bernd Wiesberger and Rasmus Højgaard on the back end of those teams.
And yet, they could not look more different in their overall disposition at these two events.
2. I thought this from the Data Golf live blog on Thursday summed that up quite well.
At last year’s Ryder Cup, the Europeans putted the lights out in the opening session to jump ahead 3–1, gaining almost 10 strokes over the US on the greens. So far today the US has flipped the script, already 8 strokes better than the Internationals on the greens.
Data Golf
That ended at just a 3.75 SG advantage, but it is emblematic of the entire thing. Europe just makes more putts! But ask yourself why. When is it difficult to make putts? When you’re uncomfortable. When is it easier to make putts? When you’re comfortable.
That is my entire point here.
One probably-too-deep theory I have is that the Presidents Cup feels more like a regular PGA Tour event than the Ryder Cup does because … the PGA Tour runs the Presidents Cup. Same media people they see at Memorial or Quail Hollow. Same officials. Same all of it. The advantage Europe always has on the Ryder Cup side is that it has the same folks running things as it does week to week on the DP World Tour.
And while I only halfheartedly believe this theory, it’s still interesting to consider because — as with all team events — the sample size is so small that almost anything could be the reason a team struggles or doesn’t.
3. I enjoyed the Scottie match on Thursday even if the idea that the broadcast put forth that this match was “one of those classics” did not exactly come to fruition. Regardless, I felt invested in it. Which is not always the case when it comes to the Presidents Cup.
I love golf that makes us even a little bit nervous, and for some reason I felt nervous watching the last 4-5 holes in this match. Some of the reason is probably because Scottie has a wide variance (maybe the widest variance of anyone) when it comes to what he has to gain and what he has to lose this week. I definitely sensed and felt that. Surely he does, too.
But some of it was probably because the International team had a real chance to win Day 1 and put just a sliver of doubt into the U.S. side going into Friday’s matches. That is thrilling and consequential, and thrilling and consequential almost always lead to nervousness, even from afar.
4. (As a reminder — and something I should probably say more often — we are dissecting tiny, tiny sample sizes here, which is part of the fun but also sometimes slightly unfair to players on some level).
Another reason I was probably feeling this match has to do with Scottie and his ongoing legacy at team events. In that first match out, he won the first hole and didn’t win another. He birdied two of the first three and then didn’t make another.
Though he hit the ball decently and gained strokes from tee to green, Scottie was — all things considered — not very good on Thursday relative to how good he actually is, especially down the stretch.
Burns was a bit better and saved them with two birdies on the back that flipped their match and kept the U.S. from being down 3-2 (which they should have been).
Why should they have been down 3-2? Well, it took an almost historically bad putting performance from Sungjae and Min Woo, who lost nearly four shots on the greens. If they make anything, that match is a tie or a loss for the U.S.
This isn’t exactly novel, but this tweet got me thinking about how Scottie and Tiger play golf so similarly and how much both have struggled relative to their overall status at these team events.
Scottie is a marathon runner. He grinds your soul down, doesn’t make mistakes, manages the golf course incredibly well and mentally punishes you over and over again. But he needs 72 holes for this to play out. And I’m convinced if tournaments were 90 or 108 holes, he would have 40 wins and 10 majors by now.
Match play is different. The decisions are different. The shots are not the same ones you would hit in regular tournament. Different lines. Different choices.
In one sense, Eliud Kipchoge is the fastest runner in the world. However, if he faced Noah Lyles in the 200, he would get destroyed. It would be difficult to watch.
That’s obviously an extreme example, but I think it gets at the idea of how different team match play is compared to a 72-hole stroke play event.
5. Shout out to @golframble for this next stat. Scottie is 1-7-0 in foursomes play at Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups, which is what we’ll see today.
Here are his results.
Si Woo/Cam Davis 2UP over Scheffler/Burns
Tom Kim/K.H. Lee 2 and 1 over Scheffler/Burns
Rahm/Hatton 4 and 3 over Scheffler/Burns
Ludvig/Hovland 9 and 7 over Scheffler/Koepka
Si Woo/Ben An 1UP over Scheffler/Henley
Scheffler/Henley 3 and 2 over Hideki/Sungjae
Ludvig/Fitz 5 and 3 over Scheffler/Henley
Bob Mac/Hovland 1UP over Scheffler/Henley
This should just not be the case. And unless Scottie absolutely runs the table or comes close to running the table this week, his team event play is for sure going to be a talking point at Adare Manor next September.
As Paul Hodowanic pointed out to me on the podcast this week, Scottie hates it when narratives follow him around and hates how much he gets dissected. But it’s impossible to ignore 1-7-0 in foursomes and now 7-11-4 overall (even with the win on Thursday).
A chance to erase all that over the next three days by completely dominating, but otherwise it’s going to persist.
6. Imagine not taking JT for these events.
LeBron did less work dragging Eric Snow and Anderson Varejao to the 2007 finals than JT did carrying Koivun around the course on Thursday.
Koivun was the best putter in the field on Day 1, and he walked in a couple that had me feeling very Spiethy things. But JT made four birdies on his own ball, led the field in total strokes gained and never let a listless Conners/Echavarria team get in the mix.
Nobody wants to hear it, but boys clubs win cups.
7. This is a small thing, but Golf Channel, we cannot be running Rugiet commercials during a tournament like this. As someone who loves watching games and events with his kids, these commercials are insane to try and manage during a golf tournament in the middle of the day.
I get it, money is tight. We’re all in that boat together, but I’d rather you hire Duff Foreman’s name, image and likeness than continue running those commercials.
Be better.
8. Hayden and I were texting about this, but the 12th hole is sick, and as was pointed out on the broadcast, is so, so money for match play.
You have the entire planet to the left, but if you go left, you’re probably going to make four unless you lay up way back to give yourself an angle.
Then the closer and closer you move your line to the left side of the green or even at the pin, the easier it is to make three. But also the easier it becomes to hit it in the penalty area or the water and make five. Tons of decisions and a tricky shot to hit.
Tremendous golf hole.
9. I appreciated this from Wyndham, although I also thought it was pretty hilarious coming from him: You New Yorkers are going to boo and jeer me all weekend, fine, I’m going to take it out on everyone from … Chicago.
As was pointed out by many people, this will improve over the weekend. Thursday is a difficult day for a rowdy crowd at an event like this one.
• I got this text on Thursday evening: The reason Derrick Rose was on the first tee is because he owns a flower shop and delivered the floral arrangement. Sure.
• The score bug highlighting the U.S. in red and the International team in gold but also boxing the match in the same gold color is crazy to me (see below). Just box it in any color other than red or gold.
• Name a funnier duo.
• Xander and Cantlay struggling and both losing their matches is not something I saw coming. A combined 20-8-0 going into Thursday’s four ball.
• Terry Gannon is so good. We do a lot of complaining about Golf Channel and NBC, but he is absolutely tremendous at his job. A professional.
• It felt like every time they cut to Scottie and Burns, they were eating something. Felt like Brad Pitt in Oceans 11.
• Also, I don’t think I realized that Scottie and Burns were Nos. 1-2 in the Data Golf rankings until yesterday. Roommates on the road, legit close friends, partners at these cups. And Nos. 1-2 in the world. That’s pretty wild.
• Amazing and underrated tweet here.
• The U.S. is up 98.5 to 58.5 all time in foursomes (even with a 5-0 loss on Day 2 in 2024). That’s likely because you can’t hide in foursomes, and the International team has a lot of guys they would probably like to hide.
I’m rooting for a big International win on Friday because I want to see things get tense for the U.S. on Saturday and Sunday like they did in 2019 at Melbourne. Golf that makes you nervous is the best kind of golf, and we very rarely get it at this event.
Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain a hand-made, algorithm-free establishment that specializes in theorizing about exhibition events that are played once every two years.
Greetings!
Is the Presidents Cup actually going to be … interesting this year?
The International team has been down a combined 9-1 after the last two Thursdays at this event so trailing 3-2 might feel like they’re leading. It’s their best first day since 2019 when they actually led 4-1 after Thursday, and the U.S. had to win singles 8-4 to avoid its first loss in this event this century.
Let’s get to what happened on Thursday and what’s in store for Friday’s round.
Name drops today: Anderson Varejao, AI (the basketball player, not the machine learning experience), Eliud Kipchoge, Noah Lyles, Brad Pitt, Duff Foreman, K.H. Lee and Jon Rahm.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Cobra.
According to Wyndham Clark, crowds at Medinah lacked juice on Thursday.
The noise “just kind of dissipated as the day went on,” said U.S. captain, Brandt Snedeker. It was quiet all over the golf course, which means you could probably hear some sounds we love to hear.
Like Si Woo Kim flushing his Cobra OPTM LS Titanium fairway wood to the tune of a 3 and 2 victory over Patrick Cantlay and Chris Gotterup.
Or Hideki hitting his Cobra King RadSpeed Tour 5-wood (which Jason tells me is club is based on the the legendary Cobra Baffler from 1975) and beating Cam Young and Xander Schauffele 3 and 1 in their match on Day 1.
I’m not going to look up whether anyone else in the P Cup is using a one-off Cobra club like these two. Instead, I’m going to choose to believe that Cobra was the only undefeated entity on Thursday, going 2-0 in its matches — both against the U.S. side.
May it hold up over the next three days, and may you also also take a gander at that fairway wood Si Woo was gaming. So good you’re gonna be doing the night night in your own matches the rest of this fall.
And now, onto the news.
1. Early on, I though the U.S. looked extremely comfortable, especially compared to early on at the last two Ryder Cups. This is not surprising. The Presidents Cup is a much less competitive environment than the Ryder Cup.
But the difference between the two is a bit shocking.
There are still nerves in the Prez Cup because you don’t want to be the first time since 1998 to lose. You don’t want to go full Allen Iverson and 2004 Dream Team, which lost to Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina en route to a bronze medal. Its third, fourth and fifth losses in Olympics history.
On the flip side, the U.S. should still be relatively confident in the Ryder Cup. They get guys like Bernd Wiesberger and Rasmus Højgaard on the back end of those teams.
And yet, they could not look more different in their overall disposition at these two events.
2. I thought this from the Data Golf live blog on Thursday summed that up quite well.
At last year’s Ryder Cup, the Europeans putted the lights out in the opening session to jump ahead 3–1, gaining almost 10 strokes over the US on the greens. So far today the US has flipped the script, already 8 strokes better than the Internationals on the greens.
Data Golf
That ended at just a 3.75 SG advantage, but it is emblematic of the entire thing. Europe just makes more putts! But ask yourself why. When is it difficult to make putts? When you’re uncomfortable. When is it easier to make putts? When you’re comfortable.
That is my entire point here.
One probably-too-deep theory I have is that the Presidents Cup feels more like a regular PGA Tour event than the Ryder Cup does because … the PGA Tour runs the Presidents Cup. Same media people they see at Memorial or Quail Hollow. Same officials. Same all of it. The advantage Europe always has on the Ryder Cup side is that it has the same folks running things as it does week to week on the DP World Tour.
And while I only halfheartedly believe this theory, it’s still interesting to consider because — as with all team events — the sample size is so small that almost anything could be the reason a team struggles or doesn’t.
3. I enjoyed the Scottie match on Thursday even if the idea that the broadcast put forth that this match was “one of those classics” did not exactly come to fruition. Regardless, I felt invested in it. Which is not always the case when it comes to the Presidents Cup.
I love golf that makes us even a little bit nervous, and for some reason I felt nervous watching the last 4-5 holes in this match. Some of the reason is probably because Scottie has a wide variance (maybe the widest variance of anyone) when it comes to what he has to gain and what he has to lose this week. I definitely sensed and felt that. Surely he does, too.
But some of it was probably because the International team had a real chance to win Day 1 and put just a sliver of doubt into the U.S. side going into Friday’s matches. That is thrilling and consequential, and thrilling and consequential almost always lead to nervousness, even from afar.
4. (As a reminder — and something I should probably say more often — we are dissecting tiny, tiny sample sizes here, which is part of the fun but also sometimes slightly unfair to players on some level).
Another reason I was probably feeling this match has to do with Scottie and his ongoing legacy at team events. In that first match out, he won the first hole and didn’t win another. He birdied two of the first three and then didn’t make another.
Though he hit the ball decently and gained strokes from tee to green, Scottie was — all things considered — not very good on Thursday relative to how good he actually is, especially down the stretch.
Burns was a bit better and saved them with two birdies on the back that flipped their match and kept the U.S. from being down 3-2 (which they should have been).
Why should they have been down 3-2? Well, it took an almost historically bad putting performance from Sungjae and Min Woo, who lost nearly four shots on the greens. If they make anything, that match is a tie or a loss for the U.S.
This isn’t exactly novel, but this tweet got me thinking about how Scottie and Tiger play golf so similarly and how much both have struggled relative to their overall status at these team events.
Scottie is a marathon runner. He grinds your soul down, doesn’t make mistakes, manages the golf course incredibly well and mentally punishes you over and over again. But he needs 72 holes for this to play out. And I’m convinced if tournaments were 90 or 108 holes, he would have 40 wins and 10 majors by now.
Match play is different. The decisions are different. The shots are not the same ones you would hit in regular tournament. Different lines. Different choices.
In one sense, Eliud Kipchoge is the fastest runner in the world. However, if he faced Noah Lyles in the 200, he would get destroyed. It would be difficult to watch.
That’s obviously an extreme example, but I think it gets at the idea of how different team match play is compared to a 72-hole stroke play event.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes a JT take, a wild Scottie stat, the best hole from Day 1 and my favorite duo at this event ...
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