2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah: Internationals Lead 7-3 as the U.S. Foursomes Problem Stays Unsolved

MEDINAH, September 26, 2026 — On Saturday morning, the first man to the first tee at Medinah Country Club for the opening Four-ball match of day three was Jackson Koivun. The stands behind him were full, the applause was there, the names were being called, but the noise carried no weight. For anyone sitting in the media area of a team event, it is an easy signal to read: the home crowd is waiting for a reason to believe rather than starting from belief.

Three hours earlier, the scoreboard at the practice ground still showed 7-3 to the Internationals. No shot was struck in that window, yet the state of Medinah had changed. A U.S. team trailing by three points at home no longer plays instinctive golf; it plays corrective golf. That is a different psychology altogether, and it shows up most clearly in how the pairings are built.

Context: a scoreline that touches memory

The Internationals lead 7-3 after two sessions. It is their largest margin through two sessions since 2026 — the only year this team has ever lifted the cup. One historical detail makes it heavier: in the most recent Presidents Cup, the United States was also swept in the Foursomes session and still rescued the week when the match stood at 5-5. This time that cushion is gone. Three points down, the Americans must win sessions rather than hope the opponent drops them.

The event runs across three formats: Four-ball (best ball, each player uses his own ball and the lower score of the pair counts), Foursomes (alternate shot, two players share one ball and alternate strokes), and singles. Of the three, Foursomes is where individual quality is most diluted. A poor strike does not simply cost one stroke from the man who made it; it pushes his partner into a recovery position, from a worse lie, under more pressure, and usually from rough or an unwelcome distance.

Medinah is a long parkland course on bentgrass that demands high-quality ball-striking and rewards precise approaches. On paper, that profile suits the United States more than an International squad with several players unfamiliar with American September conditions. Which makes the U.S. collapse in exactly the format that demands mutual understanding harder still to explain through course fit.

Another detail matters. According to the PGA Tour's own in-house live newsletter from Medinah, the Internationals quieted the Chicago crowds. For an event staged on American soil, neutralising home advantage to that degree is rare. It suggests the Internationals are not winning on a wave of inspiration but on a plan built to slow the rhythm of the matches and cut off the energy supply from the stands.

The core: 24 out of 30, and a pattern luck cannot explain

The anchor of this entire story is a statistic the PGA Tour newsletter itself supplies: the United States has lost 24 of a possible 30 Foursomes points across recent Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups. An 80 percent failure rate in a format that appears in every edition is a level any analyst has to stop at.

The U.S. Foursomes problem is structural, and its nature lies in pairing chemistry rather than in the ball-striking quality of individuals.

The clearest evidence is not the 24-of-30 rate but Scottie Scheffler's record: 1-8 in Foursomes. In any other format, a world No. 1 with that win-loss profile would be treated as a statistical paradox. In Foursomes, it is consistent enough to be a pattern. The gap between Scheffler's individual quality and his format record points to one thing: the problem is not the ability to hit the shot, it is the sequencing of the shots.

Foursomes does not punish good players. It punishes pairs who sequence badly. When one player has a tendency to leave the ball where his partner must play a recovery, the pair loses its structure. When both want to lead and neither accepts a stabilising role, alternate shot becomes two disconnected decision chains instead of one continuous strategy. Scheffler is the archetype of a player who controls the ball from tee to green; pair him with someone of the same instinct and the two will compete for the leading role from the very first drive.

Justin Thomas is the other face of the same problem. He arrived at this Presidents Cup with an 11-0-2 team-format record, one of the cleanest profiles in U.S. team golf. On Thursday he was the team's best statistical performer. On Friday he posted the worst round in the field and lost his first-ever team match in Presidents Cup play. It is a textbook illustration of week-to-week variance at the elite level, and a warning about a common pairing error: using Thursday's form as the basis for Friday's partnership.

According to the newsletter, Thomas and Cameron Young were put together after both played well in Thursday's Four-ball. A pairing formed in reaction to a result is not a tested pairing. In Foursomes, the distance between a "natural pair" and a "battle-tested pair" is wide: you need to know where your partner will leave the ball when it tightens, not how many birdies he made yesterday.

Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup, a combined 0-3, are the clearest cold-form signal on the U.S. side, and they create a notable tension in the Saturday morning match projections: in some matches, form logic and matchup logic point in opposite directions.

One more point on roster construction. Of the U.S. pairings, only Scheffler/Burns and Cantlay/Schauffele have history together. The other three Foursomes teams were new combinations. That points to a selection and chemistry problem rather than a talent problem. The United States does not lack good players; it lacks partnerships built deliberately, early, and given enough time to form shared reflexes.

One small but diagnostic detail: Nick Taylor of the Internationals was credited with the approach at the 18th, one of the week's most memorable moments on the course. In Foursomes and Four-ball, such moments usually belong to a pair in which one man accepts a safe shot to open the door for his partner to make the decisive one. That is precisely what the United States has not managed systematically.

Based on my experience reviewing hundreds of team-format matches on tape over eleven years of analysis, I always check one thing before believing a format trend: how many sessions produced it. One swept session is an accident. Two in a row is a signal. Three is a pattern. The PGA Tour newsletter sets out that same rule in its own analysis, and 24 of 30 sits on the far side of the pattern threshold, and has for a long time.

The contrarian angle: when the easiest explanation is the wrong one

The explanation coming out of the U.S. camp centres on putting. Brandt Snedeker said that some days the ball just does not want to go in, and that he cannot put his finger on exactly where the problem is. Psychologically, that is an understandable reaction from a losing team. Analytically, it is the weakest explanation available.

Putting is the most volatile category in the entire Strokes Gained system. It swings round to round, day to day, green to green. Using such a short-horizon variable to explain a pattern spanning multiple years and multiple events is a logical leap that does not hold. If the United States were simply having a bad putting week, it would not have lost 24 of 30 Foursomes points across many editions, under several captains, with different groups of players.

Here is the more important part. The putting explanation is not merely technically wrong; it is harmful. If the United States continues to treat Foursomes defeats as a matter of putts not dropping, it will never fix what actually needs fixing — how pairings are constructed and how decisions are sequenced inside each alternate-shot hole. Every crisis in team sport begins with an indicator that gets ignored because it does not match the story the insiders want to tell.

There is another possibility the newsletter does not raise but the data hints at: the United States may be quietly conceding the Foursomes session as a loss leader and betting on Four-ball and singles. That is defensible in theory, but it places the entire Presidents Cup on a very high-variance wager. You cannot give away one format and expect to claw back three points across the other two without a very specific reason.

On the other side, the Internationals' risk is the mirror image. They lead 7-3, and the scoreline recalls 2026 exactly — the only edition they have won. But converting only once in the event's entire history is a warning, not a comfort. A lead is not a result. The Internationals have been in this position before and have let it go.

Jackson Koivun deserves a note. Sending the least experienced player in the squad out to open the most important session of the day is a two-sided decision. In development terms, it is how you harden a talent for future Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup cycles, and the U.S. captain may be deliberately paying a short-term price for a long-term return. In competitive terms, it puts a young player in the highest-variance slot of the morning. Talent does not appear out of nothing; it waits for a gaze calm enough to see it.

At a team event where every point counts, however, calm observation and aggressive selection do not always travel together. Koivun walked out on Saturday morning with a silent crowd behind him — a rookie carrying the job of opening a comeback, while the men with the best team records were in the position of having to prove themselves.

What to watch: Saturday afternoon Foursomes is a minefield

After the morning Four-ball session, the captains will confirm the afternoon Foursomes pairings. That is the hinge of the entire Presidents Cup. The United States is in a position where it must confront the very format it is worst at, while the pressure to close the gap remains. The Internationals return to the arena they just controlled completely.

The cup does not measure strength; it measures a group's capacity to endure chaos. At Medinah, that chaos has a very specific shape: an alternate-shot format where one side has lost 24 of its last 30 points, and a side that just swept that same format in the most recent session.

Three signals matter over the next 24 hours. First, the result of Saturday afternoon's Foursomes session — a U.S. win there flips the "formula" story immediately. Second, whether Justin Thomas regains form in the morning match, since he is the team's sharpest volatility signal. Third, whether the Internationals can hold their margin through the remaining sessions, the part of the event where they have failed most often in their history.

Psychologically, the pressure sits with the team in front. A U.S. side playing at home, three points down, with a Foursomes record that has been poor for years, does not have room to experiment. It needs a clean session, not a speculative one.

The business angle: the value of a genuine fight

From an operator's viewpoint, what Medinah gains is not the scoreline. Medinah Country Club is already a top-tier golf brand. Hosting a Presidents Cup that is genuinely tense, one that could run to the final singles matches, gives the venue a different kind of value: the value of a place where a historic event happened. That value does not sit on a club's balance sheet, but it shows up in tee-time pricing, in event-hosting contracts, and in sponsorship negotiations for later editions.

At the midstream level is the part the newsletter does not mention but which needs to be read between the lines. A one-sided Presidents Cup is hard to sell to sponsors and broadcasters after the opening session. A Presidents Cup in which the Internationals lead 7-3, silence Chicago, and force a U.S. comeback is a broadcast product that works. In an era when golf is fragmented across competing tour systems, the value of a genuinely competitive team contest is a strategic asset, not just an event.

Jackson Koivun's appearance in the opening match is also a talent-pipeline signal. Putting a young player on a global team stage generates a different value chain: personal brand recognition, earlier access to sponsorship deals, and a development story the tour system can use to promote the amateur-to-professional pathway. If Koivun plays well in the remaining sessions, that effect will be amplified for months.

It is also why recent Presidents Cups are increasingly run as a media product rather than just a tournament. When the most compelling thing at a team event is a question about one specific format — whether the Internationals have found a Foursomes formula, and whether the United States has lost the ability to play it — what is being sold is an argument, not just golf.

Final read

After two sessions, the Internationals lead 7-3 and control the format they play best. The United States faces a pattern that has now run for multiple editions: 24 of 30 Foursomes points lost, a Scheffler who has won just one of nine Foursomes matches, and a previously perfect team record that now carries its first scar.

A great champion is not someone who never falls, but someone who knows precisely when he is about to fall and prepares a controlled landing. The question hanging over Medinah is not whether the United States can turn the scoreline around. The question is whether it is looking at the thing that has brought it down for years, or still looking at the putts that did not drop — and waiting for a week when the ball finally wants to go in.