In Golf's Battle of U.S. vs. the World, the Presidents Cup Fights for Relevancy

This week the Presidents Cup will be staged for the 15th time, and it's still looking to stand out in a crowded sports calendar. Its lopsided history hasn't helped.

Hideki Matsuyama and Scottie Scheffler will lead their teams at this year's Presidents Cup. / Photo Illustration by Dan Larkin; Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images (Matsuyama); John Byrum/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images (Scheffler)

MONTREAL — The journey is now 30 years and counting. The Presidents Cup has ventured a long way since those early days when there was considerable consternation over whether such an event was even sustainable, especially in the shadow of the more popular and hugely successful Ryder Cup.

To be played for the 15th time this week when the event begins Thursday at Royal Montreal, it has overcome some dubious moments, perhaps none more telling than when a majority of the media contingent left Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia on the eve of the final day of a close match in 1996 to chase a 20-year-old kid named Tiger Woods, who had taken the 54-hole lead at the Quad Cities Open.

Two years later, when the tournament was to venture outside of the United States for the first time and head to Australia, Hall of Famer and former U.S. Ryder Cup player and captain Lanny Wadkins quipped that he found it silly that a bunch of Americans were traveling “halfway around the world just to play a bunch of guys from Orlando.”

Perhaps that indifference rubbed off on the American side, which was drubbed at Royal Melbourne 20½ to 11½.

It remains the only U.S. defeat in what has turned into a lopsided competition, one that has seen the Americans win nine in a row and lead to a simple question: Do you care?

A scene all too common at the Presidents Cup (including here in 2022) a U.S. team with much to celebrate. / Jim Dedmon/Imagn Images

The PGA Tour regular season ended three weeks ago, the NFL and college football are prevalent, major league baseball is at the end of its regular season.

Canadian golf fans will no doubt be out in full force this week with the country’s only major champion, Mike Weir, captaining the International side that looks to end the baffling run of disappointment that stretches all the way back to that December competition in Australia 26 years ago.

But unless the Americans finally lose ...

“The difference has been it hasn’t been competitive,” said Australia’s Adam Scott, 44, who has played in every Presidents Cup since 2003. “That’s been very harsh on our team I have to say. There have been some close calls for our team going back to ’05, ‘03, ‘15. There’s a bit of a gap. Even in Melbourne (in 2019) we were leading going into the last round.

“I’m being very harsh, but when it comes down to what’s on paper we’ve lost a lot. That’s why it hasn’t had the spark. Not quite the sparks flying like the Ryder Cup. That’s very appealing to watch I think. That’s probably the difference … I’m pretty hopeful we’re putting together a really formidable team this year.”

It is somewhat hard to fathom that Scott, the 2013 Masters champion, will be playing in his 11th Presidents Cup for the International side and has never won. He was part of the 2003 team that played to a riveting tie in South Africa, where Woods and Ernie Els actually played three holes of a sudden-death playoff to try and determine a winner before captains Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player agreed to share the Cup.

Since then, it’s been nine consecutive victories for the Americans, including a couple of blowouts that made it difficult for the event to gain any traction.

Scott has played on 10 losing International Presidents Cup squads. / Peter Casey/Imagn Images

In terms of popularity and prestige, the Presidents Cup lags behind the high-profile event it is modeled after, due mostly to its lack of history. The Ryder Cup has 80-plus years of tradition going for it, a healthy amount of “bad blood” between the participants and an intensity born out of immense pride from the European Union, which has not lost a “home game” since 1993 and sent the Americans reeling again last year in Rome.

The Presidents Cup may never match the Ryder Cup, but it has nonetheless emerged as an excellent international golf event that was born out of the desire three decades ago to offer an opportunity for players outside of the United States and Europe to have a Ryder Cup-like experience.

Players of that time period such as Greg Norman and Nick Price and Ernie Els were on the outside looking in. And since the PGA Tour had no stake in the Ryder Cup (aside from the seven-figure check it gets from the PGA of America for TV rights), it made some sense to establish something similar.

The Presidents Cup does have some features that differentiate it from the Ryder Cup, a few of which might be more embraced.

Instead of two sessions with eight matches crammed into each of the first two days at the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup plays out over four days, starting with five matches on Thursday and Friday.

The Presidents Cup also allows the captains to more or less set up intriguing matchups, if they desire.

While at the Ryder Cup, the pairings are made without knowledge of the other side’s order or groups, the Presidents Cup sees the captains alternate putting players out. It’s how you had Weir take on Woods in Sunday singles at the 2007 at Royal Montreal, with Weir coming out on top despite the overall team loss.

It also resulted in Norman and Woods going to head to head in 1998 at Royal Melbourne, perhaps the highlight of the final day, as Woods prevailed over Norman in his homeland.

Those aspects, however, have not made up for the lopsided results.

Norman and Woods waged a memorable final-day singles match in 1998. / Jack Atley /Allsport

One factor that can’t be dismissed is the PGA Tour having full reign over the Presidents Cup. At the Ryder Cup, there has always been a sense that the Europeans are playing for their tour (hence the reason membership is required) and the importance it plays in the now-DP World Tour’s overall well-being.

The event is a massive revenue source for the DP World Tour, especially when the matches are played in Europe, all but subsidizing the Tour in years in which there is no Ryder Cup.

There is not that same level of thirst at the Presidents Cup, although it’s not for a lack of trying on the International side, which has sought some autonomy from the Tour and slowly received some concessions.

One was five years ago in Australia when Els, as captain, was given the ability to brand the Presidents Cup a bit differently with the side’s only logo and shield. The idea was to present the players a bit something more to play for, an identity that can’t be duplicated like in Europe or the United States.

Another was reducing the total points from what once was 34 down to 30. The Internationals would prefer to it be 28—just like the Ryder Cup—because it remains difficult to compete with the American depth.

“I think in Melbourne was really the first time we really had a come crowd advantage,” Scott said. “The creation of our shield and putting that out there was also important. We’ve identified something. It’s not just a group of guys. I think that’s been helpful. I played the Canadian Open this year (in May) and I was blown away with the support and I feel like there’s going to be strong support for our team.”

There also needed to be strong support within it. Jason Day, who played in his first Presidents Cup in 2011, admitted that he was not always fully invested. It’s an individual sport, he said. The team aspect didn’t move him much.

Day, who skipped the 2016 Olympics when he was the No. 1-ranked player in the world, had a similar change of views about that competition, where he tied for ninth last month in Paris.

“You talk to the Europeans, how much they want to beat the Americans, and there is that rivalry there, you can tell, and you can hear it when they talk about it,” Day said of the Ryder Cup. “That's America versus Europe, as well. I feel like the way the guys look at it, I think that's shifted here. I think they're very driven and passionate about this tournament now. Like I'm looking at Ben (An) and Tom (Kim) now, like there's guys that—like the young guys all the way to the top guys.

“When you have experience like Adam Scott, you hear them talk, and I think this is his 11th one, so he's been on the losing end of those for quite a long time. You can hear how much he wants to win one. I think it'll only take one. If we can get one, I think that'll change the tide a little bit.”

Day said he wasn't always fully invested in the Presidents Cup but has recently changed his opinion. / Kyle Terada/Imagn Images

Having three Canadians—MacKenzie Hughes, Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith—on the home side should help. The team also consists of four players from South Korea (An, Tom Kim, Si Woo Kim and Sungjae Im), Hideki Matsuyama from Japan, Christiaan Bezuidenhout from South Africa. Aussies Scott and Day are joined by Min Woo Lee.

“I think we have a better system in place,” Scott said. “Looking at the team this year, I think I can be leader on the course as much as around the room. Hideki has to be that guy, too. This is his sixth Presidents Cup. As much as I know Hideki, it’s up for me to make him understand that if he puts in a performance with me this year, that’s going to fire everyone up. I think that load can be shared. I don’t think it’s all resting on my shoulders.”

Is interesting to note that since the Presidents Cup began in 1994, the U.S. has dominated an International side of great players 12–1–1 while going just 4–10 against Europe in the Ryder Cup.

Perhaps nothing points out this disparity more clearly than U.S. captain Jim Furyk’s own playing record. In the Presidents Cup, Furyk, 54, went 20–10–3 in seven appearances. He went 10–20–4 in nine Ryder Cups, playing on just two winning teams.

He also caught considerable heat after captaining the losing U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2018, as did Zach Johnson last year, which shows how much passion there is for the event.

So far, not too many International captains have been called out for their team’s defeats. And even Nicklaus—the only U.S. captain to lose a Presidents Cup and the first U.S. captain to lose on home soil at the 1987 Ryder Cup—escaped backlash.

“I think the guys put a lot of pressure on themselves (at the Ryder Cup),” Furyk said. “They try a little too hard. They push in the Ryder Cup. They want to prove everyone wrong, and sometimes maybe when you try too hard, you kind of get in your own way, if that makes sense.

“What used to always disappoint me in our era when we were accused as Americans—it was easy to say we just didn't care. I saw grown men crying in the locker room after some of those events. That always frustrated me, but there's not much you can do about it. I think in this event we play a little bit more loose, we play a little more free.”

Interest in the Ryder Cup didn’t really spike until the U.S. began losing. In 1983, when Nicklaus captained the team at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., it was the first time the event was televised in the United States on national television—and it was on tape delay.

Two years later, the Europeans won for the first time since Great Britain & Ireland won the event in 1957. They had tied in 1969. From there, Europe won again in 1987, tied in 1989 and went on a run that has twice seen them put together three-match winning streaks over the past 30 years.

And the Ryder Cup is now one of the biggest—if not the biggest—events in the game.

The Presidents Cup clamors for anything near that type of intensity and interest.

Perhaps it will take the Americans losing to put the event on that path.