Medinah 2026: The Red Wave That Never Came

Medinah, September 26, 2026 — Corey Conners stood over a putt just under two metres on the 18th green, the last match of Saturday. Minutes earlier, his partner Nick Taylor had chipped from the fringe to six feet. Conners arrived this week ranked 155th out of 157 players in putting from 1.2 to 2.4 metres, according to PGA Tour statistics. Medinah fell silent in exactly the way people fall silent when they are waiting for something they dare not believe.

The ball rolled into the centre of the hole. A full point for the International team. A comeback from three down, in the latest match of the day.

That is the image that lingers. But the real story of Saturday was not on the 18th green.

The United States led in all four morning matches. In the afternoon, they led in all four again. By nightfall they had taken exactly one point.

The scoreboard moved from 7-3 to 10.5-7.5. A three-point margin that almost nobody at Medinah had dared imagine before the first ball was struck.

A script written in advance

Since its inception, the Presidents Cup has run on a familiar sequence. The International team digs in over the opening sessions, holds the balance, sometimes edges ahead. Then on Saturday or Sunday the red wave arrives. The Americans win the pivotal matches, take the closing holes, and finish with a result everyone saw coming.

Saturday at Medinah repeated the first half of that sequence perfectly. Four morning matches, U.S. ahead. Four afternoon matches, U.S. ahead. The galleries waited for the wave.

It never came.

It takes three months to build a roster, and three years to understand where it broke.

Matches are decided on the greens, not off the tee

Look at the individual records and the Americans did not play badly. What they lacked was the ability to close.

Wyndham Clark is the clearest case. A 1-3 record looks like a disaster, yet he putted better than anyone at Medinah, on either side. In a format where most matches are settled by putts over the closing nine, the best putter in the field winning only one match is close to nonsensical. Flip two holes and Clark leaves Medinah at 3-1.

On the other side, Justin Thomas moved in the opposite direction. After winning his opening session, he was the worst driver on the team. Medinah is a big ballpark, and his ball kept missing fairways. The Americans needed him in their heaviest matches; he could not answer.

Then there were Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman. They were three up after the 10th. On the 15th, their third shot finished in a bunker. Conners and Taylor took the point, turned the match around, and it ended exactly the way it had unfolded.

For the Internationals, Si Woo Kim was the standout. A 3-1-0 record, level with Tom Kim, but a heavier workload. On Saturday morning, birdies at the 16th and 17th closed out his match before his opponents could respond. By the afternoon, he and Tom Kim lost to the pairing of Cantlay and Schauffele, and for the first time all week he looked short of fuel. That is the price of a captain who keeps sending you back out.

Based on my experience following matches in team match-play formats, a side wins on three things: putting, stamina, and the ability to close a match while leading. On Saturday the Americans had the first two. They lacked the third.

The contrarian view: the mistake was on the bench

Scottie Scheffler did not play in Saturday afternoon's session.

His foursomes record is sketchy, I know. Finding him a genuinely compatible partner has never been smooth. But this is Scottie Scheffler. Sitting in the stands that afternoon, watching him joke with families and support staff while two American pairings let leads slip away in turn, it was painfully clear how wrong it was to leave him out. One of those two pairings included Sam Burns, who should have been his partner.

The contest is played on grass, but it is arranged in the meeting room.

The American captain repeated, again and again, that his priority was keeping his players comfortable. That is a mindset error repeated across generations of captains. The Presidents Cup is designed so that nobody is comfortable. Match play, scoreboard pressure, noise from the galleries: all of it exists to break comfort. A team coached to feel at ease has no answer when a match reaches the 16th and 17th holes.

After Saturday, that same captain publicly took the blame on himself. That is the right reaction. But blame does not repair a scoreboard.

What to watch on Sunday

The match I want most is Nico Echavarria against Scottie Scheffler.

There is an easily missed detail in how these pairings are made. One team offers a name, the other counters. Whoever names first hands the choice of matchup to the opponent. If I am the U.S. captain, I want Scheffler facing the strongest International player and taking him out, strength against strength. Instead, the Americans offered Scheffler first. The Internationals countered with Echavarria, who has played exactly once all week.

The result is a player who has been overlooked, who is annoyed, standing across from the world No. 1 with nothing to lose. Meanwhile the Internationals have saved their strongest players for every other match.

A good model does not predict the future; it exposes what we choose not to see.

Spectators do not come to a course for the result. They come for the promise.

A Sunday afternoon at Medinah will answer the question nobody has answered all week: did the Americans let their lead slip through bad luck, or have they simply forgotten how to finish a match?