Ranking All 24 Presidents Cup Players After Another American Victory
Numbers never tell the whole story. Unless you’re a math teacher.
If you watched last weekend’s Presidents Cup, you already know the event between the U.S. and the International team was closer than the final score (17.5-12.5) indicated. At several points during Sunday’s singles matches, the Internationals were on the verge of pulling off the supreme upset. It didn’t happen, however, and some late matches after the outcome was already decided puffed up the margin of victory.
Maybe you didn’t have the time or the stamina to watch all four days of golf and all 30 draining matches. Or any of them. So here is The Ranking’s official list of which individual players stood tallest and which didn’t. The rankings were determined by match outcome, number of holes won and lost, length of strides, and other complex metrics that include the Eyeball Test.
One more thing: Nobody asked but the International team’s shield is a cool logo, cooler than the U.S. team’s plain old golden cup, and their variations of black and beige and gold uniforms looked cooler, too …
The players were divided into three categories. "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" has already been done so The Ranking went a different direction …
The Ivy Leaguers
No. 1: Jordan Spieth (5-0). The Golden Child lived up to his old nickname, twice hitting balls into the creek at the 15th hole and twice having them bounce back into play. With the way he putts and chips, how are you going to beat that? The big shocker was that he'd gone winless in seven previous Ryder and Presidents Cup singles matches. Scratch one monkey (but don’t do that in real life).
No. 2: Max Homa (4-0). This wry Californian is like a Napa Valley wine that keeps improving with age. He was also the star of Day 2 when he birdied the last two holes, as he and Billy Horschel stole a point from Canadians Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith. Stealing from Canadians? That seems low. But Homa beat all comers, including the biggest new star created by the Prez Cup, South Korea’s Tom Kim. He’s not Mad Max, he’s Cool Max.
No. 3: Justin Thomas (4-1). It didn’t hurt that JT won a PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in 2017 and, of course, was joined by his long-time Robin, Spieth, in all four team matches. Thomas was mostly clutch all week but lost his singles match on the final green when Si Woo Kim holed out and Thomas missed. You don’t want to face this guy in team golf, if you can help it. He’s tougher than titanium linoleum. (They’ve got that?)
No. 4: Si Woo Kim (3-1). Give it up to the former Players champion who didn’t putt great, has already gone to the long putter (you know what that means) and scratched out three wins anyway. He got a bit chippy when he shushed the Charlotte crowd late in his singles match (well, nothing near like what Patrick Reed used to do), but he holed the biggest putt of his life at 18 to beat Thomas in singles when the Internats (possible new nickname?) still had a chance.
No. 5: Sebastian Munoz (2-0-1). Americans don’t know this Colombian but they found out about him when he beat Scottie Scheffler, No. 1 in the world, in singles. Scheffler holed a 50-foot impossible putt from off the green on one hole to salvage a halve or that match would’ve ended sooner. Munoz flat outplayed No. 1. He’s worth watching.
No. 6: Patrick Cantlay (3-1). Was there any chance The Iceman (a way better nickname that Patty Ice, don’t you think?) wasn’t going to pull out a singles win Sunday when Team USA needed it. The Iceman got through the whole handshake line and walked over to team captain Davis Love III without cracking a smile, too, at least until Love gave him a hug. Then he smiled. A little.
No. 7: Tony Finau (3-1). He’s the American version of the Big Easy, Ernie Els, the big guy with the constant smile that everybody likes. The work he put in on his short game, especially his putting, paid off in a banner year and at the Prez Cup. He outputted Taylor Pendrith to win his singles match, a key point. There is more to come from The Big Fin.
No. 8: Xander Schauffele (3-1). He doesn’t rack up tournament wins by the bushel but he picks his spots pretty well. Schauffele, an Olympic gold medalist, scored the point that won the Prez Cup for the U.S. and he did it with his best feature, grit. He hit some loose shots last week but his work around the greens was first class. The X gets an A.
No. 9: Tom Kim (2-3). He’s 20, he’s from South Korea, he’s a first-time PGA Tour winner this year and he was the darling of this Prez Cup. From splitting his pants to not looking when his partner had a key putt to making eagle at the same hole twice Saturday to having NBC analyst Paul Azinger predict he’s going to get to No. 1 in the world someday, nobody had a bigger week. There are a lot of players named Kim on tour but there’s no mistaking this one. He just became a global star.
The State Schools
No. 10: Sungjae Im (2-2-1). Im, the man with the slowest backswing in golf, showed off his iron play and short game and maybe the stuff of a major champion. He could get better on the greens, perhaps, but he was part of the Internats’ backbone. Good player and, a plus for the media, his last name is easy to spell.
No. 11: K.H. Lee (2-1). He didn’t get much airtime in Sunday’s finale, when he dunked on Billy Horschel with a solid back nine. But he helped Young Tom Kim knock off the Scheffler-Burns duo in foursomes. Second-guessers may think he should’ve played a fourth match. Of course, second-guessers say the Titanic should’ve put out that coal fire below decks before heading for New York.
No. 12: Cameron Davis (2-3). It sure didn’t feel like Davis took three L’s, not after his super-clutch eagle-birdie-birdie finish Saturday afternoon lifted the Internats to within striking distance—a doable four points—of the U.S. This Aussie is top shelf with every club in the bag except the putter and he was impressive.
No. 13: Collin Morikawa (2-1). A solid week for this two-time major champion. He came up big in singles by trouncing Pereira at a time when the Americans were struggling to put this thing away. Let’s see, he’s got a PGA, a British Open, a Ryder Cup and a Prez Cup. If he quits tomorrow, that’s a helluva career. (But don’t quit, man!)
No. 14: Hideki Matsuyama (1-2-1). The putter was a problem all week but his first-class iron play was worth a point and a half. He showed his class in a gutty singles match with Sam Burns that ended in a halve. Not everybody has their A game during Cup week. Time to consider a claw grip/long putter? He sure didn’t need to when he won that Masters.
No. 15: Adam Scott (2-3). If you didn’t get goosebumps watching Scotty pump 330-yard drives down every fairway Saturday when he helped spark the Internats’ had-to-have-it rally, you may not have a pulse. His swing is still as good. With the long putter, though, he’s just not the threat he used to be on the greens and these team match-play events are putting contests. Case in point—his 6 and 5 foursomes thumping paired with Matsuyama against the great-putting Cantlay and Schauffele. Scott was always going to get out-putted by Cantlay in singles. It was a bad matchup, like the New Jersey Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters but minus the fake water-bucket trick.
No. 16: Cameron Young (1-2-1). This rising star didn’t have his best stuff, which you may have noticed when he bogeyed the first three holes of his singles match and fell 3 down. He grinded it back to even, however, but Im stuffed it close at 17 to inch ahead and get the win. Maybe the thrill of this team event will make him forget all about that LIV Golf carnival cruise.
No. 17: Christiaan Bezuidenhout (1-0-1). Nobody beat this South African, something that no other Internat team member can say. All right, he got his win in the irrelevant final singles match against Will Zalatoris’ stand-in, Kevin Kisner, but 1.5 points in two matches is almost Ivy League stuff.
No. 18: Sam Burns (0-3-2). A halve and two close losses with partner Scheffler must’ve felt like second-degree Burns (come on, this was supposed to be a pun-free zone). Burns hit a lot of big, heroic shots—better than most—but he could’ve gotten by with a little (more) help from his friends.
The Community Colleges
No. 19: Billy Horschel (1-2). He looked uncomfortable on the greens, particularly during a dreadful four-putt in a singles match he lost. He just didn’t play Billy Ho golf.
No. 20: Mito Pereira (0-2-1). The Chilean who nearly won the PGA Championship gave himself some good looks but didn’t get it done on the greens, like many of his fellow Internats.
No. 21: Kevin Kisner (0-2-1). Maybe only Corey Conners got less TV time than Kiz, who is considered a match-play wizard but never got it going this week. He earned a halve against Periera and Conners, the Internats’ weakest pairing, so that’s something.
No. 22: Scottie Scheffler (0-3-1). Your Masters champ went Twitter viral Saturday night when he stayed on the practice green until after dark and worked on his putting under the lights with assistant captain Steve Stricker and others. Wonder what kind of odds you could’ve gotten that Scheffler would play four matches and go winless?
No. 23: Taylor Pendrith (0-4). It wasn’t “O Canada,” it was Oh-for-Canada at this Prez Cup for Pendrith and countryman Conners, who pitched shutouts. Sometimes, the other guys just play better.
No. 24: Corey Conners (0-4). Ditto.