Presidents Cup Q&A: Biggest hero, biggest mistake, what TV viewers missed

MONTREAL — Drinks are flowing in the Presidents Cup team rooms, but our writers — James Colgan, Dylan Dethier and Nick Piastowski — stuck around to break down the best, worst, wildest and dumbest from an exciting week at the Presidents Cup.

Dylan Dethier, senior writer (@dylan_dethier): Hello, James. Hello, Nick. I saw the rest of our staff already tackled MVPs, so let’s take a slightly different angle: If you were giving out grades, which player gets the highest and lowest marks?

James Colgan, news and features editor (@jamescolgan26): Dylan, Nick — hello! High marks to both of you this week, and also to the Brothers Kim (Tom and Si Woo), who delivered some of the most entertaining match-play golf I think I’ve ever seen. I’ll give ’em an A-minus for the week, because they lost the Cup but saved it, too. As for lowest scorers? Let’s just say that Brian Harman will likely go to bed tonight very grateful for a U.S. win, because his winless performance (which featured a weeklong SG: Total of -8.54, the worst in the field) was one to forget. I suppose that evens out to a D-plus.

Nick Piastowski, senior editor (@nickpia): Right off the top I’ll say that you boys, along with GOLF videographer Emma Devine, were the real MVPs. You also can’t argue with the Kims, and Tom has certainly become the face of this event. But my “A” goes to the Friday effort from Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im. A day after the Internationals got throttled, they came out and KO’d American stars Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schaffele 7 and 6 and set a tone. The lowest grade? Here’s a second vote for Harman. And one for Mike Weir. He gassed his team on Saturday afternoon.

Dethier: I feel like I have to deduct points from both of you for failing to mention anyone on the team that just threw down a dominant victory. I’ll shout out the dominant duo of Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, who each went 4-1-0. They put the Cup effectively out of reach when they flipped their Saturday evening foursomes match, and they slammed the door with early wins on Sunday afternoon: Schauffele won six holes on the front nine against Jason Day while Cantlay won three of his last four holes to close out Taylor Pendrith. The strokes-gained numbers don’t lie with these two, either: They were the best golfers in Montreal this week. A and A! And while it gives me no pleasure to give this one, I’ll dish out a low grade to Sungjae Im, the only player to lose four matches this week. There were plenty of guys who played worse golf but this team needs Im to be a difference-maker; he wasn’t. That’s a D for our guy.

Some second-guessing, then: What was the biggest mistake, either in tactics or execution, that you saw this week?

Colgan: The easy answer here is what Mike Weir, the International Captain, did in electing to play the same eight golfers for all 36 holes on Saturday. His side fully ran out of gas down the stretch, and then looked lethargic for much of Sunday’s singles matches. It was a major tactical risk, and it majorly backfired. It might have even cost the INTs the tournament.

Piastowski: This is going out there a bit, but the rough here was mostly short, making for more birdies, giving an advantage to the U.S., who, in my opinion, was the more talented bunch on paper.

Dethier: As our Sean Zak says, these team events can be the Hindsight Olympics — but Weir’s Saturday strategy really backfired. Team INT rode its horses into the ground. It was a bold call and it didn’t work. The eight guys who played those final three sessions went 2-6 on Saturday and 2-5-1 on Sunday. Not good enough.

It’s easy to oversimplify these matches with binary win-loss perspective, though. Gimme the name of somebody whose record doesn’t tell the full story of their week.

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Colgan: Max Homa! On paper he was 1-2-0 but he was one of the best players on either side, per strokes-gained data. Also Sungjae Im, who Hideki Matsuyama credited for carrying him through the pair’s alternate shot match on Saturday afternoon, but finished 1-4-0.

Piastowski: Mack Hughes. He’ll never forget this week. Career highlight. Even noted it in his press conference. 

Dethier: I’ll give you Sam Burns. He was the only player in the field who didn’t lose a match, going 3-0-1, but in golf’s most important statistical category — strokes gained approach — he was dead last by far, losing 5.99 strokes to the field. That’s wild! Of course, winning strokes-gained categories isn’t the point of the week; winning is, and he did that better than anyone. But it wasn’t always pretty.

Let’s give people some insider access, then. What’s something you got to see on site that people wouldn’t have seen watching on TV?

Colgan: How chippy things really got at times on Saturday and Sunday. It’s en vogue to dump on this event for failing to bring serious competition, and the W-L records would certainly indicate that’s true, but for a few real moments there on Saturday and Sunday things hung in the balance.

Piastowski: Royal Montreal, though no architectural, top-rated gem, was easy to get around, had sightlines all over and made for good match play. Also, most of the trees here are marked, telling what they are. Learned a lot with that.  

Dethier: That’s good stuff, Nick. Seems like an educational week for you. I’m not sure exactly how obvious this was on the broadcast, but I thought it was fun: There was real drama around who would secure the actual winning point. It came down to Patrick Cantlay, who was on the brink of securing his match at No. 17, or Keegan Bradley, who was trying to get up-and-down for the win at 16. The greens are close together, separated only by a pond, so everyone around ’em was waiting to see who’d make their putt first. But then something funny happened: Bradley putted first, from three or four feet, and missed. That meant Cantlay’s point, which he secured a few minutes later, only got the U.S. team to 14.5. Bradley suffered a little more stress when he lost No. 17 but ultimately secured the win at No. 18 — a fitting ending to the week for next year’s Ryder Cup captain.

Colgan: Ooh, something else I saw that most people didn’t was Fluff Cowan, the legendary caddie and longtime buddy of Jim Furyk. Fluff was in Montreal just four weeks removed from a hip replacement as a ceremonial cart driver, and he seemed truly overjoyed at the opportunity to be around the guys. 

Long live Fluff.

Dethier: In six months, what will you remember from this Presidents Cup? 

Colgan: I’ll remember Si Woo Kim’s “night-night” celebration after holing out on the 16th hole on Saturday until I leave the golf industry or until I leave this earth … whichever comes first. It was the sort of moment that only team golf events give us — and that made me totally rethink my perception of him as a player and competitor in a few weeks. Go, Si Woo. That moment rocked. Even though he lost two holes later. Or maybe because he did.

Piastowski: That the U.S. needs to bottle whatever the hell they found on Saturday, after being body-slammed on Friday, and carry that six months after the six months from now — to Bethpage Black.

Dethier: I’ll remember the on-site joy of Friday’s 5-0 sweep, which felt like it saved the entire week. That was awesome. I’ll remember Patrick Cantlay’s Saturday-night putt in the dark — yes, another one. And I’ll remember the easy camaraderie of the U.S. team as they surrounded the final match of the day. The event’s tension had dissipated long since, but there was something special about the moment Max Homa holed a six-footer on the 17th green to close out Mackenzie Hughes. Some of the best golfers in the world surrounded him, beers already in hand, finishing a season together that they’d begun alone. Good times.