On paper, this year’s Presidents Cup looked like another rout, with the Americans winning 18.5-11.5 to claim their 10th-straight victory and improve their all-time record to 13-1-1 over the Internationals.
But those few days at Royal Montreal Golf Club in Montreal, Quebec, last month were hardly mundane.
There was that testy exchange between Scottie Scheffler and Tom Kim during Thursday’s opening session, and Kim made more headlines when he said he could hear “some players cursing at us” amid a thrilling foursomes match in which Xander Schauffle and Patrick Cantlay beat Kim and Si Woo Kim 1 up on Saturday evening. As the last match out on the course, players from both teams were following along and watching.
“I don’t think there was good sportsmanship there,” Tom Kim said. His cursing and sportsmanship comments were widely circulated.
“I felt like Pat and I, we treated the Kims with the utmost respect,” Schauffele said. “We’re trying to quiet the crowds down when they were hitting. We’re trying to quiet the crowds down when we were hitting. It was fair take, give and go. I have no clue if anyone was doing any of that. I don’t believe any of our guys would do something like that. So I’m not sure what he was hearing.”
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Paul Tesori, Tom Kim’s caddie, offered his take on the controversy when he joined Brian Crowell and Frank Darby on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio on Sunday.
“Obviously, I witnessed three scenarios where members of the U.S. team emphatically got personal with Tom and yes, cursed at him and got very personal,” Tesori said. “And at the end of the day, no one wants that. These two guys that had done it, I don’t think that’s in their character at all. I know one of them apologized, which is a great thing. The heat of the moment got to him. But I do want to say something about that. When Tom mentioned that in the Saturday press conference, I didn’t know he had done it. And when he came in, he shared with me what he did, and this is part of what a 52-year-old veteran can share with a 22-year-old. I said, Tom, you have every right to feel the way you did.
“One of them, I witnessed a foot away from me. And the feelings I had inside were very New York Bethpagey. I wanted to react physically, and I was upset by what had happened, but at the end of the day I also know the character of the person this happened with I don’t believe is that way, and Tom handled it really well. Now, there’s no reason for him to go in the media, and we know in the world we live in now even if there was video proof of what happened, half the world is going to think he’s being a baby and the other half is going to think he’s viable.”
Tesori said it was “only two of the 24 guys that acted in a way that I’d be embarrassed to act,” but added Kim needs to have thicker skin.
“At the end of the day, he can’t go to the media and pronounce that,” Tesori said. “You got to go talk to your captains about it, go talk to your teammates about it, and it’s a learning experience for Tom. And I think that’s what it comes down to.”
Kim was also involved in an incident with Scheffler during Thursday’s four-ball session. Kim screamed and celebrated after making a long birdie putt on the 7th hole, but Scheffler dished it right back after he made a birdie on top of him, screaming “What was that?” at Kim.
On the 8th, Kim made another birdie and followed it with yet another vocal celebration, but Kim and Sungjae Im didn’t stick around to see Scheffler putt out, instead walking to the 9th green.
“Well, that’s bordering on bad behavior there,” analyst Paul McGinley said on the broadcast. “That’s disrespectful, in my opinion. I know it’s competitive out there. But that certainly shows you there’s an underlying edge here that’s not all fun and games.”
On PGA Tour Radio on Sunday, Tesori said Kim and Im walked to the 9th tee after assistant captain Camilo Villegas instructed them to do so.
“From the outside view for Camilo, he thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is getting bad; this is getting personal; this is gonna go to a bad place and I’m gonna get these guys out of here because when Scottie makes that 9-footer, he’s going to look right at Tom,'” Tesori said. “Camilo admitted he was wrong. He should not have done that. His fault was, ‘I got to take them out of this situation.'”
U.S. assistant captain Kevin Kisner was right next to the green when it happened. He was on Barstool’s Fore Play Podcast last week and called the move “Bush League.” He said he talked with Villegas a couple of days later to sort it all out.
“He was like, ‘Dude, just gonna be honest with you, when I saw Scottie [yell back on 7], I feared a little bit for my guys; that was the scariest-looking Scottie Scheffer I’d ever seen, so I just didn’t want him to make another putt and something go awry,'” Kisner said. “I’m like, I’ll take your word for it, but I still thought it was bull—-.”
