MONTREAL — It was quiet for a moment on the 16th green at Royal Montreal early Saturday afternoon.
Minutes earlier, Xander Schauffele and Tony Finau had dispatched the Internationals in a four-ball match 10 yards to the right, on the 16th. Minutes later, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns would close out the Internationals 15 yards to the left, on the 17th. But in this moment, the only conversation that filled the 16th bleachers surrounded the entirely unathletic events happening a few football fields away, where captains Jim Furyk and Mike Weir selected this Presidents Cup’s final four alternate shot pairings.
One by one, the pair ticked through the afternoon’s matchups, which were quickly posted to the video boards inside the tournament gates. But once the news began to circulate, a confused quiet fell over the crowd.
“Wait,” one fan asked. “Is that right?”
Indeed, it was right — and it was the strategic decision of the tournament.
The Americans had thrown a fastball from their four-ball to their alternate shot pairings, flipping out Tony Finau, Wyndham Clark and Keegan Bradley for Brian Harman, Max Homa and Russell Henley. But the Internationals had thrown … a replay?
Weir had selected the exact same pairings for the afternoon’s alternate shot as he had for the morning’s four-ball. Just as they had in the morning, Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im, Taylor Pendrith and Adam Scott, Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes, and Tom and Si Woo Kim would be responsible for bringing glory home for the Internationals in the afternoon.
For the first time in Presidents Cup history, a captain had elected to play the exact same pairings twice in the same day.
At first blush, the strategy had some merits. For one thing, the Internationals were riding a huge wave of alternate shot momentum from their five-zero victory the previous day. And nobody could fault Weir, captain of a Presidents Cup International side with only one victory in 30 years, for living and dying with his best players.
But there were also a few obvious caveats. There was a reason the strategy had never been tried before: it bucked conventional wisdom around fatigue and riding the so-called “hot hand.” The truth is that it’d been a long day for the Internationals before they reached the first tee for Saturday afternoon’s alternate shot, thanks to a pre-4 a.m. wakeup and 90-minute fog delay. Then most of the International side went out and played poorly in a start-and-stop opening session. Only the so-called “Kim brothers” — Tom and Si Woo (no relation) — were victorious in the early session, and their general proclivity for high-octane celebration seemed to leave both prone to a late fade in a 36-hole day.
In short, Weir’s roster decision was the golf equivalent of a fake punt: if it works, you’re a champion, if it doesn’t, you’re a chump.
It was a risk. A big one. Maybe even a Presidents Cup-deciding one.
IT WAS QUIET FOR A MOMENT ON THE 18TH GREEN ON SATURDAY EVENING.
But only for a moment.
Patrick Cantlay had just sent a 15-footer slicing through the night sky and straight into the center of the cup, a devastating last-hole birdie that forced a Si Woo Kim make from nearly the exact same distance just to halve the match.
The International crowd, which had spent the better part of the last several hours hurling insults in Cantlay’s direction, suddenly fell silent. Cantlay’s subsequent scream ripped through the air like a thunderclap.
A minute later, Kim missed his birdie try, ending the match with a thud. A morning that had brimmed with such promise for the Internationals now bled into an early evening dull with heartbreak. The Internationals trailed by four points, the same deficit a more inexperienced side faced on the road two years ago.
The International momentum of the early afternoon — leads in three of four matches, a tied score in the other — had been extinguished in particularly heartbreaking fashion. Three of the afternoon’s four matches needed 18 holes to determine a winner, and all but one of them featured a late charge by the Americans to steal a full point. On a day that began in darkness, the worst fears of Weir’s 36-hole strategy had come to life in the last whisps of sunlight.
“No, nothing’s up health-wise with Jason [Day],” Weir said when asked about the decision to sit one of the International stalwarts, Jason Day, for the full day. “We went 5-0 yesterday and had a lot of momentum.”
Weir said the decision was strategic, electing not to elaborate on specifics other than “trying to get our best guys out there” and that the team knew “pretty early” how the rostering would look.
“We talked it through, and that was it,” he said. “We had a plan. We had a plan for some other things too. That’s why we meet and go through these things. But nothing health-related that left any of the other guys out.”
Ultimately, we’ll never know if any of the other four members of the International team — Day, Min Woo Lee, Christian Bezuidenhout and Ben An — would have turned the tide on Saturday afternoon. We will, however, know that Saturday evening after Weir’s roster decision was not spent focusing on his strategic genius, but instead on how a critical roster error might have cost him the tournament.
As the early returns rolled in from those who played on a marathon Saturday, the conversations focused around a common theme: exhaustion. Weir’s fake punt looked more Pat McAfee than Dan Campbell.
“I’m pretty tired, yeah,” Pendrith, the first of the day’s finishers, volunteered.
“I’m very tired right now, but I’m not going to lie, I’m so motivated to come out tomorrow,” said Tom Kim, the firecracker, who later admitted his game left him a bit down the stretch on Saturday.
“I’m 54, I just walked 36, yeah I’m tired,” said U.S. captain Jim Furyk with a grin.
“To Jim’s point,” even Weir agreed. “Yeah, I’m tired.”
There won’t be much rest for the weary. The final session of this Presidents Cup — 12 singles matches — starts in just a few hours. That may be good news for the Internationals, who wake up on Sunday in an 11-7 hole after losing 3-1 in both of Saturday’s sessions.
“They’ll be ready,” Weir said. “Our guys aren’t distracted this time, they’re ready.”
In other words, Weir has a new strategy for getting over a brutal Presidents Cup Saturday.
Wash and rinse.
Just don’t repeat.
