MONTREAL – What a difference a day makes.
After the U.S. side swept the first five matches Thursday at Royal Montreal, International Team Captain Mike Weir, Canadian through and through, described the shutout in hockey terms as only the first period.
“There’s a long way to go,” Weir pointed out. “Still significant sessions left. That’s the way we’re looking at it.”
On Friday, his team delivered the equivalent of a hat trick, bouncing back with a clean sweep of its own in foursomes. After two sessions, the match is tied at 5-5. It marked the first time in Presidents Cup history with multiple session sweeps and just the second time the International Team has swept a session (2003). Sungjae Im, who teamed with Hideki Matsuyama, to earn the International Team’s first point summed up the valiant comeback as only he can.
“Our vibe was vibing,” Im said through a translator.
Weir couldn’t ignore that his team had a nightmare start but he stuck to his plan and it worked. Im and Matsuyama boat-raced the pairing of Patrick Cantlay-Xander Schauffele in the first foursomes (alternate shot) match, 7 and 6, tying the largest margin of victory in a foursomes match.
A day after Im was cold with the putter and managed just one birdie, Im and Matsuyama were 8-under through 12 holes and ran the tables with seven straight birdies beginning at No. 6.
“We knew that we could come back from this,” Matsuyama said. “Sungjae hit a perfect shot on the 1st hole, so I think that really brought the momentum.”
The second match proved to be another beat down with Adam Scott and Canadian Taylor Pendrith routing the American side of Collin Morikawa and Sahith Theegala, 5 and 4. The International Team reeled off three straight holes in a row starting at the fourth and never looked back.
“We just needed to find a little something extra,” Scott said.
It was the first point earned by Pendrith, who was winless in his first five career Presidents Cup matches, and the 22nd for Scott, who became the all-time leader for most points won in the team competition.
Captain Weir finally teamed up a pair of his Canadians, and Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes delivered another resounding victory, trouncing Wyndham Clark and Tony Finau, 6 and 5.
Hughes, who was on the bench Thursday and whose only contribution was chugging a Stella Artois beer on the first tee on to get the crowd going, played as if he had guzzled a six-pack of Jolt. He egged on the crowd to get louder and the revved-up fans responded with cheers of “I-N-T” and “Dig in,” and even cheered the Americans bad shots, usually a given in these sort of international matches.
“That was a blast today,” Conners said. “Right from the 1st tee, the crowd was in it. They were behind us. We felt their energy, fed off their energy.”
“Why did Mike Weir take so long to get Team Canada out on the golf course?” PGA Tour Radio’s John Rollins wondered.
Great question. With their wives waving gold pom-poms with Canadian flags sticking out from the top, the Canadians won three of the first five holes and coasted to an easy victory. This match was a microcosm of the day as the Americans burned lips and missed the big putts they had made a day earlier. Hughes and Conners, who were college teammates at Kent State and partnered hundreds of times in Tuesday practice-round money games on Tour, had a comfort level playing together that Clark and Finau couldn’t match.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout, who had missed countless putts on Thursday, poured them in on Friday and sparked a 1-up win with Australian Jason Day over Max Homa and Brian Harman. Day hit a gorgeous flop shot tight at 18 for a conceded par to hang on for the victory.
It was the closest match but it still may have been the biggest upset of the day as South Koreans Ben An and Si Woo Kim edged world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and Russell Henley. In this tight contest, only three holes weren’t halved. Kim drilled his tee shot to 3 feet at the par-3 13th to set up a winning birdie that proved to be the difference. Then he delivered a clutch par putt at 18 to secure a 1-up win, telling his partner to get him inside 15 feet and he’d take care of the rest.
“So I made it,” Kim said. “All the front four groups many points, so I need to game on.”
And just like that, the U.S. lead had evaporated in one session.
“I’d say there was a better chance it would have been 10-0 than it would have been 5-5,” PGA Tour Live analyst Craig Perks said.
But it will go down as the greatest turnaround in Presidents Cup history, and even more stunning considering the Internationals hadn’t won a Foursomes session since 2005.
“We left yesterday at the door when we walked out,” Hughes said. “We came here this morning, we had our heads held high, chin up, and we were ready to play.”
