MEDINAH, Ill. \u2013 The International team showed it knows how to finish matches. It rallied from deficits in every match, morning and afternoon, on Saturday at Medinah to build a three-point lead going into the final day at the Presidents Cup.<\/p>\n
Now the question is whether they can finish off the Americans for the first time in 28 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey showed a lot of passion and fight today,\u201d International captain Geoff Ogilvy said.<\/p>\n
The Americans narrowly won the fourballs session in the morning to trim the deficit to three points. The afternoon foursomes was a push. The result was a 10 1\/2-7 1\/2 advantage for the Internationals, only the fourth time since the Presidents Cup began in 1994 that they have led going into Sunday.<\/p>\n
Now comes the hard part. Singles traditionally are an American strength in these team competitions. They have a 97 1\/2-82 1\/2 advantage dating to 1994.<\/p>\n
U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker stacked the front of his lineup to try to get momentum. Cameron Young is leading off against International rookie Ryo Hisatsune, followed by U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark against Tom Kim, Justin Thomas against Corey Conners and Scottie Scheffler against Nico Echavarria, who has not hit a meaningful shot since Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kind of dug ourself a hole here,\u201d Snedeker said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to need a special day tomorrow, and the only way to do that is to get the crowd going, get these guys making some putts, and get these people behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheffler, who teamed with Sam Burns to deliver a rare American rally in the morning, spent the afternoon watching. Snedeker benched the world\u2019s No. 1 player, his first time not playing all five matches since 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I said at the beginning of the week, Scottie Scheffler is not going to go out there and win us 15 points, so we\u2019ve got to go out there as a team and do this together,\u201d Snedeker said. \u201cI challenged the guys this afternoon to go out there and be that team that we need them to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s what he got \u2014 at least for a while.<\/p>\n
The Americans twice filled the leaderboard with their red numbers, leading by at least 2 up in every foursomes match in the afternoon. They won two of them. Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman were 3 up through 10 holes when Nick Taylor and Corey Conners rallied to beat them for the final point on a long, loud day at Medinah.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to sort of weather the storm early in both sessions, and it was amazing for the boys to get us out of the day relatively unscathed,\u201d Ogilvy said.<\/p>\n
Min Woo Lee was part of both comebacks. He teamed with Sungjae Im in fourballs, going from 2 down against Thomas and Jackson Koivun to earn a halve in the morning. Lee and Ryan Fox overcame an early deficit to blow past Burns and Clark in afternoon foursomes.<\/p>\n
The final stroke of a long, loud day at Medinah was Conners holing a 6-foot par putt on the 18th green with both teams gathered around. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth sessions having all red on the board, down in every match, and to come back and get 1 1\/2 points out of this morning we felt like was a little victory,\u201d Ogilvy said. \u201cThe U.S. team played so well all day. They played some really high-level foursomes especially this afternoon. For the boys to somehow come back and pinch two points out of that and split the session was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lead was the largest for the Internationals since 2003 in South Africa, the Presidents Cup that ended in a tie. They last led at Royal Melbourne in 2019 until the Americans rallied behind Tiger Woods, the playing captain that year.<\/p>\n
The Americans found their spark from Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup \u2014 Young from New York, Gotterup from New Jersey \u2014 who were unstoppable. They won the first four holes in fourballs against Conners and Taylor in a 2-and-1 victory, and they were 5 up through seven holes in blowing out Im and Adam Scott, 6 and 4, the shortest match of the week.<\/p>\n
Clark got the noise he wanted from Chicago fans, and Snedeker was on the seventh green raising his arms for even louder cheers when the Americans holed putts \u2014 and the Internationals missed.<\/p>\n
Lee made his Presidents Cup debut at Royal Montreal in 2024 and was asked how this experience was different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess the crowd is different, not getting cheers for holing putts. It\u2019s a bit different than any tournament, really,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWe just had to be there for each other. I think that was a big part.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd was so boisterous that a volunteer had to retrieve one fan’s dentures that had come out of his mouth from the upper deck of a hospitality tent on the 10th hole.<\/p>\n
The Internationals have been at their best closing out matches. Now they have to find a way to close out a Presidents Cup the Americans have won the last 10 times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal at the start of the week is to be leading going into singles. That\u2019s sort of what the first four days are all about,\u201d Ogilvy said. \u201cThere\u2019s still 12 points on the board, though, so we\u2019ve seen in these team events all sorts of different things can happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to put our heads down and play for a big opportunity tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\nSee AP\u2019s full golf coverage here\n<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEDINAH, Ill. \u2013 The International team showed it knows how to finish matches. It rallied from deficits in…","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_volume":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1088,48,100,2623,56,63,2762,20,60,29,554,1613,47,13,325,27,858,78,49],"class_list":["post-14739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scottie-scheffler","tag-brandt-snedeker","tag-cameron-young","tag-chris-gotterup","tag-christiaan-bezuidenhout","tag-collin-morikawa","tag-corey-conners","tag-geoff-ogilvy","tag-jackson-koivun","tag-justin-thomas","tag-min-woo-lee","tag-nick-taylor","tag-nicolas-echavarria","tag-sam-burns","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-si-woo-kim","tag-sports","tag-sungjae-im","tag-tom-kim","tag-wyndham-clark","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@fogolf\/117340499003712771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}