The United States enters Sunday singles at the 2026 Presidents Cup trailing the International Team 10.5-7.5. Whatever happens next at Medinah, one statistic already deserves a much deeper examination: since 2023, American teams are 8-26 in foursomes across the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. For a country producing so many of the world’s best individual golfers, that record raises an uncomfortable question.
Medinah knows something about improbable Sunday comebacks. Fourteen years ago, Europe arrived at the final day of the 2012 Ryder Cup trailing the United States 10-6. What followed became the “Miracle at Medinah”, a 14.5-13.5 European victory and one of the most famous reversals in golf history.
This Sunday, the roles are different. The International Team will begin the 12 singles matches of the 2026 Presidents Cup leading the United States 10.5-7.5 — the first time it has ever taken a lead into Sunday singles on American soil. The Americans, winners of 13 of the previous 15 editions with only one defeat and one tie, suddenly find themselves attempting their own Medinah comeback.
But whether Brandt Snedeker’s team completes that comeback may actually be less interesting than the question created by the first three days: how can a country capable of producing so many of the world’s best golfers struggle so badly to make those golfers perform together?
The number that should worry American golf: 8-26
The most striking evidence is not the overall score at Medinah. It is what has happened in foursomes. Since the beginning of the 2023 Ryder Cup, the United States has played 34 foursomes matches across the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. Its record is 8 wins and 26 losses, without a single halved match. At the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome, Europe won the two foursomes sessions 4-0 and 3-1. The American record: 1-7.
At the 2024 Presidents Cup in Montreal, the International Team swept Friday’s foursomes 5-0 before the Americans responded 3-1 on Saturday. American record: 3-6.
At the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, Europe won both foursomes sessions 3-1. American record: 2-6.
And this week at Medinah, the International Team produced another 5-0 sweep on Friday before Saturday’s foursomes finished 2-2. American record: 2-7. Add them together and the number becomes difficult to dismiss: USA, 8 wins and 26 losses.
This is no longer a small sample generated by one bad afternoon, one captain or one course. It covers four competitions, four years and dozens of different partnerships. It does not prove that American golfers are inherently poor at foursomes. But it does establish that something has repeatedly gone wrong when the United States has had to transform its collection of elite individual players into two-man alternate-shot teams.
Scottie Scheffler embodies the paradox
Nobody illustrates the contradiction better than Scottie Scheffler. The world’s No. 1 golfer arrived at Medinah as the most obvious individual weapon available to either captain. Yet after Friday’s defeat alongside Sam Burns against Nick Taylor and Corey Conners, Scheffler’s career foursomes record across the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup fell to 1-8-0.
Snedeker subsequently left him out of Saturday afternoon’s foursomes, saying: “Scottie’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders carrying Team USA. I think it’s time for us to carry him for a session.”
The symbolism was extraordinary. The best individual golfer in the world was sitting on the sidelines while his country was three points behind because the format in which two players alternate shots has repeatedly produced some of the worst results of his team career. Scheffler’s record does not suddenly make him a poor team player. Match play contains enormous variance, partners matter and eight defeats cannot reasonably be attributed to one golfer. But 1-8 is difficult to ignore, particularly because Scheffler is not really the problem. He is simply its most spectacular illustration.
Foursomes asks a different question
Team golf is often discussed as though “chemistry” were one universal quality. Foursomes shows why it isn’t. In four-ball, two golfers play their own balls. One player can make a mistake and his partner can erase it. Exceptional individual performance can carry a partnership. Foursomes removes that safety net: there is only one ball, and every shot determines the situation from which the partner must play the next one.
Compatibility therefore becomes important in ways that go beyond two players simply liking each other. Which player should hit the odd-numbered tee shots? Which player’s driving pattern leaves approaches from distances his partner prefers? Where does each golfer normally miss, and how well does his partner play from those locations? Which player is better from the rough, more comfortable with long approaches or psychologically better equipped to deal with a partner’s mistake? Professional golf now possesses enormous amounts of performance data that can inform some of those decisions. But Medinah also offers a warning against assuming that more data automatically produces the right partnership.
Before Friday’s foursomes, Data Golf reportedly gave Scheffler and Burns close to a 60 percent probability of beating Taylor and Conners, the highest winning probability among the five matches. They lost. That does not make the model wrong. A 60 percent probability still leaves a substantial chance of defeat. But it raises a more interesting question than whether Team USA simply needs “more analytics”: are the variables that determine a successful foursomes partnership completely captured by individual performance data?
The United States’ 8-26 record suggests that identifying two excellent golfers — even two players who statistically appear to form a strong team — is not necessarily the same thing as identifying an optimal alternate-shot partnership.
Young and Gotterup may have provided the clue
Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup spent Saturday demonstrating precisely why the distinction matters. Paired together in the morning four-ball, they won the first four holes against Nick Taylor and Corey Conners and eventually won 2&1. Snedeker kept them together for the afternoon foursomes, where they overwhelmed Sungjae Im and Adam Scott 6&4. Their victory was one of only two American foursomes wins all week.
The interesting part is that their compatibility was not discovered on Saturday. Snedeker acknowledged that Young and Gotterup had been identified early in the process as a potential alternate-shot pairing. Both come from the Northeast, regularly play together at home, hit the ball enormous distances and understand the situations in which the other’s aggressive style can leave them. Yet when Friday’s foursomes arrived, Snedeker paired Young with Justin Thomas. They lost 3&2. Gotterup did not play. Only on Saturday did Young and Gotterup finally play foursomes together.
The result was emphatic.Afterwards, Gotterup offered perhaps the most revealing explanation of why the partnership worked.
“We’re different, but we play similar styles of golf in the fact that if he hits it in the rough, I’ve been in, like, a similar position where we’re not going to be in the fairway all the time just with how far we hit it,” he said. “It’s not uncomfortable in the spots we put each other in.”
That last sentence deserves attention.
A good foursomes partner does not necessarily need to prevent you from getting into trouble. He may simply need to be comfortable playing from the trouble you are likely to create.
Young described their philosophy rather more simply: “When in doubt, tee it up, hit it hard, go find it.”
Behind the simplicity is something difficult to quantify. Their games make sense together. The episode also creates an uncomfortable question for Snedeker. If Young and Gotterup had already been identified as a potentially strong alternate-shot combination, why did Team USA wait until its fourth session — and after a 5-0 foursomes defeat — to use it?
This is bigger than Brandt Snedeker
Snedeker himself has accepted responsibility for some of what has happened at Medinah.
“I tried to work my tail off to put these guys in the best situation possible, and I don’t think I’ve done a very good job this week to be where we are right now,” he said Saturday. “They look to me to put them in the best position where they’re comfortable. I hold myself to a high standard. I don’t think I’ve done the best job for them in that room.”
Asked where he believed he had gone wrong, Snedeker specifically mentioned matchups and admitted he had been second-guessing himself. That makes the delayed Young-Gotterup partnership particularly relevant. But blaming Snedeker alone would miss the larger point. He wasn’t captain in Rome in 2023, Montreal in 2024 or Bethpage in 2025. Four competitions have produced four different American foursomes records: 1-7, 3-6, 2-6 and 2-7.
Different captains. Different players. Different courses. Different opponents. Yet the same underlying weakness has survived. That should push the conversation beyond individual captaincy decisions towards a more structural question: how are American partnerships constructed, evaluated and retained from one competition to the next? The United States has successful combinations. Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele are the obvious modern example, and Young-Gotterup may have revealed another at Medinah. The issue is not an absence of good partnerships. An 8-26 aggregate record suggests there simply have not been enough of them.
Don’t confuse this with every American team defeat
There is an important limit to this argument. The United States has suffered other significant team defeats recently, but they did not all follow the same pattern.
Europe beat the United States 15-13 in the 2026 Solheim Cup after the teams entered Sunday tied and Europe then produced seven points in singles. At the 2026 Walker Cup, the United States actually dominated Sunday morning foursomes and led Great Britain & Ireland 9.5-6.5 before losing 13.5-12.5 after a remarkable singles comeback.
And the idea that American golfers have somehow forgotten how to play team golf is contradicted by the 2026 Curtis Cup, which the United States won 13-7 at Bel-Air Country Club. So this is not a theory explaining every American defeat, and it shouldn’t be. The evidence supports a narrower conclusion: America has developed a serious foursomes problem in its two major men’s professional team competitions. The intriguing part is that it has happened during a period in which the United States has possessed extraordinary individual talent.
Sunday could make the paradox even stronger
The Presidents Cup can still end with another American victory. Twelve singles matches remain and 12 points are available, although history is heavily against the home team: teams trailing entering Presidents Cup singles have gone 1-12-1. But singles remove the partnership problem entirely, which is why Sunday’s outcome may not settle the larger question.
If the International Team wins, Medinah will become the most dramatic evidence yet that superior American individual depth cannot automatically be converted into team dominance. If the Americans come back, however, the argument may become even more intriguing. The same collection of players that produced a 2-7 foursomes record at Medinah will have rescued the Presidents Cup once the requirement to play in pairs disappeared.
Something similar happened at Bethpage last year. Europe entered Sunday leading 11.5-4.5 after dominating the first two days. The Americans then collected 8.5 points from the 12 singles matches, transforming what appeared likely to become a rout into a 15-13 European victory. Individual quality almost saved them. It simply arrived too late. Now Medinah offers another experiment. Cameron Young opens against Ryo Hisatsune, Scottie Scheffler faces Nico Echavarria in the fourth match and Chris Gotterup meets Christiaan Bezuidenhout in the sixth. Maybe the Americans will produce their own Miracle at Medinah. Maybe the International Team will complete one of the greatest upsets in Presidents Cup history.
Either result will deserve another story. But the question exposed before Sunday’s first tee shot will remain. The United States clearly knows how to produce great golfers. After an 8-26 foursomes record since 2023, it may be time to understand why it has become so difficult to turn them into great teams.