The International Team Has Lost 10 Straight Presidents Cups. Medinah Is Where They Say Enough

The United States has won ten straight Presidents Cups. Before that, one tie. Before that, the only International Team win in the competition's history, back in 1998 at Royal Melbourne. That's the entire scoreboard heading into this week's edition at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago, and it's exactly the kind of lopsided history that makes this particular format worth watching anyway.

The Presidents Cup runs September 24 to 27, pitting a stacked U.S. side captained by Brandt Snedeker against an International Team led by Geoff Ogilvy, representing the best players from outside Europe.

A Course The Captain Himself Rebuilt

Here's a detail that makes this edition stranger than most. Geoff Ogilvy, the man captaining the International Team trying to end a 23-year losing skid, is also the golf course architect who spent two years renovating Medinah's Course No. 3, the very layout his own team now has to solve under maximum pressure. Larger greens, wider fairways, a reworked back nine, all overseen by the guy hoping his players can use that knowledge to finally flip the result.

That's either a clever inside edge or an enormous irony, depending on how the week goes.

The U.S. roster reads like a murderer's row even by Presidents Cup standards: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Cameron Young, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns, Russell Henley, and Collin Morikawa qualified automatically, before six captain's picks rounded out a squad that came in as heavy favorites. The International side counters with genuine depth of its own, South Korea's Kim Si-woo and Tom Kim, Japan's Hideki Matsuyama, Australia's Min Woo Lee and Adam Scott, and New Zealand's Ryan Fox, all qualifying on merit.

Why The Format Still Produces Drama Despite The Lopsided History

Thirty points are up for grabs across foursomes, four-ball, and singles over four days. Unlike the Ryder Cup, a tied overall score means the Cup is shared rather than defended by whoever held it last, which keeps every single match meaningful right up to the final putt, regardless of how the overall race is trending.

Ogilvy has been an assistant captain in each of the last four editions before finally getting the top job himself, giving him a longer runway inside the International team room than most of his predecessors had. He's called this group one of the most energetic he's been around heading into a Cup, the kind of thing every captain says before a tournament, except this time it's coming from someone who's watched the losing streak build from the inside for eight years running.

The International Team's actual problem has never really been talent. It's depth and continuity, assembling twelve players from a dozen different countries and tours into something resembling a cohesive unit in the span of a single week, against an American side that shares a tour, a culture, and, increasingly, each other's practice rounds all year long.

Medinah gets four days to answer the same question the Presidents Cup has asked for over two decades now. Can a genuinely talented International side finally turn thirty individual matches into one collective result, or does the U.S. simply keep doing what it's done ten editions running?