Solo golf is left behind for team golf over in Canada this week as the Presidents Cup takes place with organisers hoping that this can be the year that the competition becomes a close contest between the Internationals and USA.
Internationals have still only won this tournament once and with USA having won the last nine Presidents Cups the home side will probably feel that it is about time they win it again. That should make for a decent week of golf in Montreal.
Recent Winners
2022 – USA
2019 – USA
2017 – USA
2015 – USA
2013 – USA
2011 – USA
2009 – USA
2007 – USA
2005 – USA
2003 – Tied
The Format
30 points are up for grabs this week so the team who gets to 15.5 will win the Cup. If it ends 15-15 there will be the second tie in the history of the tournament. Each team has 12 players in it and unlike the early runnings of this event not everyone plays on the opening two days so strategy comes into play a little more in keeping with the Ryder Cup.
The tournament begins with five fourball matches on Thursday before five foursomes matches on Friday. There are two rounds on Saturday. They begin with four foursomes and are followed by four fourballs and then the tournament will be decided over the course of 12 singles matches on Sunday. Each match is worth a point to the winner or 0.5 for both sides if it ends all square after 18 holes.
The Course
We are back at the Royal Montreal Golf Club for the tournament this year. This will be the first time the track has hosted the Presidents Cup since 2007 but it has hosted Canadian Opens in that time so it is fairly well known. It is a par 70 which might be in the interests of the Internationals and it can stretch to 7,279 yards although whether Mike Weir wants it to play that long remains to be seen. You would imagine that he wouldn’t.
Weir saw Europe dominate the Ryder Cup last year on a track where the driver was largely taken away from the Americans and you would imagine he will have let the rough grow here and he will turn this into a ball striking contest rather than a grip it and rip it one. The greens are fairly tiny around here which would help him in that quest. This is match play though so the score on each hole is largely insignificant so expect lots of aggressive golf.
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Internationals
Mike Weir saw his Internationals team come together via six automatic qualifiers and then six picks of his own and his automatic team members are Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im, Adam Scott, Tom Kim, Jason Day and Byeong-hun An. As you would imagine with the tournament taking place in Canada, Weir wanted some home players in his team and he has picked a trio of them with Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith largely obvious picks but it was Mackenzie Hughes who was chosen as the other rather than Nick Taylor. His final three picks were Min Woo Lee, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and somewhat surprisingly Si Woo Kim rather than Cameron Davis.
USA
The USA team was always going to be strong with all four majors being held by players from their country but with Bryson DeChambeau ineligible for this match it is just the three majors that will be involved with Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele having dominated the qualifying period. Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay and Sahith Theegala were the other automatic qualifiers. Jim Furyk kept it simple with regards to his picks. He took the next six from the rankings so he has completed his team with Sam Burns, Tony Finau, Russell Henley, Keegan Bradley, Brian Harman and Max Homa.
Betting
I’m not convinced that the Internationals will win this match but I do think they will be more competitive than they usually are. This American side doesn’t look ideally suited to this track to me and also this is a transition USA team with stalwarts such as Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods now a thing of the past while the likes of Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Bryson DeChambeau and Bubba Watson among others who are ineligible.
We can’t get away from the fact that the likes of Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Marc Leishman, Abraham Ancer and Louis Oosthuizen would probably walk into this Internationals side but they aren’t as weak as they might have been and the three Canadian players are sure to make a big difference. You can tell by the fact that Weir left Cameron Davis out and preferred ball strikers such as Si Woo Kim, Mackenzie Hughes and Corey Conners over him that he is going to set this course up tough and rely on his straight hitters to get the job done. I don’t know if they will but I think they can win 12.5 points to stay within the 3.5 point handicap.
Tips
Back Internationals (+3.5) to beat USA for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
