Friday at Medinah: Where the U.S. Foursomes Edge Actually Sits, and the Number Nobody Is Reading

Before the flag went up on the first tee at Medinah's Course No. 3 on Friday morning, a single number in my notebook had already stopped me. I hand-charted Thursday's five four-ball matches hole by hole—ninety holes, 352 shots, each tagged with the lie it came from and the club that produced it. The story the broadcast carried afterwards was about two or three players with a hot putter. In my chart, that story rests on fourteen putts made from outside ten feet, nine of which came in just two matches. The other three matches were roughly level. Three-quarters of what circulated as form on Thursday evening was a hot streak in two matches.

Friday's session should not be built on that. Because Friday is not four-ball. It is foursomes.

Context: change the format and the arithmetic changes with it

The Presidents Cup is a biennial team match—the United States against an International side drawn from everywhere outside Europe. The 2026 edition sits at Medinah Country Club in Illinois, on Course No. 3: par 72, 7,657 yards. After Thursday's opening session the United States leads 3-2. Friday brings five foursomes matches, otherwise known as alternate shot: two players, one ball, taking turns.

I do not read these matches off a television graphic. Team events do not carry a full public ShotLink or Strokes Gained dataset, so my base is three things: the broadcast feed, the walking scorer's card, and my own hand chart. The three do not always agree. Live scoring and broadcast scoring are two different sports wearing the same leaderboard. I will also state my error margin: in each match I could not confirm the position of two or three shots, so small-margin conclusions need to be held loosely.

Two claims I am leaving flagged as unverified: Brandt Snedeker in the United States captaincy and Geoff Ogilvy making International lineup decisions. Neither name matches my own records. I will not attach a person's name to something I have not checked.

Strokes Gained and OWGR points are not the main currency here. Team match play carries little or no ranking value. The real stakes are prestige, team standing, and selection résumés for fringe players.

Core: chemistry over names

The architecture of the session is plain. The United States sent its highest-floor pairing—Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns—out front. The Internationals put the Kim brothers in the anchor match. One side wants a fast start; the other wants a strong finish.

The part nobody writes about: in foursomes a captain is really making two decisions, not picking players. He decides who takes the tee shot on which hole, and who takes the first putt on that hole. On a long par four, if the shorter hitter drives, the longer hitter plays the approach, and the first putt falls to whichever partner is the more dependable putter. That is hole-by-hole planning, not luck. Watch how the tee shots are assigned on Medinah's opening stretch and you can read how conscious each captain is.

A currency note, since I came out of football analytics. PPDA and field tilt have no clean golf translation. What I use instead is fairway-wedge share—how many of a pair's holes are played from the fairway inside 150 yards. When I write that a pair is controlling a match, I mean that share is high, not that they look good.

Match one: Scheffler and Burns against Nick Taylor and Corey Conners. Taylor's first Presidents Cup match; Conners struggled on and around the greens Thursday. The market makes Scheffler-Burns a heavy favourite. But the leadoff is really a set piece: the opening match is not golf, it is mood-setting. If the Internationals steal it, the arithmetic of the other four flips.

Match two: Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa against Ryan Fox and Min Woo Lee. Both Internationals were out of sorts Thursday. This is the slate's one contrarian pick and it rests on Morikawa's weakness. Clark carried his partner on Thursday; in alternate shot there is no carrying.

Match three: Justin Thomas and Cameron Young against Adam Scott and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Thomas and Young have played four-ball together at a Ryder Cup, but alternate shot is a different sport. Scott's ball-striking plus Bezuidenhout's steady greens reads beautifully on paper. The question is Scott's putter, which never woke up Thursday.

Match four, the anchor: Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay against the Kims. Schauffele and Cantlay are 4-1-0 in foursomes; history stands with the market. Montreal's early celebration still trails the Kims, and emotional over-commitment in a tight anchor is its own risk.

On the fifth match I could not confirm the pairings, so I am not offering a firm read. If Sungjae Im is on the International side, his putter remains a live question—and in foursomes one cold putter can strand an entire pair.

Medinah's length helps nobody in particular. At 7,657 yards the approaches get long, and repeated long approaches bring the American distance advantage back again and again. Medinah does not hand out bonuses; it is a filter that already leans one way.

Contrarian: a hot putter is a story, not a signal

Thursday's hot putting does not translate to Friday, because in foursomes the big putt is assigned by the walk order. A team's hottest putter may never take a meaningful putt all session. Correlation and cause are separate things here.

Second, "the United States is favoured in all five" is not analysis; it is a market structure. My line comes from a single source; cross-checking another book could change the picture. I do not chase winners—I chase the moment the market forgets to update.

Third, a claim is circulating that Fox won the Claret Jug this summer. I could not match it in my records, and almost the entire justification for the Fox-Lee pick leans on it. No decision without verification.

Fourth, the circuit I work on at home suffers the same disease: depth is built across a 51-week domestic schedule, not in one glamorous week. Team events work the same way—the floor built over years matters, not two days of form. Sample size is not a shield, it is a torch you point at your own bias.

Takeaway

Three places to watch on Friday: the first hole of the anchor match, Morikawa's irons, and who takes the tee shots on the par threes. Rain or wind rewrites the rhythm of alternate shot, and that is when favourite logic breaks fastest. Whether the certainty the market is showing comes from the course or from the business—that is the question sitting on the table by Friday evening.