Patrick Cantlay delivered a stunning defeat at the Internationals on Presidents Cup on Saturday.
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MONTREAL – The drinks are flowing in the Presidents Cup team rooms, but our writers – James Colgan, Dylan Dethier and Nick Piastowski – have slowed down to sort out the best, the worst, the wildest and the stupidest from an exciting Presidents Cup week.
Dylan Dethier, senior author (@dylan_dethier): Hello, James. Hello, Nick. I've seen the rest of our staff already hold MVPs, so let's take a different angle: If you were giving out grades, which player gets the highest and lowest grades?
James Colgan, news and features editor (@jamescolgan26): Dylan, Nick — hello! Top marks to both of you this week, and to Brother Kim (Tom and Si Woo), who delivered the most entertaining golf game I think I've ever seen. I'm going to give them an A-minus for the week, because they lost the cup but kept it again. About low scorers? Let's just say that Brian Harman will probably go to bed tonight very thankful for the US win, because his winless performance (which includes SG for the week: -8.54 Total, the worst in the field) should have been forgotten. I think that fits the D-plus.
Nick Piastowski, editor-in-chief (@nickpia): Right off the bat I will say that you guys, along with GOLF videographer Emma Devine, were the real MVPs. You also can't argue with the Kims, and Tom has become the face of the event. But my “A” goes to Friday's effort from Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im. A day after the Internationals moved, they went out and KO'd American stars Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schaffele 7 and 6 and set the tone. The lowest grade? Here is Harman's second vote. And one for Mike Weir. He shot his team on Saturday afternoon.
Dethier: I feel like I'm going to have to deduct points from you both for failing to mention anyone on the team who just threw down the wrong win. I'll give a shout out to the pair of Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, who went 4-1-0. They put the Cup out of reach when they changed their foursomes match on Saturday evening, and closed the door with early wins on Sunday afternoon: Schauffele won six of nine holes against Jason Day and Cantlay won three of the last four holes against Taylor Pendrith. The stroke-gain numbers don't sit well with these two, either: They were the best golfers in Montreal this week. A and A! And while I hate to give this one away, I'm going to give the low grade to Sungjae Im, the only player to lose four games this week. There were a lot of guys playing really bad golf but this team needs me to be the difference; he wasn't there. That's our D.
Another guess: What's the biggest mistake, either strategy or execution, that you've seen this week?
Colgan: The simple answer here is what Mike Weir, the International Captain, did in choosing to play the same eight golfers for all 36 holes on Saturday. His team ran out of gas in time, and looked tired in most of the singles matches on Sunday. It was a huge tactical risk, and it backfired a lot. It may even cost INTs a tournament.
Piastowski: This is getting out there a bit, but the tension here was very short, it was made for many birds, it gave an advantage to the US, which, in my opinion, was a good team on paper.
Dethier: As our own Sean Zak says, these team events could be the Hindsight Olympics — but Weir's strategy on Saturday really backfired. The INT team mounted their horses and entered the ground. A bold call was made and it didn't work. The eight boys who played in those last three sessions went 2-6 on Saturday and 2-5-1 on Sunday. It's not good enough.
It's easy to oversimplify this analogy with a binary victory perspective, however. Name a person whose record does not tell the full story of his church.
7 funniest moments from a drunken US Presidents Cup press conference
James Colgan
Colgan: Max Homa! On paper he was 1-2-0 but he was one of the best players on both sides, according to the data obtained by the stroke. With Sungjae Im, Hideki Matsuyama praised him for carrying him in one of the shootouts on Saturday afternoon, but he finished 1-4-0.
Piastowski: Mack Hughes. He will never forget this week. Highlighting work. He even commented on it in his press conference.
Dethier: I'll give you Sam Burns. He was the only player in the field to go undefeated in the match, losing 3-0-1, but in golf's most important statistical category – the stroke count – he ended up dead, losing 5.99 strokes to the field. That's incredible! Of course, winning categories won by beating is not the point of the week; winning is something, and he did that better than anyone. But it wasn't always good.
Let's give people inside access, then. What can you see on site that people wouldn't see on TV?
Colgan: Things like this indeed sometimes on Saturday and Sunday. That's right in vogue abandoning this event for failing to deliver serious competition, and WL records will show that to be true, but for a few seconds on Saturday and Sunday things hung in the balance.
Piastowski: The Royal Montreal, while no architectural gem, was classy, easy to walk around, lined everywhere and made for a good game play. Also, many of the trees here are labeled, meaning what they are. Learned a lot about that.
Dethier: That's good, Nick. Seems like an academic week to you. I'm not sure how obvious this was on the radio, but I thought it was fun: There was real drama over who would defend the real winning point. It came down to Patrick Cantlay, who was in a position to defend his match at number 17, or Keegan Bradley, who was trying to get up from the bottom to win at 16. The greens are close together, separated only by a lake, so everyone nearby was waiting to see who would make their putt first. But then something funny happened: Bradley put first, from three or four feet, again you missed it. That meant that Cantlay's point, which he scored a few minutes later, brought the American team to 14.5. Bradley faced a bit of pressure when he lost the No. 17 but eventually got the win at No. 18 – a fitting end to next year's Ryder Cup captain's week.
Colgan: Ooh, another thing I noticed was that most people weren't Fluff Cowan, legendary caddy and longtime friend of Jim Furyk. Fluff had been in Montreal only four weeks after being removed from his position as wagon driver, and he seemed very happy with the opportunity to be among the boys.
Long live Fluff.
Dethier: In six months, what will you remember from this Presidents Cup?
Colgan: I will remember Si Woo Kim's “night of the night” celebration after he bogeyed the 16th hole on Saturday until I leave the golf industry or until I leave this earth … whichever comes first. It was the kind of time only club golf events give us – and it made me completely rethink my opinion of him as a player and competitor in a matter of weeks. Go, Si Woo. That moment moved. Although he lost two holes later. Or maybe because he did.
Piastowski: That the US needs to bottle up whatever hell it got on Saturday, after the beating on Friday, and carry it six months from now – to Bethpage Black.
Dethier: I'll miss the thrill of Friday's 5-0 sweep, which felt like it saved the week. That was good. I will miss Patrick Cantlay who put in the dark on Saturday night – yes, another one. And I'll miss the easy camaraderie of the US team as they roll into the final game of the day. The tension in the event had long since died down, but there was something special when Max Homa holed a 6-footer on the 17th green to close out Mackenzie Hughes. Some of the best golfers in the world surrounded him, beers already in hand, ending a season together that they had started alone. Good times.
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