Don't Let Sunday at Medinah Distract You From Team USA's Glaring Problem

It took a historic comeback in Sunday Singles, but come sundown, the Americans were drinking from comically large bottles of Michelob Ultra to celebrate an 11th-straight Presidents Cup victory. A 9½-2½ beatdown in singles made the difference, just as it nearly did a year ago at Bethpage Black.

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But despite the win over the rest of the world, Team USA has plenty of work to do before its trip across the pond to Adare Manor, where it will face a European side that has owned this fight on home soil for three decades.

So what needs to change? The answer boils down to a single word: foursomes.

On Friday at Medinah, the Americans were swept 5-0 in alternate shot. A day later, they squeaked out a 2-2 tie, which must have felt like a win. At Bethpage, they lost both foursomes sessions to the Europeans, 3-1. Go back further and the results stay the same: the Internationals won the 2024 Presidents Cup foursomes 6-3, and Europe took them 7-1 at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler shut down chatter about team chemistry early last week, but these results seem to back it up.

Foursomes is the one format in these events that truly forces two players to work together. In best ball, each player plays his own ball, with strategy mostly limited to the greens, and Sunday singles is mano a mano. That's why it's not hard to believe the Americans have dominated singles for three straight years. It's as close as they get to a normal Tour week, which Brandt Snedeker stressed to them before Sunday's session began.

I'm not claiming to have the answer. I don't know if the problem is too little analytics, too much reliance on them, or something the numbers can't reveal. What I do know is that they have no hope against Luke Donald's tightly knit group unless they crack a strategy for those eight matches.

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Captain Jim Furyk's addition of Justin Ray is a smart early move. Ray has worked with the Solheim Cup team for years and will be a fitting counterpart to Europe's number-cruncher, Edoardo Molinari. But analytics alone won't fix chemistry, and Furyk is chasing America's first Ryder Cup win on foreign soil since 1993.

Medinah did reveal something that may keep Donald up at night, though, and that's Jackson Koivun.

The 21-year-old rookie didn't just shine in his debut. He did it with a swagger that's next to impossible to find, especially in a kid who was playing college golf a few months ago. He was the only undefeated player on either side, and on Sunday he took down the Internationals' best player, Si Woo Kim—his reaction to both shots on 18 got me off my couch.

Koivun may help in foursomes, but he isn't the answer. That equation has to be solved in the next 350 days, or Furyk will be just the latest captain to leave Europe empty-handed.