EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsTrailing by three points heading into Sunday's singles matches, the U.S. team stormed back to take 9.5 out of 12 points to win the Presidents Cup for the 11th straight time.Rookie Jacob Bridgeman rolled in a 3-foot par putt for a 1-up victory over Min Woo Lee, giving the U.S. the clinching points needed to close out a 17-13 victory at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago."I'm super proud of them," U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker said. "These guys never gave up. They believed in each other. They did a hell of a job. They were really special."I knew these guys were special. I knew they were close. I saw it last year at the Ryder Cup, how hard those guys fought for Keegan [Bradley] on Sunday. I was just trying to get them to fight for me the same way."What were the keys to the comeback? Who stepped up when needed? And what does it all mean for the U.S. heading into next September's Ryder Cup in Ireland?What's your big takeaway for the U.S. team from the President's Cup?Schlabach: The U.S. team showed plenty of resilience in coming back from a 10.5-7.5 deficit by winning nine singles matches Sunday, but the Americans won't be able to dig themselves another huge hole when they play Europe in the 2027 Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in Ireland.The U.S. team boasted seven of the top 10 golfers in the Official World Golf Ranking, including six of the top eight. The highest-ranked International golfers were Si Woo Kim (14th in the world) and Ryan Fox (22nd).On paper, at least, the International team should have been overmatched. But again, the Americans couldn't come up with the correct strategies and pairings for foursomes (alternate shot) matches. After taking a 3-2 lead in Thursday's four-ball (best ball) session, the U.S. dropped all five foursomes matches Friday. The International team had a 7-2 advantage in foursomes overall.Since 2023, the U.S. is 8-26 in foursomes in two Presidents Cups and two Ryder Cups. World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler is somehow 1-8-0 in foursomes during team competitions, which is probably why Snedeker sat him for Saturday's afternoon session.Uggetti: Sunday's comeback was both impressive and further evidence of where the United States has gone wrong in team events. There's no doubt that the Americans have the individual talent to overwhelm both the Internationals in this event and the Europeans in the Ryder Cup; they pretty much show it every time they play in Sunday singles and dominate.Yet this week was also a very clear display of their shortcomings in the other two formats these team match-play events require. Whether that's indicative of poor preparation in those formats, a continued misunderstanding of foursomes or simply bad strategy, it's unclear. What is clear is that in the Ryder Cup, the United States can't get away with going down big heading into Sunday sessions. Just look at what happened at Bethpage when it needed a nearly historic singles session to attempt a comeback that ultimately fell short.Jim Furyk, who is set to be the U.S. captain at Adare Manor next year, was an assistant captain under Snedeker this week and it is likely that there will be some crossover in staff between this event and next year's Ryder Cup. It will be fascinating to see what Furyk & Co. take away from this week's performance and I wonder if suffering a loss at the hands of a huge underdog like the Internationals would have been the wake-up call the U.S. team needed.Biggest surprise/positive for the U.S.?Schlabach: Chris Gotterup won three times on the PGA Tour this season, so it's not a huge surprise that he performed well in his first international team competition as a pro.Gotterup lost his first match with Patrick Cantlay in Thursday's four-ball session, falling 3-and-2 to the South Korea tandem of Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim. Gotterup sat out Friday's foursomes and didn't get a point on the board in the first two days.But then the New Jersey native went 3-0 on the weekend. The U.S. found a pairing that works in Gotterup and Cameron Young. It was surprising that they didn't go out together Thursday. They took down Canada's Nick Taylor and Corey Conners 2-and-1 in Saturday's four-ball session and then routed Adam Scott and Sungjae Im 6-and-4 in foursomes a few hours later.On Sunday, Gotterup was 3 up after five holes in his singles match against South Africa's Christiaan Bezuidenhout but didn't put him away until the 18th.What was perhaps most surprising was that Gotterup led both teams in strokes-gained putting (4.77) after ranking 32nd in that statistic on tour this season. He hits the ball a mile off the tee, ranking seventh in driving distance (322.9). If Gotterup improves his accuracy off the tee and his iron play, he might become a superstar.Gotterup clearly did enough this week to be a serious contender for the next Ryder Cup team.Uggetti: Picking Jackson Koivun was a bold but entirely justified move by Snedeker. That it paid off in such a way was not so much a credit to him but rather to Koivun, who like many Americans have in the past, excelled immediately in singles. Koivun, alongside Justin Thomas, played well enough during their two four-ball sessions to earn 1.5 points. But once Sunday came around, Koivun had to face off against the International team's best -- Si Woo Kim.Down two at one point, Koivun came all the way back and earned the full point to finish 2-0-1 -- he was the only player on the U.S. team who didn't lose any matches. The point helped put the finishing touches on the Americans' comeback, but it was the way that he did it -- swaggering off the 18th tee box after hitting a perfect drive, twirling his club on the fairway and walking in birdie putts -- that stood out.The American team hasn't always been able to find players who can inject a shot of energy into the event or their team when they need it most. Thomas has been one of those players and was again this week, but he is 33 now and no longer the young and exciting talent he once was. Through one team event, it appears Koivun has the game and the energy to be his emotional successor. It's enough to feel like Koivun can start getting his passport ready for Ireland next year.Biggest disappointment for the U.S.?Schlabach: Wyndham Clark criticized fans at Medinah Country Club for not being loud after Thursday's sessions, saying it was "kind of dead out there."Clark didn't exactly give the fans in Chicago a lot about which to cheer.The U.S. Open champion went 1-4 in the Presidents Cup after winning his opening four-ball match with Collin Morikawa. That pairing lost their next two matches before Clark and Sam Burns fell to Fox and Min Woo Lee in Saturday's foursomes.On Sunday, Clark lost to Tom Kim 3-and-2 in singles.In Clark's defense, he didn't play awful golf. He ranked third among the 24 players in strokes gained: total (6.04), trailing only Young (10.57) and Im (8.97), per Data golf. Clark and his partners just couldn't figure out a way to finish off matches.Uggetti: It might be the most confounding question in the sport right now: Why can't Scottie Scheffler look like the No. 1 player in the world in foursomes? To be fair to Scheffler, this is a problem that appears to plague most American players. But Scheffler's 1-8-0 record in the format is confounding given that he has been the most dominant player in the sport for a handful of years now.The easy answer is that foursomes requires an entirely different kind of skill, approach and thought process than any other format in golf, and especially the one that Scheffler works so hard to hone during most of the PGA Tour season. Even though his record in four-ball (6-12-4) isn't as bad as foursomes, it's still far below his standard.This doesn't necessarily mean Scheffler needs to be benched as he was Saturday afternoon by Snedeker but for as competitive of a player as he is in stroke play, it would stand to reason that Scheffler himself would want to figure out why he has struggled in this format and what he could do to improve. It could also mean that it's time the American team looked at a fresh new pairing for Scheffler. Putting him alongside his friend Burns hasn't exactly reaped great results, and his pairings at Bethpage (Russell Henley and Bryson DeChambeau) also resulted in losses.What can the U.S. take from this for the Ryder Cup next September?Uggetti: After the win Sunday, Snedeker was already looking ahead to next year."This team is going to be a problem in Ireland," he told PGA Tour Radio.You would think that after Bradley's quotes backfired and were used as motivation for the European team, that the Americans would learn to not give their opponent any more bulletin-board material. And yet, the U.S. team can't seem to help itself.Still, the week at Medinah can be very useful for Furyk and the rest of his staff given that we saw a handful of players show not only the ability to play well in the team format at times but also a level of confidence that was absent in Rome and at Bethpage.If I had to pick a team today for Adare Manor, my only locks would be Scheffler, Young, Gotterup, Burns, Xander Schauffele, Koivun, Clark and Morikawa. I think the latter two are the ones you can make a case for falling out of this group, but I believe it would benefit the Americans, not only next year but beyond, to lean into creating a core around Young, Gotterup and Koivun specifically. That also leaves theoretically four spots up for grabs and I feel as if there's a list of about 10 guys (maybe more) who could have big years in 2027 and find their way there.Schlabach: I agree with Paolo's picks for the locks to make the team. Remember that the U.S. team changed its qualification rules for the third straight time in September.The points system will be based entirely on tournaments in 2027, so the aforementioned golfers will have to continue to play well next season. The qualification period lasts from the season opener at the American Express until the second FedEx Cup playoff event at the BMW Championship.Besides coming from behind to win, I think the American captain and his vice captains had to be most excited about how Koivun and Gotterup performed. I agree that they might become mainstays on the U.S. roster, and Young has been the best American golfer in the past two team competitions. He isn't going anywhere.I'm not sure it's going to matter, to be honest. The Americans haven't won a Ryder Cup on European soil since captain Tom Watson led his team to a 16-13 victory at The Belfry in England in September 1993. That was more than three decades ago, and the Europeans seem to have figured out how to excel in foursomes and four-ball more than the Americans.
