Medinah Country Club was the site of one of the greatest comebacks in Ryder Cup history, as Europe came from 10-6 down to win 14.5-13.5 back in 2012.
Despite the USA coming from 10.5-7.5 down to win the Presidents Cup 17-13 at the same venue, go down in the annals of golfing history it will not.
To be fair, there have been no comparisons between the two. One was very well near a sporting miracle, the other was a narrowly avoided humiliation.
The most important takeaway for the USA after their escape from Medinah must be to not to allow this win to paper over the cracks. The performance was shameful from the hosts across the first three days, to the point the Internationals were inexplicably favourites going into the singles.
As it happened, the USA’s enormous superiority over their opponents told in the final session, making the win look relatively comfortable in the end, but the same old issues cropped up once again.
USA again overlooking strategy
Firstly, there was the most strategic element to the Presidents Cup: the live announcement of pairings. In the Ryder Cup, captains have to second guess what their opposite number will do and hope to outmanoeuvre them with the most statistically suitable teams. Europe, particularly since Paul McGinley’s reign in 2014, have leaned heavily into the analytics side of things, especially on foursomes where strategy is key, knowing who will drive on what hole, who is expected to have the most putts, and ensuring a balance between teams
Across the last six Ryder Cups, the foursomes score is 30.5-17.5 in Europe’s favour, and in those 17.5 American points, 11.5 came in two editions where the USA simply outgunned weak European outfits on home soil.
Generally speaking, the USA are lagging miles behind their rivals in the format, which always enhances scrutiny on the captains and the teams themselves.
Moving beyond pairs golf, captain Brandt Snedeker led with Scottie Scheffler on Sunday, allowing Internationals captain Geoff Ogilvy to throw sacrificial lamb Nico Echavarria out. The USA were favourites in 11 of the 12 matches and almost any 12 matches would’ve produced something similar, but it doesn’t mean the decision itself wasn’t wrong, and there’s almost an arrogant dismissal of doing things the right way.
Instead of submitting to data, they insist on putting pals together and hoping that this time it will be different. Some of the USA's best pairings have looked their most unlikely: Keegan Bradley and Phil Mickelson; Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed; Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar.
They can get away with it in the Presidents Cup, where Scottie Scheffler can be miles below his best and still win three points from four matches, but the fine margins are everything at the Ryder Cup.
Cultural issues remain
For years now, the USA have faced accusations that team golf simply doesn’t mean as much to them as individual golf, that they don’t have the camaraderie the Europeans do, and that they’re simply not as good in the format. Perhaps some of that is explained by having a team competition every year, whereas the Europeans wait two years, but the Presidents Cup isn't going away, and players must find their motivation from somewhere.
Make no mistake, whatever 12 players are picked to wear the stars and stripes all want to win; even Tiger Woods, who never had his best golf in Ryder Cups, still wanted to win, it just mattered less to him than the other 51 weeks of the year. For Europeans, the Ryder Cup has essentially become a fifth major.
Rory McIlroy, while still fresh-faced and major-less, declared the Ryder Cup to be little more than an exhibition before making his debut. But finding himself in the team room on the eve of the competition, hearing from the great Seve Ballesteros, changed all that, and there is no more passionate European than McIlroy nowadays.
Jon Rahm, one of the best golfers of his generation and already well on his way to becoming a Ryder Cup legend, spoke of ‘forgetting who you are’ at Ryder Cups. That is to say, egos get left at the door, and you’re now simply one of 12. Europe now has a culture the States could only dream of, and it's been decades in the making.
USA lacking inspiration
The final issue for the States might be captaincy. For Europe, the captain seems less important than ever; there’s a thread running from the 1980s, from Ballesteros to Olazabal, to Montgomerie, to Westwood, to Poulter, to McIlroy and from McIlroy to whatever the next generation looks like. Ryder Cup icons that appreciate what the competition means, with their names forever associated with it.
That almost spiritual bond combined with the analytics provided by Eduardo Molinari means the team are lacking in neither motivation or direction.
For the Americans, they seem to be lacking in both. Keegan Bradley made endless poor tactical decisions in 2025, even managing to pick statistically the worst foursomes pairing out of the 132 possible pairings in Harris English and Collin Morikawa, and then somehow sent them out again.
Snedeker then looked like anything but a leader of men at Medinah, and while chest-pounding and flag waving will only get you so far, his self-flaggelation about how he’d let his team down was hardly inspiring, while he was unable to justify his reasoning for picking certain pairings.
The USA have now won the Ryder Cup just twice in nearly 20 years, both times boasting vast superiority over Europe when all the captains had to do was get out of the way. Interestingly, their previous success came in 2008, where European captain Nick Faldo copped plenty of criticism for his captaincy.
Of course, it’s very easy to criticise the captain for everything that goes wrong, and even easier to do so without offering up a solution for how to actually improve things.
But the USA need to start looking inwards. Snedeker saying he was tired of hearing how they can’t play team golf, and that they’ve just proved it there and then (by winning a load of singles matches) is once again missing the point. The USA can celebrate their win – the nature of the comeback was impressive if not hugely surprising – but they still look miles away from a team that can win a Ryder Cup on European soil.
There is scar tissue there, and the USA need a galvanising presence in the team room if they're to win on European soil next year, but right now they look as far away as ever.
Snedeker, in a rare act of defiance after the victory, declared that “this team will be a problem in Ireland”.
Perhaps, but it won’t be a problem for Europe.
