MONTREAL – After a rainy morning, sleepy opening ceremony and muted Canadian crowd, this Presidents Cup was finally coming alive.
Tom Kim, human sparkplug, was up to his old antics. Long putts. Fist pumps. Guttural screams. Just like in 2022 – anything and everything to get himself, his partner and his team revved up.
But now it was getting spicy: Scottie Scheffler hadn’t just matched Kim, but, fascinatingly, had even given it back to him – squaring him up, looking him dead in the eye and barking, “What was that?!” when his tying birdie on the seventh green tumbled into the cup.
And so when Kim rammed home another birdie on the next green, uncorking another wild celebration in which he appeared to flex behind the back of a stalking Scheffler, the intensity of this must-win Presidents Cup threatened to boil over. That’s why International assistant captain Camilo Villegas gathered Kim and Sungjae Im and sent them up ahead, to the ninth green, as Scheffler lined up his attempt to tie.
Scheffler claims he didn’t notice the bit of gamesmanship; he was too busy reading his putt. But partner Russell Henley was well aware of what, to some, was a disrespectful breach of etiquette.
“Yeah, it bothered me a little bit,” Henley said.
Villegas said afterward that he was merely trying to defuse the situation, but U.S. assistant Kevin Kisner confronted him on the next hole about a move he believed was “bush league.”
With the Internationals’ deficit now trimmed to one, Villegas woofed that Kisner was overreacting: “Why are you being so sensitive?”
“Let’s play by the rules,” Kisner replied.
“I’m not breaking any rules,” Villegas countered.
Afterward, with the memory still fresh, Kisner said, “I thought they took some gamesmanship too far and over the line and lost some integrity. This should never be about the captain, and I try not to get involved. I just thought it was pretty bush league. So I just told him: ‘If that was the way they want to do it, game on.’”
What happened next helps explain why Scheffler is as competitive as he is – and why the Americans, in this event, are as dominant as they are.
Scheffler and Henley combined for four more birdies and didn’t allow the Internationals to win another hole en route to a 3-and-2 victory that set the tone for the U.S. team’s first opening-day sweep in 24 years.
As for the Internationals, it was yet another example of how they failed to meet the challenge.
Rather than digging into the drama after the ninth-hole dustup, rather than proving they’re game and unafraid, the Internationals seemed to stand down. The intensity dipped. The tension fizzled. The momentum putts failed to fall. Kim might have claimed that he doesn’t “shy away” from Scheffler, but over the final eight holes he didn’t appear fit for the fight. On the greens he acted timidly around Scheffler, a player whom he views as a big-brother figure and mentor. When Kim holed a long birdie putt on 10, he hardly emoted, perhaps reluctant to antagonize the world No. 1 once again.
The moment, it was clear, had passed.
“It’s hard to play with someone that you’re really, really close with, but it’s part of the gig,” Kim said. “I knew he was going to come out firing. I’ve played too much golf with him to know what he was gonna do.”
Meanwhile, following along inside the ropes, Kisner was relishing the decisive shift in attitude.
“Oh, I was loving it,” Kisner said. “If you can piss off the No. 1 player in the world, then I’m all for it.”
Xander Schauffele only became aware of the kerfuffle a few hours later, after he’d finished off his opening-day win alongside Tony Finau.
“From my perspective,” Schauffele said, “it looked like he poked the bear.”
And the rest of the home team ran away, too.
Schauffele birdied the last two holes to clinch the first match.
Collin Morikawa stuffed a wedge on the 14th hole and carried a 1-up lead to the house.
Keegan Bradley, in his return to team competition for the first time in a decade, made six putts over 10 feet and oozed the passion for partner play that made him such a revelation long ago.
And Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns, paired together for the first time, never blinked on the back nine to put a fifth and final point on the board.
Entering the week at Royal Montreal, the Internationals seemed thisclose to ending their two-decade run of misery. But this day, and this start, was an unmitigated disaster.
The Americans have never lost after capturing the opening session, and now they’re staked to a 5-0 lead for the first time since 2000 and heading into the foursomes format they’ve historically dominated.
“Look, the reality is it wasn’t a great day, but it’s like the first period of a hockey game,” International captain Mike Weir said. “You’re down, but there’s a long way to go. Still significant sessions left. That’s the way we’re looking at it.”
Another way is this: With such a large deficit already, moments of competitive tension might be rare moving forward.
They’d be wise to lean into them and capitalize.