The tee sheet for the opening morning of the Presidents Cup went up at Medinah on Wednesday afternoon, and the headline pairing needed no real explanation. Scottie Scheffler will open his week alongside Sam Burns, the partnership Brandt Snedeker has leaned on through Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups alike, sent out first in Match 1 against Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im at 12:35pm local time. Four more four-ball matches follow in close succession behind them, and inside little more than an hour every player on both twelve-man rosters will have hit a competitive shot in the 2026 edition.
The world's eyes turn to Medinah Country Club.#PresidentsCup pic.twitter.com/nYSn8WxJTs
— Presidents Cup (@PresidentsCup) September 21, 2026
The five matches
Snedeker and Geoff Ogilvy, his International counterpart, each showed their hand early rather than saving surprises for later sessions. The full order:
- Match 1, 12:35pm: Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns (US) v Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im (International)
- Match 2, 12:53pm: Cameron Young and Xander Schauffele (US) v Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune (International)
- Match 3, 1:11pm: Justin Thomas and Jackson Koivun (US) v Corey Conners and Nico Echavarria (International)
- Match 4, 1:29pm: Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa (US) v Ryan Fox and Adam Scott (International)
- Match 5, 1:47pm: Patrick Cantlay and Chris Gotterup (US) v Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim (International)
There is a logic to the order that says as much about the captains’ thinking as the pairings themselves. Snedeker’s strongest, most proven combination leads off, his newest partnership anchors the back, and the two American rookies in the lineup, Koivun and Gotterup, are both sheltered alongside senior partners rather than thrown out together.
Scheffler’s record, and why Burns matters
Scheffler arrives at Medinah as the best player in the world by a distance that shows up in almost every statistic that measures such things, and yet his Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup record together sits at a modest 3-5-1 across his two prior team appearances, the only multiple major winner with a losing record in this event since the turn of the century. Snedeker’s answer to that awkward fact has not been to shuffle Scheffler around looking for a spark, but to send him out early and often with Burns, the partner he trusts most and the one Scheffler himself has credited with keeping team weeks loose. It is a low-risk opening move dressed up as a bold one. If it works, and history says it has more often than not, the rest of the American side gets to play catch-up to a lead rather than dig one.
A debut worth watching
Match 3 carries a story of its own. Jackson Koivun, twenty-one years old and the youngest American to play in this event since Jordan Spieth in 2013, makes his Presidents Cup debut alongside Justin Thomas, who has been in this role of steadying senior partner before and clearly relishes it. Their opponents, Corey Conners and Nico Echavarria, give Ogilvy a pairing built on steadiness rather than star power, which against a rookie making his first walk down a Presidents Cup fairway might be exactly the right kind of opponent to unsettle him, or exactly the wrong one to test him properly.
The future looks bright.
— PGA Tour (@PGATour) September 1, 2026
Jackson Koivun is set to make his @PresidentsCup debut at Medinah. pic.twitter.com/egDCONwgss
The Internationals’ long wait
Ogilvy’s side arrives with a heavier weight to carry than any individual pairing can fix. The International team has not won the Presidents Cup since 1998 and has now lost ten consecutive editions, a run so lopsided it has occasionally threatened the event’s own reason for existing. What Ogilvy does have, tucked into the back of his lineup, is the best four-ball record on either roster: Si Woo Kim, who carries a perfect 3-0-0 mark in this format into his match alongside Tom Kim against Patrick Cantlay and Chris Gotterup. If the Internationals are going to find the sort of afternoon that turns a Thursday into momentum rather than another chapter in the drought, the Kim brothers’ match is as likely a place as any to look for it.
Medinah’s ghosts
There is a specific piece of history hanging over this particular clubhouse that nobody involved needs reminding of. Medinah hosted the 2012 Ryder Cup, where the United States surrendered a 10-6 lead heading into Sunday singles and lost to Europe in one of the more painful collapses either side of that rivalry has produced. Snedeker played in that match. Three of his current assistant captains were on the property that week too. None of that history decides a single putt on Thursday, but it does explain, better than any statistic, why a captain who could have played it safer chose instead to send his best player out first, with his most trusted partner, against the strongest resistance the other side could offer. Medinah has punished American overconfidence before. Snedeker seems determined not to give it the chance again.