The worst-case scenario for the Presidents Cup is an International team upset | Opinion - Golfweek

CHICAGO, Ill. — The Presidents Cup isn’t among the most important projects in Brian Rolapp’s gut renovation of the PGA Tour, ranking somewhere after designing a split-level schedule, building media rights revenue and installing a shredder for the perfumed letters sent by agents representing LIV Golf’s groveling refugees. But the matches at Medinah Country Club should remind him that the remodeling needs to go beyond the weekly stroke play product. 

It’s been 32 years since the Presidents Cup was created to draft off the drama (and revenue) of the Ryder Cup, and more than 20 years since it became as stale as the offerings in a Pyongyang deli. When the U.S. was last defeated, Bill Clinton wasn’t yet halfway through his second term, the second-ranked golfer in the world was Mark O’Meara — now retired even from senior events — and Donald Trump was desecrating skylines to build monstrosities to honor his fragile little ego. Which is to say that a lot of things have changed since 1998, but not everything. 

Debating the shortcomings of the Presidents Cup risks having the International team’s players and captains interpret it as an indictment of their effort. It isn’t, and it’s necessary. The Cup was intended to capitalize on a generational talent pool — Greg Norman, Nick Price, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els — but today finds itself swimming in the shallows of Si Woo Kim, Nico Echavarria, Ryo Hisatsune and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Fine players all, but not legends around whom one can market a compelling event. Many an accusing finger points at LIV for the Internationals’ lopsided losses in the last two Cups, but the exiling of Cameron Smith or Louis Oosthuizen doesn’t account for the eight successive American wins prior to the league’s launch. LIV is more excuse than explanation. 

As a competitive spectacle, the Presidents Cup is fundamentally broken, and the worst thing that could happen at Medinah is for Geoff Ogilvy’s International squad to pull off a shock victory. Sure, even some U.S. fans might enjoy a romantic underdog upset and a reversal of three decades of drubbings, but it would also embolden optimists and opportunists to hail the dawn of a new era of parity and it would set back an effort to fix things by a decade or more. 

What that fix could look like is another matter. 

The only real tweak to the Presidents Cup has been the total points at stake. It began as 32 and grew to 34 — rigging the system for the team with the deeper bench — before being revised downward in 2015 to 30 versus 28 for the Ryder Cup. But alterations to the format didn’t alter the outcome, and it’s difficult to imagine things changing in Chicago when the stronger half of the International team compares poorly with even the weaker half of the U.S. team. There are two other modifications that could be attempted — one radical, one progressive — but neither will be front of mind in Ponte Vedra. 

There’s a good chance that by Sunday night we’ll hear the biennial cry for the Presidents Cup to become a co-ed affair, with six men and six women comprising each team. There are several arguments in favor of such. It would make it more competitive and perhaps even render the Internationals as favorites, since there are six eligible women ranked in the world’s top 10, five of them in the top six. It would clearly distinguish this event from the Ryder Cup, a lingering comparison that will always cheapen the pale imitation. And it would embrace a format that departs from the weekly fare, which the Tour has shown a willingness to do in rethinking the FedEx Cup playoffs. 

But there are factors mitigating against such a seismic shift. The Presidents Cup is profitable and Rolapp likely isn’t incentivized to roll the dice with revenue when investors are watching closely. He also knows that his job is to create playing opportunities and money for his members, not for Craig Kessler’s constituents on the LPGA Tour, and that going co-ed would be dilutive to the core mission. And while it might generate social media brownie points from the woke folk, Rolapp can’t be eager to assume responsibility for marketing LPGA assets, a task that seems ever more onerous given the poor viewing ratings for the recent Solheim Cup. 

The other potential change is more incremental and focused on an area seldom scrutinized: ownership. 

The Presidents Cup is wholly a PGA Tour product and the PGA Tour decides everything. Who captains both teams. Who’s eligible to play (or not) on both teams. Qualification criteria for both teams. How both teams are resourced and managed. And where the matches are held for both domestic and international venues. The latter might explain why two of the last five “foreign” Presidents Cups were staged within walking distance of the U.S. border, betraying a desire to keep this “global” event within North American time zones to maximize media rights value. 

For an event that wants to emulate the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup does the exact opposite at every turn. Instead of cultivating a real rivalry, it feels like divisions of the same parent company meeting for a friendly off-site. 

Rolapp should sell the International team, whether to a conglomeration of overseas tours, a wealthy individual who fancies being a player in the sport alongside a solvent partner, or to private equity. This is a platform with value but no direction. Let a new owner decide captaincies, eligibility, resources and foreign venues. Hanging a new shingle won’t necessarily make it more competitive, but it would at least mirror one crucial aspect of the Ryder Cup by granting the International team the self-determination necessary to give itself the best opportunity to succeed. But that would require Rolapp overcoming the control freak vapors that filter through the ducts in the building formerly known as the GloHo. 

If nothing changes — and an International victory this weekend assures that nothing changes — then the Presidents Cup is doomed to continue being judged unfavorably against the Ryder Cup, profitable but far from maximized in its value. It could be leveraged for the PGA Tour’s ambitions to make more impact internationally in the fourth quarter, as a vehicle to exploit untapped markets and as a scheduling device to encourage top players to compete in the far-flung national opens it has pledged to elevate. 

After 28 years, it’s time to stop pretending that the Presidents Cup is anything other than an exhibition of American supremacy. It needs a strategy for the future, something more than simply hoping that the Internationals will finally hole more putts than the Americans. Because the average rank of a U.S. team member in Strokes Gained Putting is 45.8, versus 74.8 for their opponents. So that would seem like a losing game plan. Again. 

Eamon Lynch is a columnist for Golfweek and a frequent contributor to Golf Channel.