MEDINAH, Ill. – Of all the roads to this Presidents Cup, Nick Taylor has traveled the longest.
The 38-year-old Canadian has been on the cusp of this event for most of the last decade, never making the team. He has won an impressive five times on the PGA Tour – more than almost any of his teammates – but only once during a Presidents’ Cup year. It happened to the 2024 Phoenix Openin February, six months before the International team was finalized, where it was left on the outside looking for. Earlier this week, he explained to GOLF.com how the pain of missing the ’24 Cup – held in his homeland – had diminished in acceptance. But then he saw from afar that his best friends were competing in Canada and the scab was reopened again.
Finally now, in a year when he he didn’t have win, he received the positive phone call that he had won a place. And then, on Wednesday night, the same captain, Geoff Ogilvy, said he had to wait a little longer – he had to sit out the first session.
It could be all the best for him.
Taylor had the smoothest way to ease into her first team event. He went to the 1st tee like a viewer Thursday morning, taking everything in. He watched each of his teammates go by, then warmed up and played a few practice holes in the background, not knowing basically everyone on the property.
Then, on Friday afternoon, he had to sit and watch again, as Corey Conners played his opening shot. Conners is as comfortable a pairing as Taylor could have asked for, playing alongside one of his best friends. They have only been matched against, statistically, the two best golfers on the planet in Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns.
On paper, it seemed like the creation of an unfair fight. But I would be ignorant of Taylor’s young career. His second career victory came at Pebble Beach in 2020, in a final pairing against Phil Mickelson. He beat Tommy Fleetwood in an unforgettable playoff at the Canadian Open 2023. That Phoenix Open win? From a playoff. His latest victory? Another playoff.
Taylor is 3-0 in extra time on the PGA Tour, which is why you should be worried, if you are a Nick Taylor fan, to see how squirrelly his tee shot was on the 18th hole, in an almost borderline battle between the United States and Canada, holding a 1-up lead.
“That was just a poor swing at the wrong time,” he said of the tee ball that ended up about 50 yards right down the center of the fairway.
He had found Conners so far right that the only move was to cut him 70 yards back into the fairway, short of the Americans’ tee shot. The number was 151 yards for his uphill approach, with a little wind in his face. A gassy 9-iron, he thought, if these were normal conditions, but they weren’t. The adrenaline of a team that spent years imagining had arrived in full. A 9 iron “hold-off” it is, and “it came out perfect”.
He and his caddy weren’t sure they could even get their ball to the tee, but they had about eight clues that stood behind the green waving their flags in the air. “It was a great feeling to walk that was a kick-in,” Taylor said. Sam Burns’ 15-footer to split the game in half bounced hard over the lip of the hole and spat out, a kind of omen for the entire afternoon, which the Internationals swept, 5-0.
If that foursomes session was a great reminder not to count the downsides, then Taylor’s final approach was the perfect derivative of it. People really counted on him for most of his career. And at times, he gave them plenty of reasons to do so. (He’s only netted a top 25 in 22 major starts.) Yet he also has this uncanny knack of hitting the exact shot when certain moments call for it.
If what you saw wasn’t proof enough, then here’s a message from his PGA Tour friend watching from Scottsdale, who has known Taylor since they were freshman roommates at the University of Washington.
“Any game, anytime, anywhere,” Joel Dahmen replied via text. “Dude is a boss in crunch time.”
