Captain America Brandt Snedeker he knows that no lead is safe around Medina. Snedeker was on the US Ryder Cup team that blew a 10-6 lead over the Europeans on the 2012 Chicago course.
So, while Snedeker’s team enters on Sunday at the Presidents Cup 2026 followed by the Internationals 10.5-7.5Snedeker believed things were far from over.
That belief — both in his team and in whatever Medinah mystique may exist — proved prophetic Sunday as the Americans came out on top in singles with a flurry of haymakers to take the momentum and put pressure on the underdog Internationals before pulling off a comeback Sunday, the biggest in Presidents Cup history.
Here’s how the Americans’ Sunday comeback unfolded.
Snedeker’s plan to load up his singles line to put a lot of red on the board early and overwhelm the Internationals – a strategy that the victorious GB&I Walker Cup team used. in his own return on Sunday beginning of the month – it worked exactly as he hoped.
Cameron Young got out first and took care of Ryo Hisatsune 3 & 2 to put the first American point on the board.
“That’s the job he gave me today,” Young told NBC’s Cara Banks after the win. “To go out and do my job for the guys behind me, that’s all I was trying to do.”
Tom Kim responded for the Internationals by beating Wyndham Clark 3 & 2 in the second game. Kim finished the week going 4-1-0. He is the first international player to win four points in a week since 2015.
Kim’s win over Clark only briefly turned the tide as Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler followed with big wins for the Americans in the third and fourth games. Thomas blanked Corey Conners 5&3 and Scheffler, who was benched Saturday for foursomes, dispatched Nico Echavarria 2&1.
After winning three of the first four games and with red all over the table, the Americans had taken the momentum and the crowd in Medinah was energized.
Sungjae Im briefly halted the American momentum with a 3 and 1 win over Sam Burns, cutting the Internationals’ lead to 12.5-10.5. But while Internazionale were in the lead when Burns finished, they were looking at a big hill as they went ahead in five of the remaining seven games as they needed three points to win the cup.
The next American point came courtesy of Chris Gotterup, who held off a hard charge from Christiaan Bezuidenhout to win 1 up.
With the board covered in red, the Internationals’ best chance to thwart the American comeback was for Hideki Matsuyama to hold on to beat Collin Morikawa and for Adam Scott to throw his matches against Patrick Cantlay.
It was not being.
Matsuyama led by 1 with four to play, but Morikawa made a 30-footer for birdie on 15 to win the hole after Matsuyama missed a three-foot birdie putt of his own. The two halved holes 16 and 17 and then Morikawa won the final hole after Matsuyama missed a 15-footer for par.
“Go and finish your business,” Morikawa told Banks about the US attitude going into Sunday after finishing Matsuyama. “We can only control what we can control, and that’s all we can do. One game at a time, one shot at a time, and see what happens at the end of the day.”
Cantlay led by 2 with four to play, but Scott birdied the 15th and was in position to tie the match on the par-3 16th. But Cantlay missed a 57-foot birdie putt, and Scott missed his birdie attempt to fall 2. Cantlay closed out the match on the 17th to win 2 and 1.
With the Internationals in dire straits, Si Woo Kim needed to fight back The new Jackson Koivun for Internationals to have any life. Kim jumped Koivun early and led 2 through 10, but Koivun won 11, 12, 13 and 15 to take the lead before finishing the Internationals’ best player in 18.
Koivun’s win brought the USA to 14.5 points, one point away from victory. But with the Americans in good position in the last three games, the comeback of the United States was complete when the 21-year-old put the dagger in Kim on the final hole and Jacob Bridgeman’s 1-up victory over Min Woo Lee officially cemented the Medinah Miracle 2.0: Presidents Cup edition.
“These guys never lost faith,” Snedeker told Banks after the win. “I told the guys last night that funny things happen here. Medniah hits you; funny things happen. They definitely went out there and played their ass off today. I’m so proud of those guys.”
