MEDINAH, Ill. – Brandt Snedeker spent a good portion of his Sunday evening going back and forth, back and forth between Medinah’s 15th green and the 16th tee. From afar, it looked like steel, but up close, it was a frantic mess.
His cell phone was in his pocket, one hand almost always covering his mouth, masking his words like a baseball pitcher does with his glove. He whispered softly into his radio, then projected more strength at his increasingly giddy American players, then returned to a whisper for his assistant captains.
then, wham. An expletive in the mic.
The gravity of the Presidents Cup matches in advance had drawn the crowd towards the 18th hole and, damn itSnedeker wanted to be there to see “the kid,” Jackson Koivun, finish. But he looked around and thought of Russ Henley, just in a tied match, reading a putt on the 15th, then walking off the green to see … none of his teammates? Snedeker stayed put, for at least a few moments, as the demonstration of his many, many decisions built to a crescendo hundreds of meters away.
In the end, the team that was favored by the jump won this Cup, but the process to get there was a great reminder of four days: You don’t want that job. Yes, you, the lay punter at home who watched hours and hours of golf this fall football weekend. You think you’ll be a great captain, but you don’t want to be the captain of the United States.
Would you have put the best golfer since Tiger Woods in an alternate shot? Well, maybe if I wasn’t playing like the best golfer since Tiger.
Do you take a rookie you really believe in if he struggles at first, like Chris Gotterup did? Yes, JT led Thursday in Strokes Gained! He would do well with Cam Young. Oh, sorry – you look silly now because it’s Saturday night and Gotterup posted an Instagram story with the quote “My mf (dawg emoji)” and a photo of Cam Young. They burned Medinah to a crisp and you acted too slowly.
Would you have paired Scheffler with his best friend because relationships matter? Well, those friends keep losing those foursomes matches. Wait, I know those different friends of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay? You send them again, as if it were 2021 and they are invincible. Unfortunately, it’s 2026, and they’re not that invincible. They lose 4 and 3, and you wonder… Am I doing anything about this right?
The immense depth of the roster that routinely makes American teams the betting favorite is the same depth that makes their captain’s job strangely odd. No writers publish articles about the snubs left out of the International team. No one criticizes European captain Luke Donald, as he puts on a Hojgaard twin for more sessions than he plays. But back here on the American side of things, three or four American professionals – led mainly by JJ Spaun – are rather angry, annoyed or just disappointed with Snedeker for not choosing him.
A better name for these team events would be the Hindsight Olympics. And they drive American captains crazy. Zach Johnson’s captaincy in Rome went so badly – despite very close relations with his players – that he has been kept “out of the loop” ever since, as he recently explained to GOLF.com. (It was not handled well from American fans at that time, either.)
Keegan Bradley’s time in the Ryder Cup chair ended in a way he called “The darkest time of my life.” He spent much of 2026 in a not so sweet and not so private state of depression. Only on Sunday, after a historic singles performance, did he feel some release from those negative memories.
And before this comes across as a sympathy spree, much stress is deserved. Snedeker got it wrong in many ways – as did Bradley – some of which were out in the open and, if we are to trust his word, more of which happened behind closed doors. One thing became abundantly clear in each of his daily mating sessions: the International team accurately predicted many of his chess moves, and knocked him out with some of their own. Geoff Ogilvy and Trevor Immelman intentionally maintained close relations with the European captain Luke Donald to try to better understand his plan to beat the Americans. (Damn close they did.)
If Donald is an example of anything, it is that a successful captain can sprout a positive fruit from the declining years of a playing career. Captains are some of the final roles these professionals take on in the very public side of their careers. It is one of the final things that can be remembered.
Therefore, we ask: How do you remember Presidents Cup winning captain Brandt Snedeker?
For me, he’s a man who wanted the job badly, badly and got close enough to life as a lost American captain who realized it while it was happening. (And then, much to his benefit, that destiny never came true.)
“I was surprised (about how stressful) it was,” Snedeker said after Sunday night’s win. “I don’t think anyone knows the weight that a captain carries on their shoulders all week. I don’t think they understand that you’re not only making a decision that affects you, but you’re making a decision that ripple-affects the whole team – people’s families, people’s lives. Every decision you make has a serious consequence.
“You think you know, but you don’t until you do.”
Sitting a few points away from him on the podium was Jim Furyk, a man who knows all too well how to remember a captain, and who is now taking up the baton for an even higher mountain to climb in Ireland.