THE PRESIDENTS CUP

September 1, 2026

Brandt Snedeker

Medinah Country Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us. You just came out of a live picture here of Ponte Vedra Beach at PGA Tour studio to name your six picks, and now your 12-man team is rounded out.

If you don't mind starting with some thoughts on how that feels to be at this point, that milestone on the way to the 2026 Presidents Cup, and then we'll open to questions.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I'm super excited. This has been a long process, 14 months at this point. To get all this team building kind of behind me and get these guys together and start talking and start sharing what our plans are for everybody is super exciting.

It's been a long road at this point, but it's kind of barely just started. We've got a long way to go. Excited to get this behind us and get moving.

Q. Brandt, thank you for the time. Wondering, I think the highlight is going to be Jackson's pick, at least from a surprise factor. Wondering just why you went that direction. When we talked to you at Wyndham a couple weeks ago you said you weren't going to pick someone just because they were young, so I assume you think Jackson is one of the 12 best Americans. What was the thought process there?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, I think you said it. I think he's a great young talent. I think he's proven himself to go out there and do what he did at 3M and stare Scottie Scheffler down on the back nine and not blink. That was very impressive.

I spent a lot of time researching him. I spent a lot of time talking to people who know him and who coached him and have spent time with him. Every conversation I had, I came away more impressed.

So I'm super excited to have him on the team. I'm super excited to see what he brings. I'm super excited for him to kind of show the world who he is.

I think he brings a lot to our team room. He brings a lot to our pairings. Just super excited to have him on.

Q. Just one follow: Was J.J. in your plans before he got injured at the TOUR Championship? How much did that adjust where you were going with the room?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: There's a lot of guys that were in that conversation. One of the hardest things I think I've had to do is look at how deep our team is. There was 15, 16, 17 guys that had a legit chance of doing this.

There's a lot of factors that go into these decisions. It's tough. It's not fair to a lot of these guys. That's the way it comes. At the end of the day, the best advice I've gotten from every captain I've talked to is to trust your gut.

So that's kind of what I did. I trusted my gut and went with Jackson and Jacob, as kind of the last two weeks is the way it turned out. Excited for those guys. Excited for those young guys to be out there and go compete.

Q. Just to follow up on Jackson for a sec, first of all, Scottie has had sort of an odd Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup record. For as great as he's been here over the last four years, his record in these team competitions has not been so great. I just wondered if there might be any thought of putting him with Jackson. Is finding a good partner for Scottie a priority, or do you think that it's beyond that?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think finding a good partner for everybody on our team is a priority. I think building these teams to where guys have guys they're comfortable with, they feel like they can go through the fire with 'em. It's not just Scottie. There's so many great players we have on our team, whether it's Collin, whether it's Wyndham, whether it's Sam Burns, whether it's Xander -- you can go down the list of these guys that we have. It's finding the right teammate for them to go pair up with, whether it's Russell Henley.

I feel like it's my job as captain to go and forge these relationships that can kind of last us from team to team to team that we can kind of rely on. That's kind of my charge. I put myself on that mission with this captaincy. We're doing a lot of soul searching. We're doing a lot of digging trying to find these matchups that work so we can build these relationships for these teams going forward.

Q. Anything that you learned at Bethpage that will help you in that regard in go round, having been there and seen what happened?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think every time you're in these situations you learn something. If you're not learning, you're not doing your job. There's nothing specific I can point to as an "aha moment." I learned a lot in Montreal. I learned a lot when I played on these teams. I learned a lot talking to these captains.

I think having Keegan and Jim as vice captains has been huge for me to really help me understand what the process is going to look like coming up and help me through the things that I don't know, that you couldn't possibly know.

I'm constantly learning. It has not been perfect at this point by any stretch of the imagination, but those guys have really helped me kind of understand what the next month is going to look like and what to really focus on.

Q. I'm just curious, just the moments before Geoff was talking about how with Jason Day there was an injury there that he was concerned about. He even mentioned thinking about the Ryder Cup situation with Viktor Hovland. You answered, but I don't think it really explained if that was a factor with J.J. I'm just curious if you'd elaborate a little more.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, I'm not going to give specifics on the players that didn't make our team. I feel like this process is about the 12 players we did select. There are plenty of guys who, unfortunately, didn't make the team. That sucks for them. They put two years of their life into this. They deserve to be on the team.

But I'm not going to get into specifics why X player or Y player didn't make it. I don't think it's fair to them or fair to the guys who did make it. Our process is talking about the 12 guys that are on this team and going forward from there.

Q. You mentioned already that you heard a lot of great things about Jackson from various people. Can you share like one anecdote that maybe was something you didn't know or that persuaded you one way or the other?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, I don't think there's any that persuaded me. I think it was just a kind of culmination of lots of great stories about what a great kid he is, what a great competitor he is.

I got to play with him two years ago at Muirfield when he was a 19-year-old kid, freshman at Auburn. I got to spend two days with him, so I remember what he was like then; and then got to play with him again at Wyndham this year in a nine-hole practice round. Got to see him, how he's kind of grown and changed, and obviously watched every shot he's hit for the last four months.

I just feel like doing my research with other college coaches, with talking with people who know him very well, who play a ton of golf with him, I just felt very comfortable with him. I feel like he's got a bright future ahead of him. I feel like he brings a ton to our team, and excited to see what he does when the bright lights are on.

Q. When Bob was talking about Scottie Scheffler, it's something I thought a lot about, and even a stranger thing what Tiger Woods went through a stretch in his Ryder Cup career. At this point now that you're a captain and you've been an assistant, you've had a lot of time to think about it. I'm curious, do you have a theory about either of those guys as to why it happened? Is that the same reason that both of them struggled in the Ryder Cup? Their pedigree would make you think they would be well above .500, if anything else.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I don't have a theory. I was fortunate to play with Tiger on the team. It's one thing to understand Tiger from the outside. It's another thing to be on a team with him. I was blown away by how much he cared. I think there was this notion in the media that he didn't really care about Ryder Cups and it wasn't important to him.

I think I can sit here and say unequivocally that's totally false. Like he cared probably too much. He wanted nothing more than to be a great teammate and to help us win and do everything he possibly could.

I don't know if Scottie has that same -- being on these teams, I know Scottie carries that with him too. Scottie cares so much about these teams and doing the right thing and trying to be the best version of himself for everybody in that team room.

Maybe that's too much for them to carry, I don't know. I don't have a theory on that. I do know one thing, they both love these team rooms. They both love being part of these teams.

I think my job as being captain of this team is just to put him in a position where he can be successful and be Scottie. That's what me and my vice captains are working on and trying to find a way to do.

Q. Do you think -- and pardon me if I'm overthinking it -- do you think there might be something about that level of greatness which is difficult for the partner? Even though those players are being great teammates, does it add pressure or add an aura or something that makes them hard to play with?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: That's a theory. I have no idea. Me personally, I would love to have Scottie Scheffler as my teammate or my partner. It would be awesome. He'd cover up all the mistakes.

There's probably something to that. I'm not sure.

Q. Are you working with anyone statistically on the data analytics side outside of the team? And who would that be?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: We have Hunter Stewart helping us out and Mark Horton, who is my longtime statistician, kind of trying to help us understand that role of things on these teams and the golf course. So we have people helping us, and we're excited about what they bring to the table.

Q. I was wondering, based on your experience on teams, do you feel like that allows you to work a little bit with the newcomers? They have to be moderately terrified for their first match out. At least that's what everybody says, that you've never been so scared in your life when somebody says, playing for the United States and your name is said. So what kinds of things do you think you're going to want to do with the newer fellas to get them comfortable?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think just being around the guys in the team room is super important. I think having -- we're very fortunate on our side with the team room we have. These guys are all really good friends. They get along really well. They're very open and honest with each other. I think that helps kind of put some of the pressure off of these guys when they feel like they can ask questions and be real with each other and understand what they're going to go through.

I think us as captains and vice captains, we have a role to help these young guys along. We have veterans to put their arms around these young guys to help understand what's in front of them and know they're not alone.

That's what we do as a team. We're going to win as a team and lose as a team, but we're going to do it as a team. I think it's getting that conversation going with young guys and letting them know we're all in this together and they're not alone is super important.

Q. Are you likely to put a veteran with a new guys, or you haven't decided yet?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: We'll see. We'll see.

Q. Just wondering, when you look at that International Team, is there anything in there that's going to give you a few headaches or keep you up at night? Is there one thing or one player that's giving you the biggest cause for thought?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: It's not just one player. I feel like Geoff's picks were really good for his team. I feel like they kind of filled a lot of holes that they had and got some great team matchups, between Nick Taylor pairing with Corey Conners. I'm a huge Nick Taylor fan. I respect him a ton. I think he's a great player.

Ryo Hisatsune is a young and up-and-coming player. I've gotten to know him a little bit out there on TOUR. I have great respect for his game. He and Hideki are going to be a tough pairing. And Christiaan is a friend of mine, a guy I respect a ton. He did some great things there did what you're supposed to do, so we have our work cut out for us.

If people are not paying attention to that, they're not doing their job. He did a really good job of pairing his team up and making the best 12-member team he has available to him. There are some tough pairings we're going to have to deal with. It's going to be a tough task, and he did a great job of filling his team out.

Q. I was just going to ask you about Jacob and what was kind of put that over the edge to put him on this team as a rookie?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think it's just his totality of work. When you look at somebody like Jacob, obviously got off to a great start this year, and winning at Genesis was really impressive the way he did it.

Then it wasn't just that. I feel like he was really consistent throughout the course of the year. I think he grew as a player and kind of understood what success looks like, which is a tough thing for a player, to understand once you have this massive success, how do you maintain that level?

I thought he did a good job of getting back to what made him so great. Obviously having a great putter on a match play team is super important. So when you add a person like that to your team room, and not to mention Jacob is probably a better human being than he is a player, I'm all in. I love those kind of players.

I'm looking forward to having him on this team and getting him around the guys and make these relationships that he'll only add value to. So it's going to be a lot of fun.

Q. How much did the last three weeks, the postseason, impact how this team looks?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Definitely. It definitely impacted it. Unfortunately, these teams always come down to that. It seems like you're trying to find guys who are in form. The margin of error for these guys is so thin, unfortunately, when you're talking about cheater model. Like there's so much that goes into it, but it always ends up coming down to these last few weeks of how guys are playing.

Unfortunately, like there's a ton of pressure on these guys this last month of the season. There's a ton of pressure not only dealing with the FedExCup playoffs, but trying to make a team. Some guys handle it better than others. Some guys can figure it out. You always pay attention to that, looking for that. I think that's something you take into account as a captain.

Q. I think the question was answered, but just out of curiosity, who had the best reaction of the six guys you called?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: That's a tough one. The most -- the reaction I was expecting was probably from Jackson. I didn't get much out of him. I think I shellshocked him when I called him. I was expecting a little bit more excitement coming out of him.

They're all each special. They're all special. They're all each their own thing. I'm just so happy for them. At the end of the day, these guys deserve everything that comes with this accolade and comes with this pick, and they've worked so hard to get here.

I'm just happy to play a small part and enjoy that moment with them a little bit and have them understand like this is really important, it's really special, and you deserve it.

Q. Brandt, you said you went with your gut. Why did you do that? Should we expect you to be doing a lot more of that in the weeks to come?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, I had the good fortune of talking to a ton of ex-captains, whether that be Jack Nicklaus or Paul Azinger or Davis Love or, you name it. I've probably talked to them all trying to get down to the nuts and bolts of what really at the end of the day can move the needle for you one way or the other when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Everyone to a T said you've got to trust your gut. You've got to trust your gut. You have good instincts. You didn't get to where you are in life without having good instincts. You've got to trust them. I don't know why I can't put my finger on it, I just have a gut feeling about this kid.

We're going to put him in some tough situations for sure. He's going to have to rise to the occasion, but I'm fully expecting him to. I'm super excited for him to be out there with our team, to be out there representing the United States, and I know he's going to do it the right way and compete his tail off, which is all I can ask for.

THE MODERATOR: Brandt, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations on rounding out your teams. We'll see you in 22 days.