THE PRESIDENTS CUP

September 23, 2026

Brandt Snedeker

Geoff Ogilvy

Medinah Country Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Welcome to pairings for 2026 Presidents Cup round 1 four-ball matches. To get us started, I'd like to introduce Gary Young, chief referee of the match committee.

GARY YOUNG: Thanks, Amanda. Good afternoon, everyone. Again, welcome to round 1 pairings for the Presidents Cup.

Over the course of the next four days, we'll be conducting 30 matches, each match being worth one point to the winner. Any tied matches will result in 1/2 point to each team. The first team to accumulate 15 1/2 points will win the Presidents Cup.

Should each team earn 15 points, the Cup will be shared until they meet again in 2028 in Melbourne, Australia.

As a reminder, all team members must play in at least one of the first rounds of matches.

As the host captain, Captain Snedeker has chosen four-ball for the format for round 1 matches. In addition, Captain Snedeker has the option to select first in round 1 or defer to the International Team.

Captain Snedeker?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Defer.

GARY YOUNG: Captain Ogilvy, your selection for match 1, please.

GEOFF OGILVY: Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im.

GARY YOUNG: The International Team selects Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im. Captain Snedeker, your selections for match 1?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns.

GARY YOUNG: United States selects Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns.

Captain Snedeker, your selection for match 2.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Cameron Young, Xander Schauffele.

GARY YOUNG: United States selects Cameron Young and Xander Schauffele.

Captain Ogilvy, your selection for match 2.

GEOFF OGILVY: Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune.

GARY YOUNG: Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune.

Captain Ogilvy, your selection for match 3.

GEOFF OGILVY: Corey Conners and Nico Echavarria.

GARY YOUNG: International Team selects Corey Conners and Nico Echavarria.

Captain Snedeker, your selection for match 3.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Justin Thomas and Jackson Koivun.

GARY YOUNG: United States selects Justin Thomas and Jackson Koivun.

Captain Snedeker, your selection for match 4.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Wyndham Clark, Collin Morikawa.

GARY YOUNG: United States selects Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa.

Captain Ogilvy, your selection for match 4.

GEOFF OGILVY: Ryan Fox and Adam Scott.

GARY YOUNG: International Team selects Ryan Fox and Adam Scott.

Captain Ogilvy, your selection for match 5.

GEOFF OGILVY: Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim.

GARY YOUNG: Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim.

Captain Snedeker.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Chris Gotterup, Patrick Cantlay.

GARY YOUNG: Chris Gotterup, Patrick Cantlay.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is mostly cloudy skies, easterly winds at 14 to 18 miles per hour. Temperatures will range between 55 degrees for a low, 66 for a high tomorrow.

The first tee time is 11:35 a.m., and the International Team will have the honor on the 1st tee.

Gentlemen, play well.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Gary. If I can have Captain Snedeker and Captain Ogilvy remain on stage, we will open it up to questions.

Q. Geoff, trying to just grasp what it's like to be in that chair and if we could seize upon match 2. You hear Cam Young, Xander Schauffele, and you pause and deliberate for 60 seconds or whatever. What are you thinking in that moment? You're choosing them to go out in that exact match, I guess what's the thought process?

GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know, it's the first time I've done this.

Q. Yeah, so what's it like?

GEOFF OGILVY: It's interesting. I'm sure Brandt and his team have -- we made some guesses based on practice round groups. We've got some ideas about what we want to get matched up, and I'm sure Brandt has the same thing. We just thought about it for a bit.

I mean, these things unfold quite quickly. You just want to make sure you don't break one of your rules that you've set before you come in this room.

Q. Brandt, wondering, Jackson going out in the first session, was it important to kind of get him some reps, feel the momentum and play his own ball, and why Justin was the right pair there?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think we wanted to get as many -- Jackson being a young kid, I feel like he's really kind of found his way on our team really quickly. I feel like he's handled the adjustment really well. Justin is just a natural pairing for him.

He's somebody he's comfortable with. I think he'll do a great job putting his arm around him and show him how USA golf is meant to be played.

I know he's excited to see him, but think we're really excited about all these matchups and put this lineup out.

Q. For both captains, has anything over the past three days changed any kind of your thinking, outlook, from the time you got here Monday? Or Sunday, or whenever you got here.

GEOFF OGILVY: Not for me really. The golf course was very wet when we first got here, and it's drying pretty rapidly. I guess that's changing. But not really as far as our team. Not too much, just the golf course really, how we're approaching it, because it was pretty wet.

Sunday I was out here, and it looked like it could have been preferred lies and all of that, but it's made a really good comeback from all that rain, and it's getting firmer, and the greens got a lot faster the last couple of days. So from a golf course sense, but not a team sense.

Q. What's your optimism level?

GEOFF OGILVY: Pretty good. These tournaments, I think everyone comes into these tournaments with optimism. They're very momentum-based tournaments. I mean, Montreal was an amazing first two days. 0-5 was a disaster for us, and then 5-0 was a big success. You could never have predicted that, where it takes a long time to get to this stage. We've been thinking about this for a long time. So we're just excited to get going.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think you do a lot of prep work in the months leading up to this so that, when you get here, you have a pretty good idea what's going to happen. Playing for contingencies in case, like Geoff talked about, golf course is different than we anticipated, or we have something creep up that we were not anticipating.

For the most part, we've had a pretty smooth week this week. We've had -- obviously the weather getting better is helping every day.

Guys are more comfortable on the golf course. At the end of the day, you kind of have an idea of how this thing's going to go and got a good game plan set forth, and now it's just about getting out of these guys' way and let them go do what they love to do.

Q. For both, did you know the people that were sitting coming into the week? Was that something you talked to them about in the lead-up so they knew how to prep? Is that something you just figure out week of based on how people are feeling?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think you have a pretty good idea of what you kind of see for -- especially being the guy, once we knew the format, which format we were doing first, you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do. Then you get here and you have the ability to adjust if you need to.

Especially in a four-ball, it feels like it's an easier adjustment to make than you would necessarily in a foursomes match, just because they're playing their own golf ball.

Yeah, I think we have a pretty good idea. We let the guys know pretty early this was our plan, but to be ready in case something came up.

You never know if somebody's back goes out or someone is not feeling great. There's a lot of things that can happen, someone gets sick. So try to keep the guys ready in case that happens. Fortunately for us so far, we've been pretty good.

Q. Just wondering, Geoff, how important is it for you to kind of let the players know what to expect in terms of when they play and when they don't play? Are you kind of telling them to be ready at any point?

GEOFF OGILVY: A bit of both, I guess. Yeah, we all came here, all the players are pretty aware of the sort of plan that we had. Everyone sort of practiced accordingly. Everyone's always ready. I mean, they always know that they could play any session, but everyone's been pretty aware of sort of what we had planned and what their roles were going to be.

These weeks, I mean, that's just today. We've had 18 months or whatever. We've had a month to plan this out. Tomorrow we've got golf under our belt, so it might be a little bit different tomorrow, but yeah, we come in with a plan.

Q. Sorry to pick on you like this, Geoff, but after one session tomorrow, what kind of score would put you in a happy mood for that one-hour bus ride back?

GEOFF OGILVY: It's hard to say. Better than Thursday last time would be good.

Look, we would love to be in front, obviously. Have a winning session. I think every team on every side would always like to win a session. I mean, that's the job tomorrow is to win a session.

I'm sure we'll be in good moods either way, but the goal would be to win the session.

Q. Brandt, you can't play everybody, but Jacob Bridgeman, it probably was tough to leave him on the sidelines that first day after what he had just done, right?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, it's tough leaving these guys. I don't know what Russell Henley's world ranking is right now, but it's got to be pretty high. Both those guys, it's tough to leave them off.

But they're great teammates. I think having a session for Jacob to kind of get his feet under him, see how this thing's going to roll out, it's going to be very valuable.

Couldn't ask for two better guys to have in that team room to help us kind of get off to a good start, to be great teammates, go out there and get prepared and get ready to go on Friday and be ready.

Q. Comparing that to the Ryder Cup, where it's like morning and afternoon these first two, is it easier as a captain to say, hey, don't worry about Thursday? You can do whatever you want on Thursday. We need you on Friday. Does that make sense?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I guess, I don't know. I've never been a Ryder Cup captain. I wouldn't know. I've been in the room with those guys. I do like this format better. I feel like having the fourth day of golf I think produces better golf because guys aren't going to be as worn out and tired. They get more rest when they're not out until 5:00 a.m. and being on the golf course until late at night.

I like the ability that Geoff and I have to be able to match each other up a little bit, to try to game plan what they're going to do and what we try to do. I think for the quality of golf, I think having four days like this produces more rested players that are, in my opinion, where guys can go out there and kind of be more of their normal selves.

Q. Both of you guys, I'm just curious what you've planned for this evening, how you want to get your guys prepared to play their best tomorrow. What are you having for dinner?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: That's a good question. I don't even know. Something back at the hotel. We're not doing a whole lot. We're wanting these guys to get some rest. It's been a long week. It's been a long week to get to this point.

I want these guys to get as much rest as they can because after tomorrow it really picks up. You turn around and start having early mornings on Saturday. So try to get as much rest as we can.

GEOFF OGILVY: Same. I'm sure we'll have some pretty good food options. It's a pretty relaxed night for the boys. As Brandt said, it's a busy week to this point. For them now, it just comes down to golf.

I'm not sure what we're eating, but I'm sure it will be nice.

Q. Anybody planning to do a rah-rah speech or have anybody come in to talk to the team to rile them up?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: No.

GEOFF OGILVY: What happens in the team room stays in the team room.

Q. I thought that was Vegas.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah.

Q. Brandt, I know you deferred right away there, but was there anything that could have changed putting Scottie out first?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, we have scenarios, for sure.

Q. So there's a scenario where he doesn't go out first?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: We have scenarios for all those different kinds of things. Yeah, you try to game plan it as best you can, but that's part of this.

Q. Are you a guy that wants to set a tone early or wants something specific out of the guys that go out first, knowing how emotional that is?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I just want -- I want these guys to be as comfortable as possible. I want these guys to go be who they are. I want them to compete. We're lucky, so blessed as a captain to have these 12 guys because they're all fierce competitors.

So I just want those guys to go out there and do what they do. Don't try to be someone they're not. Go out there and have a blast, play great golf, and get this crowd going.

It was a fun atmosphere today for a Wednesday. I can't wait to see what tomorrow has got in store.

Q. For either of you, now that you've done it once, bouncing a pick off of maybe the pick that they've made, to what extent can you prepare for expecting what Geoff is going to do or to what extent can you prepare that maybe Sam and Scottie are going out first?

GEOFF OGILVY: I mean, you can run as many scenarios as you like really. There's a lot of combinations of 12 people.

Q. So is it unsafe to prepare expectations on that front?

GEOFF OGILVY: I think it would be poor form for a captain to not prepare a little bit for it.

BRANDT SNEDEKER: We're not just throwing darts against the wall.

Q. That's not what I was suggesting, but I would look at a board and be surprised of Pat and Xander not being together, and if I was in Geoff's shoes, I was wondering to what extent it's safe or risky to prepare for those kinds of things and try to match up against it?

GEOFF OGILVY: We ran a lot of different scenarios. You make a few guesses. There's history. There's practice round groups. Yeah, I don't think it's ever -- you're never going to be in a worse spot by preparing.

Q. Brandt, quick question. It seems like there's a theme up there developing where you're putting maybe a senior member of your team together with a newer member of Team USA. Was that intentional?

BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think our pairings worked out the way they did just because of more personality-wise than anything else. I was trying to get guys comfortable. I feel like these events do a lot, put a lot of pressure on these guys. A lot of it's internal, but there's a lot of external pressure on them.

So we're trying to create partnerships and a team vibe where everybody is as comfortable as possible. I think you always -- historically you look back, and we have all the data on what two rookies going out in the first session or two rookies going out in the second session looks like. So you try to look at that and see how it works out.

I think we were more worried about putting these guys in a situation where they could be -- go be themselves and be comfortable and go out there and have fun.

I think at the end of the day that's what this event is going to be about. The team that has more fun out there can play their style of golf and not get caught up in everything else is going to be really successful.