At the Ryder Cup in recent years, it seems like the U.S. team can’t catch a break. At the Presidents Cup, on the other hand, the Americans seem unable to do anything wrong.
The evidence can be found in the record books. The Europeans have beaten the U.S. in six of the last eight Ryder Cups. Stretch that back to 2022, and the American team’s Ryder Cup record drops to 3-9. They’ve lost the last two in a row, including an embarrassing defeat last September at Bethpage Black.
Meanwhile, the U.S. team has dominated the Presidents Cup all along, earning a 13-1-1 overall record, including 10 straight victories dating back to 2005. That’s the same year 2026 U.S. Presidents Cup rookie Jackson Koivun was born.
But on Tuesday at Medinah, U.S. Presidents Cup captain Brandt Snedeker revealed one way in which this year’s Presidents Cup is “eerily similar” to last year’s disaster at Bethpage Black: the course setup.
In doing so, Snedeker provided American fans with a reason to worry that the U.S. team’s lengthy winning streak may be at risk.
Brandt Snedeker says Presidents Cup course setup ‘has not gone according to plan’
At the 2025 Ryder Cup, the U.S. team got pummeled by the Europeans over the first two days of the three-day competition. One of the biggest culprits was the course setup.
At both the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup, the home team captain gets to choose how the course will be prepared by the maintenance team. By tweaking the setup to play to his team’s strengths, the home captain can give his team a huge advantage.
But at Bethpage, the course setup backfired on the U.S. team. One of the errors could be blamed on captain Keegan Bradley. He decided to have the greens crew chop down Bethpage’s notoriously long rough, hoping it would help his team. The opposite happened. That decision ended up benefiting the European players far more, and Bradley later admitted it “obviously wasn’t the right decision.”
However, there was another course conditioning problem for the American team last fall on Long Island, one Bradley had no control over: the weather.
Rainstorms softened and slowed the Black Course’s greens considerably during Ryder Cup week, taking away another advantage for the Americans, who generally perform best on hard, fast putting surfaces.
Unfortunately, that second issue has followed the U.S. team across the country to Chicago, where Snedeker and his team’s course setup plan has been blown up by heavy rains that have softened Medinah’s No. 3 course, causing it to play very differently than intended.
“As a home captain, that’s one of the advantages. You get to set parameters with how the golf course should be set up,” Snedeker explained in his press conference on Tuesday. “I was very clear with our Tour staff of how we wanted this place to try to get to, kind of eerily similar to what happened at Bethpage, has not gone according to plan.”
Earlier in his press conference, Snedeker expounded on how the recent rains have changed the Presidents Cup host course.
“I think it’s going to be really hard to see how difficult this place is with the conditions we have. It would take a drastic dry-out to see this place get to the intention of the design. The intention of this design was to have a ball run in the fairways, into the greens, bouncing around and kind of letting these slopes do their thing,” Snedeker said. “With the amount of rain we’ve had the last ten days, it’s going to be really difficult for this golf course to dry out. It’s going to be a really hard barometer of a week of how difficult this golf course can play.”
He continued: “I’m sure the Tour staff will do everything they can to make sure this golf course dries out. They’ve done a phenomenal job in the 48 hours we’ve been here of trying to get this place to dry out, but there’s only so much you can do.”
Snedeker and his vice captains made their course setup plan based on how they expected Medinah to play under normal conditions. But the weather has changed everything, taking away a distinct advantage for the Americans.
“So you can have a great plan in front of you, but Mother Nature throws a wrench in it, and there’s other factors you have to deal with,” Snedeker said.
Ultimately, he argued, it’s up to the players to perform, no matter the conditions.
“You try to do everything you can to stack the odds in your favor,” Snedeker continued. “But at the end of the day, the guys have got to go out there and do it.”
Oh, and there’s one other major disadvantage the U.S. team faces this week in relation to the host course. It recently underwent a major two-year renovation. One of the men in charge of that work? Geoff Ogilvy, the captain of this year’s International team.
