U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker knows that no lead is safe around Medinah. Snedeker was on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that blew a 10-6 lead to the Europeans at the Chicago course in 2012.
So while Snedeker’s team entered Sunday at the 2026 Presidents Cup trailing the Internationals 10.5-7.5, Snedeker believed that things were far from over.
That belief — in both his team and whatever Medinah mystique might exist — proved prophetic on Sunday as the Americans came out early in singles with a flurry of haymakers to grab the momentum and put the pressure on the underdog Internationals before polishing off a Sunday comeback, the biggest in Presidents Cup history.
Here’s how the Americans’ Sunday comeback unfolded.
Snedeker’s plan to frontload his singles lineup to put a lot of red on the board early and overwhelm the Internationals — a strategy the victorious GB&I Walker Cup team used in their own Sunday comeback early this month — worked out exactly as he hoped.
Cameron Young went out first and took care of Ryo Hisatsune 3&2 to put the first American point on the board.
“That was the job I was given 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 answered for the Internationals by beating Wyndham Clark 3&2 in the second match. Kim finished the week going 4-1-0. He’s the first International player to win four points in a week since 2015.
Kim’s win over Clark only briefly stemmed the tide as Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler followed with big wins for the Americans in the third and fourth matches. Thomas rolled over Corey Conners 5&3 and Scheffler, who was benched on Saturday for foursomes, dispatched Nico Echavarria 2&1.
After winning three of the first four matches and with red all over the board, the Americans had grabbed momentum and the crowd at Medinah was energized.
Sungjae Im briefly stalled American momentum with a 3&1 win over Sam Burns, putting the Internationals’ lead at 12.5-10.5. But while the Internationals were leading when Im finished off Burns, they were staring at a big hill as they trailed in five of the remaining seven matches while still needing three points to win the cup.
The next American point came courtesy of Chris Gotterup, who held off a hard-charging Christiaan Bezuidenhout to win 1 up.
With the board covered in red, the Internationals’ best chance to stave off the American comeback was for Hideki Matsuyama to hold on to beat Collin Morikawa and for Adam Scott to flip his matches against Patrick Cantlay.
It was not to be.
Matsuyama led 1 up 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 the 16th and 17th holes and then Morikawa won the final hole after Matsuyama missed a 15-footer for par.
“Go out and finish your business,” Morikawa told Banks about the U.S. attitude heading into Sunday after finishing off Matsuyama. “We can only control what we can control, and that’s all we can do. One match at a time, one shot at a time, and see what happens at the end of the day.”
Cantlay led by 2 up with four to play, but Scott won the 15th and then was in position to square the match on the par-3 16th. But Cantlay rolled in a 57-foot birdie putt, and Scott missed his birdie try to fall back 2 down. Cantlay closed out the match on 17 to win 2&1.
With the Internationals in dire straits, Si Woo Kim needed to beat rookie Jackson Koivun for the Internationals to have any life. Kim jumped on Koivun early and led 2 up through 10, but Koivun won 11, 12, 13 and 15 to take the lead before finishing off the Internationals’ best player on 18.
Koivun’s win got the U.S. to 14.5 points, one point away from victory. But with the Americans in good position in the final three matches, the U.S. comeback was all but complete when the 21-year-old put the dagger in Kim on the final hole and Jacob Bridgeman’s 1-up win 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 stuff happens here. Medniah is going to hit you; funny things happen. Sure enough, they went out there and played their asses off today. I’m so damn proud of those guys.”
