The Presidents Cup is 12 American players against 12 from the rest of the world at Medinah Country Club (No. 3). Both sides play the PGA Tour, which means both sides can be measured the same way, on the same holes, against the same fields.
This is all 24 players, counted from the 33,848 holes they played in the 2026 season. Nothing here is a rating or a projection. It is what they scored.
The two teams
| USA | International | |
|---|---|---|
| Holes measured | 15,994 | 17,854 |
| Birdie or better | 23.90% | 22.22% |
| Bogey or worse | 13.39% | 15.04% |
| Driving distance | 293.2 yd | 289.8 yd |
| Fairways hit | 66.7% | 66.5% |
| Greens in regulation | 69.1% | 68.1% |
| Approach proximity | 6.7 yd | 6.7 yd |
Tee to green, these are the same team
Look at the bottom four rows first, because they are the surprise. The two sides drive it within 3.4 yards of each other, hit fairways within 0.2 points, hit greens within 1.0 points, and finish their approaches within 0.1 yards of the same distance from the hole.
On ball-striking there is no meaningful gap at all. Whatever separates these teams, it is not how they hit a golf ball.
The gap is in what they score
USA makes birdie or better on 23.90% of holes against 22.22%, a gap of 1.68 points. On the other side of the card, USA makes bogey or worse on 13.39% against 15.04%, a gap of 1.65 points.
Both gaps run the same way, which is the part that matters. One team is making more birdies and fewer bogeys off the same ball-striking, so the difference is in converting chances and avoiding damage rather than in creating chances.
In match play that asymmetry matters more than it does over 72 holes. A hole is won outright or it is halved, so a birdie that would be worth one stroke in stroke play can be worth a full point here.
Rank for rank
An average can hide a split. A team with the single best player and a weak tail can average the same as a team with no stars and no holes in it, and those are very different teams in a format where every player has to go out and play.
So here is each side sorted by birdie rate and lined up rank against rank:
USA is higher at 12 of the 12 rank positions.
Every player
| Player | Team | Birdie or better | Bogey or worse | Hole win vs the other side | Holes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | USA | 27.53% | 10.11% | 31.05% | 1,464 |
| Wyndham Clark | USA | 25.82% | 14.50% | 29.42% | 1,441 |
| Jacob Bridgeman | USA | 24.47% | 13.72% | 28.59% | 1,684 |
| Collin Morikawa | USA | 24.66% | 14.56% | 28.58% | 1,188 |
| Sam Burns | USA | 24.36% | 13.64% | 28.57% | 1,408 |
| Jackson Koivun | USA | 23.54% | 11.02% | 28.47% | 463 |
| Chris Gotterup | USA | 23.85% | 13.77% | 28.25% | 1,656 |
| Cameron Young | USA | 23.31% | 13.19% | 27.96% | 1,433 |
| Si Woo Kim | International | 25.30% | 12.95% | 27.74% | 1,676 |
| Russell Henley | USA | 22.56% | 12.42% | 27.55% | 1,401 |
| Patrick Cantlay | USA | 22.37% | 12.77% | 27.46% | 1,292 |
| Xander Schauffele | USA | 21.91% | 13.32% | 27.04% | 1,374 |
| Min Woo Lee | International | 23.43% | 14.75% | 26.40% | 1,417 |
| Justin Thomas | USA | 21.43% | 16.72% | 26.28% | 1,190 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | International | 23.12% | 14.45% | 26.20% | 1,626 |
| Tom Kim | International | 22.49% | 13.09% | 25.94% | 1,467 |
| Adam Scott | International | 22.14% | 14.32% | 25.65% | 1,355 |
| Ryan Fox | International | 22.53% | 17.53% | 25.46% | 1,358 |
| Christiaan Bezuidenhout | International | 21.76% | 13.43% | 25.44% | 1,080 |
| Ryo Hisatsune | International | 21.81% | 15.12% | 25.36% | 1,733 |
| Nick Taylor | International | 21.17% | 14.83% | 24.89% | 1,639 |
| Sungjae Im | International | 21.18% | 15.89% | 24.87% | 1,435 |
| Corey Conners | International | 21.36% | 16.58% | 24.87% | 1,526 |
| Nico Echavarria | International | 20.04% | 17.44% | 23.84% | 1,542 |
Modelling the matchups
Pairings are not out yet, so rather than guess at them, here is every possible one. For each of the 144 cross-team pairs, both players' actual score distributions are crossed against each other to ask a single question: on a random hole, who makes the lower score?
Across all of them:
- USA wins the hole 28.3% of the time
- The hole is halved 46.2% of the time
- International wins the hole 25.6% of the time
Of the holes that are actually decided, USA takes 52.5%. That is a real edge and a small one. It is the kind of margin that decides a Cup over three days and loses a single match on a Thursday afternoon.
The ordering is the more striking result. Sorted by hole-win rate against the other side, Scottie Scheffler leads all 24 players, and the highest International player, Si Woo Kim, comes in at number 9.
The course
Medinah Country Club (No. 3) has hosted one tournament we hold shot data for, in 2019. The course has been reworked since, so read this as the shape of the golf course rather than a forecast: hole numbers and yardages may have moved, and the scoring rates belong to that setup, not this one.
| Hole | Par | Yards | Birdie or better (2019) | Bogey or worse (2019) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 432 | 22.5% | 10.5% |
| 2 | 3 | 197 | 17.8% | 9.1% |
| 3 | 4 | 414 | 19.6% | 8.3% |
| 4 | 4 | 465 | 18.8% | 12.0% |
| 5 | 5 | 524 | 63.8% | 1.4% |
| 6 | 4 | 501 | 10.5% | 24.3% |
| 7 | 5 | 615 | 39.1% | 5.8% |
| 8 | 3 | 205 | 13.0% | 11.2% |
| 9 | 4 | 456 | 15.6% | 18.1% |
| 10 | 5 | 579 | 45.3% | 5.1% |
| 11 | 4 | 443 | 20.3% | 11.6% |
| 12 | 4 | 471 | 17.8% | 11.6% |
| 13 | 3 | 248 | 13.4% | 15.6% |
| 14 | 5 | 609 | 30.4% | 10.9% |
| 15 | 4 | 344 | 30.8% | 7.6% |
| 16 | 4 | 485 | 13.0% | 22.1% |
| 17 | 3 | 196 | 13.4% | 12.3% |
| 18 | 4 | 450 | 21.0% | 13.8% |
What this does not tell you
It is one season on one tour. Every player here plays the PGA Tour, which is what makes them comparable, but it also means form from elsewhere does not appear. A player who has been excellent in Europe or Asia this year reads only as their PGA starts.
Match play is not stroke play. These rates come from stroke-play golf, where a player protects a card. Match play rewards aggression, because a bogey costs the same whether it is a bogey or a triple. Expect the real birdie rates to run higher than these and the disaster rates too.
The pairing model assumes independence. Two opponents play the same hole under the same wind to the same pin, so their scores move together. Real match play halves more often than the numbers above say. The comparison between players holds; the halve rate is the part to distrust.
Team golf has formats these numbers ignore. Foursomes in particular, where two players share one ball, is a different game from the one measured here.
Worse than double counts as double. Our scoring labels stop there, so a triple and a double read as the same result in the pairing model. It is rare enough not to move the totals and it cuts both ways.
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