Golfbet Lead Will Gray moderates a comprehensive analysis of the Presidents Cup with PGATOUR.COM's Sean Martin and Paul Hodowanic. Key takeaways include the significance of the U.S. team's dominant victory, the ongoing improvement of the International team, the strategic decisions made by Captains Jim Furyk and Mike Weir, and individual player performances along with their potential for future success in upcoming tournaments.
Talk of the TOUR Golf Podcast
Presidents Cup Roundtable Review
- Welcome into another President's Cup edition of Talk of the Tour. We are wrapping things up here at Royal Montreal Golf Club as the United States team. It's about the finishing touches on an 18.5 to 11.5 point victory over the internationals. Now 10 straight wins for the Red, White and Blue, 13 one-in-one all-time in this competition. So joining me to dissect the action as we've been here in the trenches together all week. We've got Paul Holowanich, staff writer for pjtour.com and Sean Martin, lead of editorial for pjtour.com. Guys, I know that you've kind of taken separate lanes from an editorial content and coverage perspective this week. But I'll start big picture. It was a blow on it first. It was close for a little bit. It ended up being a pretty wide margin. In fact, the biggest road victory in President's Cup history. Sean, I'll start with you. What's your takeaway from the week? - I think the big takeaway is the margin in a road victory. Winning on the road is always harder to do. Even when you're on the Eastern time zone, you're still not far from America, but I think getting a road win of this magnitude is important to this US team. Coming off row where they're absolutely outmaneuvered and dominated. Even Royal Melbourne, they were down two heading into singles. You look back to South Korea in the 2015 President's Cup, they only won by one. So I think a dominant road victory is huge here for this US team. One of the big things I think they arrived on Saturday, gave them more time to prepare. And I really think that will become a standard operating procedure for US teams going forward. You saw how they were hurt by arriving Monday at Rome in France in 2018 when Furek last capped in the team. And I think that the biggest lasting legacy of this team will be those early arrivals are now going to be part of US SOP. - Are we rolling in like three days early to Kingston Heath in 2028, setting up residency and so on our trial? - I don't think we're playing the Hero World Challenge and taking a Sunday at Red Eye. I think the Sunday at Red Eyes are gone. It's too much, especially when you have a five hour time difference or more when it comes to Australia. And it may seem like a little thing, but for guys during what is a slower time of year when they get valuable downtime, for guys to agree to come in two days earlier, is a big thing that not all US teams could be. And what I wrote about was this core of players, the gym, Furek leaned heavily on. Your Scotty Scheffler, Colin Morikov, Xander Schofle, Patrick Cantley, he talked about how they stepped up as leaders both on the course and off of it. They helped stem the tide after the international sweep on Friday, and then he put them in big situations on Saturday morning. He had Scotty and Colin lead off. He had Xander go behind them to stem the tide, to keep the internationals from gaining on them. He put the stars in those big positions and they delivered. And so I think, you know, Keegan Bradley has to be happy about that as the captain for next year's Ryder Cup team. But this core impressed and is going to be one that they're going to lean on going forward. - Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway is the international team, despite the margin and it being the biggest in history, I still do think they're improving in this event. I think Friday gave us that conviction to go 5-0 and do that. And our golf digest friend Shane Ryan had a great stat about how if you just add up all the matches, like the US won one more hole than the internationals did, or their margin of victory was just one if you just add up all of them. So I think that tells you enough that this team is, at least for the next few years, I think going to be still considerably outmatched, just if you compare talent to talent. But I do think the camaraderie that they're putting together, it's gelling. With that though, there's still kind of a long way left. Like we saw so many matches finish on 16, 17, 18 and the internationals just consistently coming up short. I think that's because you don't have the same pedigree as the US team. You don't have as much major wins. You don't have as many PGA tour wins. Maybe this can propel them to get some of those and then those pressure moments feel like they can favor the internationals. But right now, that is just such a big advantage for the US. So I think despite the score, the internationals are still improving and getting closer to a victory. But I do still feel like it's a bit far away. Listen, I come from the golf at side. I love a wager every now and then. So I would make this akin to poker where the internationals have drawn to an inside straight where you need three or four different things to go exactly right. How do you have a five oh sweep on either side? We envision an American suit going more like how things went with the internationals on Friday where you're just the better team in most of the matches. And on Thursday, it felt more like how the internationals would have had to do it. Winning a bunch of coin flips, all three matches go to 18. You win, although, but looking at how stacked this American team was and how stacked the American team should be moving forward. The internationals even playing on home soil and with partisan crowds are going to have to have a lot of things go right. Sean, I think you hit the nail on the head. When we were talking on Tuesday and Wednesday, looking at this American team, you thought maybe it's a little more top heavy than past U.S. team to bend. The problem for the internationals was the top of the lineup for the Americans delivered in a big way. Zenerick Gantlay going into Scotty Shepler is an animated team leader. Colin Markawa, Sam Burns, both step up Russell Henley delivers as a rookie. So it just goes to show, I don't think when you're Mike Weir or Ernie Ellis, Trevor Edelman, Jeff Ogleby, some of his assistance in the room. There's not one thing you point to that costs us the cup. Like maybe you would have in South Korea or Melbourne, but you just need a lot of things. You're right. If you're going to beat this U.S. team and I wonder to, you know, Adam Scott was one of their best players. He had one of the best years of anyone on the team. We're looking at 44 years old. His creator is on its back nine. There's maybe one or two cups left for him. Hadeki is injury prone. You have to wonder, you know, there's probably a handful more cups, but who's going to step up to fill those roles and really be a new leader on this international team to fill spots that are held by people like Adam and Hadeki. Yeah, and just to add to that, like if you look at the top kind of like four stalwarts of the U.S. team, which I would think is Scotty, Zander, Colin, and Patrick. I believe they went a combined 15 and five. And then you look at the top four internationals, at least by World Ranking, that's Hadeki, Adam Scott, son, J.M., Tom Kim. They went 6-12-1. The internationals kind of have a star problem where those guys are consistently not showing up. I know still like they may be a bit outmatched compared to the American stars, but when you're the top end guys of the team, you got to perform. We can debate pairings. We can debate captains picks. We can debate depth on the international side, which is a common thing. But if you're bread and butter, guys, the guys that are always on this team are going to consistently be going under 500, that's just never going to be a winning recipe. So if, as you talk about moving forward, I'm less concerned about the depth. I'm more concerned of we need Tom Kim to also win when he's putting up all these antics. We need Sungjae to win these matches. We need Hadeki to win these matches, and they're just not happening frequently enough. I think from an international perspective, if you look at the recent history of the President's Cup, there have been years where the core of the team may have come from South Africa, the core may have been from Australia. You think back to when Adam Scott and Jason Day were more in their prime. I think going forward, the core has to be these South Korean guys. And as you mentioned, Tom Kim, Seawoo Kim, they were the lightning rods of this team, and they delivered a lot of emotion. They delivered fewer points, maybe than they were hoping for. Honestly, I was shocked that Sungjae and went 1-4. It didn't feel like a 1-4 week for Sungjae, but certainly he's going to be one of those stalwarts that you're going to look to as one of the guys entering this week. And I think moving forward, you said, well, who is most likely to play five matches? It felt like it was Hadeki and Sungjae, and that's kind of how it played out. But I think as we head to Medina in 26, we head to Kingston Heat in 2028. This core of South Korean guys are really going to have to deliver. When the internationals win this, it's going to look like there's going to be elements of what we're seeing from that Tom Kim, Seawoo pairing. They kind of stole the show on Saturday with their celebrations and their energy and enthusiasm and just walking the grounds. The Canadians got a ton of cheers, but honestly, the biggest roars, the biggest moments we saw from this group where it really got both the fans and the rest of their team, like activated, cultivated. It came from those two, I think, if you're looking for positives, as long as Seawoo can make those teams year in and year out, that feels like a duo. You just kind of plug and play, because when they are paired together now, we've got two Presidents' Cups of history to look back on and say, hey, that's a group we can reliably trot out, and they're probably going to win more often than they aren't, and they're always going to bring the energy. And that's important if the internationals are going to do it. It's going to look like how it's looked when those two were rolling this week. Outside of Kevin Kidner's Bear Chess, what was your biggest surprise about how the Americans fared over the last four days here in Montreal? I think it was the performance in the team play. Four balls is normally, that's the international's advantage, and they decided to go first, and the U.S. sweeps. Forsoms is where the U.S. was dominant. They get swept. I think Forsoms continues to be a problem, which I didn't think it would be this week, because Presidents' Cup Forsoms generally go the U.S. way. I think it's something we need to get figured out. I think we made some steps. You know, Scheffler Henley, I love to see that. I think the best move that was made all week was splitting Scotty and Sam. I thought they'd get another chance to play together. They were the top two players in birdie average. It makes sense. You put them out on Thursday, four balls. See how they do. If they lose again, you split them up, and if they win, maybe you keep them going. So I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't put them together, but I was surprised. And really doing that unlocked a ton of good play. Scotty went three and two after going winless in the last two cup competitions. Both times was the number one player in the world. Sam Burns was the only undefeated player on either team after, I think, a one, five and two record in the previous two cups. And then Russell Henley riding alongside the number one player in the world goes three and one in his U.S. debut at 35 years old. So I'm going to rescind a little bit, I guess. I think, you know, obviously they went O and five and four sums coming back to go three and one helped. That O and five was a shocker. It might have been the worst session for the U.S. in the president's cup history. It was the first time a team lost at least three matches by a five up margin. But they bounced back. Well, the other pleasant surprise, I think, was the splitting of Scotty and Sam and more flexibility in the pairings. And Jim really credited that to his players. He said that they were talking about pairings even before the team was set, which put him way ahead of where he was in 2018. You know, the U.S. have been criticizing the past for being too reliant on relationships and friendships when making pairings. And I think this showed willingness from the players and the captain to think outside the box, go outside that mold, maybe lean on the data. Henley and Sheffler was a pairing people were calling for because of Russell's driving accuracy, hitting fairways, unlocking opportunities for Scotty's iron play. And so I think that now this bodes well for next year because I think when Scotty and Xander and Patrick and Colin say they're willing to play with anyone, the rest of the team follows Sue and we have that flexibility in U.S. pairings that will help us for years to come. Yeah, and for me, it's actually in that Sheffler or Russell Henley pairing, they're paired three times together, they win twice. I guess that's not a surprise that those two would go two and one, but I think what is surprising is that Russell Henley outplayed Scotty in two of those sessions. And Scotty said it himself, like Russell kind of carried me through, like if you look at just the sturks gained of their three matchups together, in two of them, Russell was by far and away the better player of the two of them. And that was a surprise to me and a welcome surprise to this U.S. team. I mean, Russell's a little bit older. I don't know if he's on the next decade of these teams, but I think he firmly put himself in position to make the team next year. And the year after that, like I think he's got the type of game that can succeed for a while. And so for him to go three and one, he goes two and one with Scotty, it beats Sungjaeum three and two today, very, very impressed with what I saw of Russell Henley. He gained, I think, five shots on the field over the course of the week, three better than Scotty Shuffler. So I was not expecting Russell Henley to be the main name I talked about out of that pairing all week. And for that to be the case is just such an asset to the Americans, because that's something that can be repeated and that's another pairing that you feel really, really comfortable going to. Those are the things that make you excited as a U.S. fan heading to Bethpage as you're trying to win the Ryder Cup from such a convincing kind of loss that you had in Rome. I loved seeing Russell play well, I'm not sure he's a fit for Bethpage. He's a pretty short, but straight hitter and a low ball hitter. I don't know if you rolled out Russell Henley, Scotty Shuffler next year, but it was a nice surprise to see that flexibility, even Sam Burns, small town Louisiana guy, paired with two Californians this week and had success. So they really went outside of, I think, maybe the predictable pairings, Xander and Patrick played together, but you have to enforce them. They're stalwarts there, they're locks, they're your best forces team. Yeah, Henley is TBD. Keegan Bradley said it seemed like he's probably not going to try and be a playing captain next year, Bethpage after notching the clinching point 10 years after being on the other side of that equation when he lost to Jimmy Donaldson at the 2014 Ryder Cup. So we'll see how, what a poll. Listen, it was a great white shot by Damon Donaldson, I'm not going to lie. For me, listen, I will go back to Sean, what you were saying about Sam Burns, the betters, cash in on Sam Burns as the top captains pick this week. As you said, he went undefeated, that would have been about a hundred times the odds. If you had told me he did that without ever playing with Scottie Shuffler. And so that was, I think, really impressive for him to be able to do what he did in the way he did it. So let's move on here. I want to get back to the internationals. And when I look at this from a big picture perspective, when we think back to this week, I think a lot of focus will go to Friday night when the internationals had gone five and no, they had them a minute and they turned the tide. And Mike Weir basically said, we're going to run it back. And he went with the same guys out in four balls that had just won enforcings. He didn't quite work out. He didn't make any changes from that morning session to the afternoon. So he had four guys in the bench and a guy is playing 36, which is a first in president's cup history. He didn't quite in the press conference say that he regretted it. I feel like Ernie Ells, his assistant, went a little bit further and saying, yeah, we might have wanted that one back. When your overall takeaways to that, and kind of as we delve into the mesh of how guys are playing versus what the data shows and trying to chart a path forward with the Saturday sessions, especially when you have to leave four guys in the bench. Yeah, Mike kind of said he imagines over the next weeks and months, he'll probably second guess that and look back at that. That's just kind of what you do when you lose. I mean, I think we're used to now the losing team on any of these events. There's immediately something to go back to the captains, whether it's captains picks or pairings and say, hey, did they do that wrong? Like, we always want to try to ascribe some blame or some meaning to what we just saw. And I think that's going to be one that we go back to because the forceums pairings themselves, like keeping them out for both forceums sessions makes sense. You combine the two records and they win that 6-3 with those guys in there. I think it's that four ball mourning session that they're really going to rue. It was maybe just a bit too much emotion that came through on that night. They win 5-0. They're trying to maintain that and maybe not thinking forward to what that would mean in the afternoon session because they just sweet enforceums. So you don't want to really change anything for forceums, but now that you've thrown them all out again for four ball, it puts you in this precarious position where four guys are going to go almost 48 hours without playing a match. I think that's what you want. And then I also don't think you want eight guys playing 54 holes on the weekend. I think both those are not outcomes you want, but I think both those maybe weren't top of mind after you sweep the Americans. You get back in this thing after it looks like you were left for dead on the first day. So I can understand how the decision was made. It seems like in hindsight, it was probably a mistake. And I think you just go back to that four ball session, hey, could we have gotten Minwoo, Benon, Jay Day, any of those guys out there earlier to give our guys some rest and propel us forward to this Sunday singles when what two of the guys that played in all eight matches one points, but otherwise it wasn't a good showing in the singles sessions from those guys that had to play all day. And I think that's just a product of getting tired from playing all that much. Yeah, it cost them in the afternoon at the end of the day there when the U.S. really turned things around. The internationals led or were tied on the back nine of all four matches and one one of them. And you saw Patrick Kalay's pot. You just you saw so many big moments from the internationals. Mackenzie Hughes holds a bunker shot. See who came night nights after the chip. And they just couldn't capitalize on that. And I think it's because the guys were gassed. And it's the way they did it too. The U.S. used four players for all five sessions. Scotty, Xander, Colin, Patrick. That's only one fewer than the internationals. The big difference was the internationals sat out for guys for all of Saturday and didn't have them play at all. The U.S. only had one guy who didn't play Saturday in Sahir Thigala. I think that that's really one that we're going to look back on and wonder what might have been. Listen, it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback, right? If they make the changes and they go one in three and Saturday morning four balls, you'll say you do it which players were the winners on Friday and you put them back on the bench. So a lot of times it's causation versus correlation. But I think that there is something to be said there for understanding, especially going into a double session of what your decisions for the Saturday morning are going to mean for your options. For Saturday afternoon. Yeah, you have eight guys who are gassed because they played 36 holes. You have four guys who are rusty because they didn't play the entire day. It sounds like most of them took it on the chin. Hey, that's what the team needed. I'll do whatever the team needs. But it's hard to put yourself in that position. But it's just it's a tenuous line to walk as a captain. And it's not one we see often where they sit four guys the whole session. And there's probably probably a reason for that. You had Canadian journalist Adam Stanley with some friendly fire too. He asked Mike Weir, you know, why did Minwoo Lee only play one session? When we sat down a few weeks ago, you said he was your secret weapon. And Mike says, well, it didn't work out. And it's like, well, Mike, that's in your control. It didn't work out because you chose it. It was such an interesting response that I think was telling a little bit about, you know, where Mike was coming from. It was puzzling, you know, the Saturday pairings were puzzling. In his defense, I do get that if you are going to win this thing, you do have to ride your horses. And if you felt strongly that those were your horses, then you just have to hope that they can just stumble across the finish line. Gassed like they just finished a marathon, squeezing out points because the depth, as we know, is the U.S. strength. But then honestly, it was the U.S. that won this really not with depth, I don't think. But because they were the ones who leaned harder in their horses and their horses delivered. Yeah, I think we'd look back at the Canadian specifically, both sessions on Saturday, hoping for a little bit of invigoration. We saw it in spurts. They had three or four whole runs, but in the end, I think five and eight was your combined record for the three Canadians. I'm sure if you're charting a path to international victory, you probably have to flip that. It needs to be more like eight and five. A lot of talk in these press conferences that we just got out of about the role of this tournament as a springboard for individual success. We look back to what these team events have led to for Scott Scheffler, guys from 2019 that one quickly in 2020 and 21. Is there anyone in this 24-guy roster that you look at is this could be a springboard either in terms of individuals winning tournaments, maybe marquee players going on to major success? Is there anything that you can see when we look back six, seven, eight months from now? You'll say, listen, the seeds were planted in raw Montreal. I'm going to go Sam Burns. It's his third international team competition. He's not new to this, but he was, like I said, one, five and two in the previous two playing with Scotty. They weren't pairing together well, weren't playing well. He goes 3-0 and 1 this time. He was the hottest US player to get a captain's picks. He finished top five in the first two Fedsco playoffs events to get that pick. And I think even delivering under the pressure of knowing you need to play well to get a pick is going to help him. He had a three-win season not long ago. He and Scotty two years ago were one and two in the FedEx Cup after, I think, the regular season winless this year though, but also a very solid season through Eastlake. He had a third most top 10s on tour behind only Scotty and Zander. So you have a guy who was having a solid season. I believe his first major top 10 at Pinehurst as well now comes out and plays like this here. And I think it's a guy who's really not far from cracking that really elite tier of professional golf and I think this just maybe pushes him over. It's hard on the international side because no one truly had that breakout week. No one earned more than two points. Two points. Yeah, half the team had two points. Not great for the betters trying to figure out who's going to be your top points score when half the team has a dead heat. The goal on Paul, you have a point tonight. I think the natural one would be Siwu just for the moments that he kind of created, but he's played in a few of these already. He's kind of had those moments and it hasn't happened. But I think he'd be one if he wanted to point two on the international side. I think Tom Kim kind of affirmed what we thought he was in Quail Hollow. I could see him having a good thing, but when you mention that, I think the first name that came to mind was Russell Henley. He's a guy that gets a lot of top 20s, top 15s is not always pushing right up there. And I think a lot of that comes down to those big moments. What do you have? What are you producing? And I think this week could be one where he sees himself go toe to toe with some of the best players in the world. He is the better pairing of him and Scotty. And I think that can give him a lot of confidence that, hey, maybe I have one of these majors in me, you know, even in my mid 30s. And then kind of sneakily, you know, different way. Max Homa to me strikes me as someone who can maybe use this as a springboard has not played well in the last couple months this summer. Went away from his swing coach. I know the record doesn't look like it at one and two, but if you go into the data, he was the third best player per strokes gained in the entire field this week. It was Zander. It was Cantlay. Then it was Max Homa. So that feels weird, but maybe that's a sign that the driving is kind of back and he can kind of figure it out to begin this year. Because I think if that went the opposite way, if Max had just a dreadful, dreadful week, we're then questioning what he looks like for all of 2025. I'm at least not feeling that as much with Max. So I think that's kind of a sneaky one. Yeah, I want to put one other name out there in Sahethi Gala. You know, we didn't hear a lot from him this week, one, one and one. But I don't think you'd be understated the value of just being in that team room and being one of the guys. And so next time you get into the mix with Scotty Sheffler or Zander Shoffley, you've seen a different side of them and you don't feel like the distance between you and them is as high. Sahethi's a guy who's talked before about imposter syndrome, not really believing he's one of the best players in the world, even though he's ranked 12th. And so I think just the week itself, regardless of the record, is going to be invaluable for him because now, like they say, he sees that all these guys put their pants on one leg at a time. He shared some drinks, he sung some songs with these guys and I think it just makes him feel that much closer and lessens that gap that he might have perceived being between him and them. You guys named a lot of worthy candidates and did not mention the guy that I thought of an answering my own question, which would be Patrick Cantley. I think that, you know, when we look back at the moment of this tournament, you know, you've got the night night from SeaWorld. And then a couple of holes later, you've got Patrick Cantley answering in a big way on the 18th goal, Saturday night and going back to last year and what he did in Rome and a similar moment and his ability to deliver in a big way in these team events. I think at some point needs to translate into success at the majors and some of the bigger events, and I expected it very well could when you look at 2025 and how this could port 10 for him going into next year. I mean, this is just a moment where even Xander Schopley who's coming off of a potential player of the year where he won two majors, he's looking at PC. I've lost count of the number of times he dropped PC in his press conference as just a guy that has ice in his veins and is able to deliver in big moments. So I think this could be big for Patrick Cantley as well. Yeah, and one thing on PC, if I may, Will, I struggled to know whether it's going to translate to majors just because he has been so good in that tandem with Xander for a while, but I think what we learned in Rome last year with the late stretch on Saturday when he digs them out of a hole and at least gives them what they felt like was a fighting chance entering Sunday. And then some of the moments we've seen here this week, I think we thought of Xander and Pat in these team events as like one person and together, they're great. And they're this force to be reckoned with. I think Pat by himself is just one of these guys in these team events. We've talked about JT for years, raising his level, we've talked about Max Homa in recent years, raising his level. I think we can expect now moving forward whether Cantley and Xander are paired together, like Cantley is going to bring it. I think we've seen enough moments in the last two years and it seems like weirdly he's one of those emotional centers for the team, which I wouldn't, just based on his personality, you wouldn't immediately jump to that. But it feels like he's developed into that guy based on what he did in Rome and what he did here. So I'm bullish on him specifically in these team events just being kind of that dude, no matter who he's with. Interesting mention there of JT in speed. This was the first team event in the US without either of them since 2012 and they didn't really miss a beat. I think that speaks to the depth of the US options this week and moving forward as we head to Beth Page and beyond. Okay, quick rapid fire question for both of you who is more likely to play in another president's cup, Adam Scott or Keegan Bradley. I think Adam Scott, he'll be there in 2026, Jeff Ogleby's the captain. We're only two years away. He physically looks great. As always, there were some reports that he was hitting the gym harder than anyone. You know, I think he's a little reinvigorated with the game. He had a great quote in Memphis. He said something along the lines of like, I don't have the patience to play bad golf. Basically, I'm in my mid 40s. Other guys, my age, including his good friend Trevor Ilman have retired at this point from competitive golf. But I think he still has that burning passion. He still thinks he can win majors and tournaments and we add a couple runners up in good events this summer. And so I think he still has that passion where he feels like he has one more push left. He's on his last legs, obviously his career, but there's a couple more titles to win. He knows it and he wants to win them. And I think that's his inspiration. And having Trevor Ilman as his kind of assistant, his consultant, if you will, also lights a fire because they are so close. He enjoys that relationship and it brings a lot out of him that I think, you know, playing golf is a way to extend that relationship. I think it's Adam Scott. I think he still feels like there's that push. He's not ready to give up yet. Keegan is going to be hard. He's got a year now where he's going to be focused on the Ryder Cup. That's not good for your game as history has shown. And then the US depth is what it is. It's just hard to make a US team period. I think actually after thinking about it a little bit, it's Adam Scott all the way. I would agree in almost solely because I could name quickly, I think, eight Americans that could have made this team and you wouldn't be surprised if they're on the next team. There's Akshay, there's Nick Dunlap, there's JT, there's Speed, there's Will Zaltoris, there's Cam Young. There's so many guys that could easily have made this team if they kind of got hot this summer. The depth is just not quite there on the international team. There's not eight guys knocking on the door for the next one. And I think we saw Adam got asked, "Hey, do you think he got one more in you?" And he kind of hemmed and hawed, but the rest of the team basically cheered for him like we want you on this team. Like I think he's kind of the elder statesman of the group and I think if he's in any type of form, he's one of those guys where you just give him the nod and you let him figure it out. I think we're one Tom came bad finish away from Keegan not being on this team. If Tom came doesn't play the last three holes in Memphis and five over Keegan's not in the BMW, which then he doesn't win it and he's not even on the team. He was already a captain's assistant for this week. So golf is a game of slim margins. We love those stories of this little thing that has a big effect, but Keegan was really only a couple shots from not being on this team. We'll try and pick up a pace with the fire with this one. Sean, you mentioned Jeff Ogilvy seems like a likely candidate to lead the internationals in 26 at Medina. He helped lead the redesign at that course in Chicago. Let's look at the other side. Let's look at the Americans and there's a lot of great options. We are, I will say confidently the three of us are not involved in choosing the next captain. Who do you think are some of the guys or a guy that you think could be a leader in 2026 for the US? Yeah, I'm not breaking any news on the Jeff Ogilvy. That has not been announced. That's just the assumption from everyone because he did design the course. 2026 in Chicago. I think it's Michael Jordan. Who else are you going to go with? I think there's room there for Tiger. You know, Tiger is a 2026 president's cup. Does the 2027 Ryder Cup? I think that is a possibility outside of that. You know, maybe they run back Keegan Bradley. I think Stuart Sink is in line as well. Obviously you look at your captain's assistance. Web Simpson was a captain's assistant. There's going to be for the next Ryder Cup and the past president's cup. Obviously the US likes this lineage of captains. But I think if Tiger is available, it's Tiger. Otherwise you look at that roster of captain's assistance from this week and next year's Ryder Cup. And I think your clues are there. I think with Keegan getting this pick, I wonder if that usher is in trying to keep this a young guy that's kind of straight from playing. So that would lead me to believe it's like Webb Brant Seneca who is an assistant on this team. And it's going to be an assistant at the Ryder Cup. I think that could be another name to look out for. All right, one more before we head for customs and try and hop the border once again. Fever Montreal moment. We've been here for a week. This is the first time the three of us have been here. I've certainly enjoyed my time here in Quebec. Sean, you want to lead off? What's going to stand out from our time here this week? I mean, the Canadians preseason game. I've not a lot of hockey in my lifetime. I've not witnessed a lot, but I mean, that was playoff fever there. There was a DJ. There was techno music. There were chants. There was exuberant reactions for goals. It was a preseason game that felt like a playoff game. I was taking it back. Outside of that. I think the lasting impression of this event itself is that core again and the fact that it delivered your top players for the US were also your top leaders. That can't always be said for US teams. Jim, it really seemed like he hinted at this time was just different with your top players. They were amenable to doing what the team needed. They were more flexible. And so that is great culturally for the US because that is one of the criticisms in the past that the individualistic Americans have trouble assimilating to the team culture. Whether it's true or not can be debated. But I think the US is headed in a good direction with this core of four guys. Canadians game would be there for me. I checked out Old Town the first day that I came in. Yeah. Loved a poutine. I had a crepe. Loved it. But honestly, I think my biggest thing is just listening to Will speak French. Maybe the surprise of the trip. Possibly the most fluent in French. But truly, that might be my lasting takeaway. I truly so unexpected the first time it came just flowing out of your mouth. So that's maybe my lasting thing. Your toss me a high dog live here. I enjoy my time. I know enough to be dangerous. Think we're back. They may have seen a good day. I'm listening. Is that audio? Yeah, I don't know what that was. It's a French version of audio. Thanks for listening essentially, which I would say in English as well. But this has been a fun week. It's a fun event. Great to be able to hang with you guys. 2026 and Diana will be here before we know it. Sean Martin. All hoodo on it. Thanks for joining us all week. And today on Talking Tour, I'm Will Gray signing off. We'll see you next time. Merci. Merci. [MUSIC PLAYING]