International team sweeps Friday foursomes, seizes 7-3 lead over U.S. at Presidents Cup

The International team swept every match of Friday's foursomes session at the Presidents Cup, turning a one-point deficit into a commanding lead over the United States and putting the Americans' streak of ten consecutive victories in the competition under real threat for the first time in nearly three decades.

Captain Geoff Ogilvy's side won all five alternate-shot matches at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago, according to the official PGA Tour match recap, flipping Thursday's 3-2 American edge in four-ball play into a 7-3 lead heading into Saturday. It is only the seventh session sweep in Presidents Cup history and the largest two-session lead the International side has held since it won the event outright at Royal Melbourne in 1998.

The numbers

Corey Conners and Nick Taylor, the tournament's lone all-Canadian pairing, opened the carnage by beating world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and his partner Sam Burns 1 up, aided by a fortunate carom off a corporate hospitality tent near the 12th green. Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im followed with a 3-and-2 win over Russell Henley and Jacob Bridgeman after reeling off four straight holes early in the round. Ryan Fox and Min Woo Lee edged Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark 1 up in a match that turned when Morikawa's approach on the final hole found a bunker.

Adam Scott, at 46 playing in his 12th Presidents Cup, paired with Christiaan Bezuidenhout to beat Justin Thomas and Cameron Young 3 and 2, a match Scott swung with a 44-foot birdie putt on the seventh hole. Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim closed out the session with a 4-and-3 win over Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, sealed by a 21-foot birdie from Si Woo Kim on the par-3 ninth. Full results and the live standings are posted on the tournament's official scoring page.

How the U.S. lost its grip

The Americans arrived at Medinah having won every Presidents Cup since 1998 and had not lost a session by a wider margin than 3-1 in over a decade. Thursday's four-ball matches, recapped by the PGA Tour's own coverage, looked like business as usual: Scheffler and Burns held on for a 1-up win, Justin Thomas and rookie Jackson Koivun routed Corey Conners and Nico Echavarria 4 and 3, and Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa beat Ryan Fox and Adam Scott to push the hosts to a 3-2 edge. Only a late point for Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim kept the International team within a single point going into Friday.

That proximity mattered. Ogilvy's players had spent the tournament build-up bristling gently at being cast as underdogs to a deep and top-heavy American roster, and captains on both sides had noted that foursomes — where two players share one ball and neither can simply outplay a weaker partner — has historically been the format most likely to produce an upset. Friday bore that out in full, with the International team winning the front nine or better in all five matches and never trailing after the turn.

Who is affected

The result puts extraordinary pressure on U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker heading into Saturday's back-to-back four-ball and foursomes sessions, the last chance for either side to bank points in team formats before Sunday's 12 singles matches decide the Cup. Scheffler, the top-ranked player in the world and the centerpiece of the American roster, has now been on the losing side of a match for the first time all week alongside Burns. For the International team, the sweep validates the captain's picks that brought Bezuidenhout and Nick Taylor into the lineup and gives long-time stalwarts such as Scott, now the most experienced player in Presidents Cup history not to have won the trophy, a real chance at ending that drought before he likely plays his final edition of the event.

A short account of Friday's carnage, as reported by Golf Channel and Sky Sports, framed it as one of the more lopsided sessions in the event's modern history, with American players struggling with putts they had been making comfortably a day earlier.

Reaction

Ogilvy, whose team has not lifted the trophy since that lone 1998 win, said he had not expected a clean sweep even after a promising eve to the week.

"It's hard to imagine. Look, we loved how we played yesterday. The first match could have gone either way, and it ended up 2-3 their way. But we just wanted to come win the session. They were all in a really good frame of mind, but you would never imagine doing five sets."

Snedeker, for his part, tried to keep his players from panicking, reaching for a football comparison as he addressed reporters after the session, as Yahoo Sports reported: "This thing is 35, 40 percent over. It's not even halftime of a football game." He added that there was still "a lot of golf left" to be played.

What happens next

Saturday brings eight more matches at Medinah — a morning four-ball session followed by an afternoon foursomes session — offering the U.S. its clearest remaining opportunity to erase points in team play before the format shifts to 12 singles matches on Sunday. Thirty total points are on offer across the week, and the first side to reach 15.5 claims the Cup, meaning the International team's 7-3 lead, while historic, leaves it still nine points short of the number it needs. A repeat of Friday's sweep on Saturday morning would put the Americans in territory they have never occupied in the event's history and would make Sunday's singles, when a U.S. team as deep as this one traditionally thrives, into a genuine grind for the visitors rather than a formality.