INTERNATIONAL TEAM REMAINS DEFIANT AFTER LOSS TO U.S. TEAM IN PRESIDENTS CUP

To warm the souls of those passionate supporters who've maintained a vigil over the International Team in this 30-year Presidents Cup sojourn, there was an unforgettable one-day session that was the picture of perfection at Royal Montreal Golf Club recently.

- Jim McCabe

A clean sweep of five foursomes matches International Team magic that had never been seen in such dominating fashion for a very long time.

That the rout included wins over dynamic players ranked first (Scottie Scheffler, with Russell Henley) and second (Xander Schauffele, with Patrick Cantlay) in the world and featured triumphs by outlandish scores of 7 & 6, 6 & 5, and 5 & 4 seemingly sent a message that this time, finally, would be different.

Players like Adam Scott, Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Kim, Mackenzie Hughes and Si Woo Kim performed like men possessed, fired up with the sole intent to end a U.S. Team domination in the biennial team competition.

Alas, the magic could not continue into the weekend because from a 5-5 tie through two sessions (the Americans had kicked things off by winning all five four-ball games on the opening day), a strong American squad, which 12 members were ranked inside the world's top-25, pulled away.

By matching scores of 3-1, the Americans won both the morning four-ball and afternoon foursomes sessions on the third day to build a virtually insurmountable 11-7 lead. It was a Saturday in which Team USA's nucleus of world top-10 players - Scheffler, Schauffele, Cantlay, and Collin Morikawa - factored in all six of those victories.

That Saturday was as demoralizing as Friday was exhilarating will be the lasting image of the 2024 Presidents Cup. Because while it was the Americans' 10th straight win in this biennial international team competition and was put into the books with an emphatic 18 ½ 11½ final score, in a fast-falling Canada twilight the International Team's inability to finish strong on Saturday told the story of yet another painful edition.