In its most dramatic moments, this Presidents Cup delivered something special

September 30, 2024

The 2024 Presidents Cup finished with a lopsided score but plenty of drama along the way.

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MONTREAL — ALL MORNING, KEEGAN BRADLEY THOUGHT HE MIGHT THROW UP.

“I was in the team room and I couldn’t eat,” he said Sunday afternoon, once it was all over. “I can’t ever remember feeling like that. Y’know, I’ve won a major, held leads in big tournaments — but this was so nerve-wracking, when you look around the room and you think of what you need to do. For the guys and, like, being a captain’s pick, you don’t want to let him down.”

Bradley emphasized one specific word to describe the feeling.

“It was really heavy this morning,” he said. “It was heavy all week, but this morning I woke up and just felt like I had electricity going through my body.”

For years Bradley has talked openly about the challenges of managing anxiety under the pressures of professional golf. But even by his standards, this weight was different.

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“My goodness — the last time I played, I was the point to lose the Ryder Cup,” he said, referencing the team’s 2014 loss at Gleneagles in Scotland. Only one of his teammates from 2014 was in Montreal on Monday: U.S. team captain Jim Furyk. Nobody from the 2015 Presidents Cup made this team either, nor the 2016 Ryder Cup team. Bradley was the only one to reach back in time.

He carried the weight of these new teammates, and the weight of last year’s heartbreaking Ryder Cup snub, and the weight of 10 years’ expectations, and the weight of knowing that he was living the moment he’d dreamt of every year since. He shouldered it Sunday afternoon, when Bradley faced Si Woo Kim, who’d been the International team’s best player all week. Bradley birdied the first hole, and then the second, to take the lead. Kim battled back to 1 Up but then Bradley birdied 8 and 10 and 12 and 14, too, flipping the match and building a 3 Up lead.

He had a putt from less than four feet to win the match at No. 16, but there was a silver lining to that miss: it extended the match and set up the perfect finish. When Kim’s birdie try at No. 18 slid past the hole, it was official: The U.S. had won the cup. Bradley, suddenly weightless, shook hands with Kim and then turned and practically floated to his teammates, who swarmed the green; so did his family and their families, all of them celebrating the team win and the perfection of the moment, knowing just how much it meant to the man who finished it off.

But that heaviness takes a toll, too. Some 10 minutes later, once the TV cameras had left and the crowd had cleared and his teammates had charged off in the direction of other matches, Bradley finally had a moment to let it settle. He bent over double, hands on his knees, and admitted something aloud.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “And I’m so glad it’s over.”

THERE’S AN INSTINCT, AFTER ANOTHER LOPSIDED PRESIDENTS CUP RESULT, to blow the whole thing up. I get that. I’m open to the idea of tweaking rules, rethinking the format, finding a way to give the underdogs a fighting chance. But the assertion that it doesn’t matter? That doesn’t check out. Not to the tens of thousands of golf fans that lined the fairways of Royal Montreal Golf Club on the weekend. And not to of the players, on either team, who were all in all week and proved, on and off the course, just how much this meant to them.

To Corey Conners, who called it “one of the coolest moments of my career” when he was serenaded from the grandstands on the par-3 13th green.

“With everybody, thousands of people around the green singing ‘O Canada’ and to hole a putt like that was really memorable and special,” he said.

To Mackenzie Hughes, Conners’ fellow Canadian, longtime buddy and college teammate. “Being with this group was the highlight of my career, and it was amazing to go to battle with these guys,” he said. “The week as a whole, being a rookie, getting to be around some of the best players in the world, it was magical. I knew it would be, and it lived up to all the hype and more.”

To Taylor Pendrith, the third of their Canadian trio, who earned two points for the Internationals after getting shut out in his 2022 debut and called the atmosphere “unreal.”

“The fans are all out,” he said. “They’ve been loud. You can hear the roars from a few fairways over and you know what’s happening. That’s what we were hoping for, and they’ve showed up.”

To Max Homa, who squeaked onto the team despite a mediocre finish to his season. He played fairly well in two foursomes losses and went off last in Sunday singles, giving him plenty of time to grow the chip on his shoulder. He started off in style, holing his approach shot at the first for an eagle 2. And he finished in style, too, surrounded by his victorious team.