2022 Presidents Cup: Potential for U.S. team domination among nine storylines to watch at Quail Hollow

2022 Presidents Cup: Potential for U.S. team domination among nine storylines to watch at Quail Hollow Presidents Cup week is here, and while it doesn’t hold the excitement everyone thought it would after the United States narrowly eclipsed the international team in Australia three years ago, team golf at the highest level is always a thrill.

The vigorously preferred U.S. side appears to be ready to defeat Trevor Immelman’s Global crew, yet the projection of a defeat is something that has frequently prompted probably the best crossroads in sports history. Davis Love III is driving the stars and stripes into a genuine David versus Goliath circumstance this week in Charlotte. The degree of play on the two sides is biased, yet there are still a lot of storylines to focus on this week at Quail Empty Golf Club.

This event also represents a reprieve from the long, (sometimes) slow slog of individual stroke play that we get throughout the year. Even in a massive victory back in 2017 at Liberty National Golf Club, the days were still compelling. We got to see future U.S. stars, a variety of pairings on both sides and the types of exhilarating celebrations match play golf often offers up.

We should investigate a couple of stories that could foster this week at Quail Empty and separate what we’ll look after the rest of what ought to be a wonderful seven day stretch of golf.

1. Over by Saturday? We know the initial not many long periods of golf will be an impact in light of the fact that the initial not many long periods of Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups are consistently fun, regardless of the matchup or score. You generally get crazy opening outs, strange, golf-y festivities and fascinating pairings that could conceivably portend the future of one or the other group. In 2017, notwithstanding, the U.S. driven 14.5-3.5 after the Saturday matches, and the whole occasion was totally over going into singles play. That is a unique case, in any event, when groups are crisscrossed this way; group contests are regularly close until the most recent couple of hours of the week. Ideally this one will be, however the danger of a boat race exists here such that it has not in latest group rivalries (explicitly the Ryder Cup last year at Whistling Waterways).
2. Who’s not there: Typically at group occasions, we talk about who got censured by one of the commanders. All things being equal, this year is about who scorned themselves. No LIV Golf Association players are allowed at the Presidents Cup, and that implies that worldwide group stars like Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer and Louis Oosthuizen will watch from home and potentially messaging with LIV Golf partners Bryson DeChambeau, Creeks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, every one of whom were Group USA points of support throughout recent years. While this shouldn’t (and won’t) be the essential argument of the week, it’s one more way LIV has penetrated into each hole of the golf world, including one of the small bunch of hallowed group weeks that we have consistently.
3. Course fit: One of the big talking points going into this week is that even with the international team at full strength, the U.S. advantage at a long, brawny track like Quail Hollow would be too much for them to overcome. One reason they nearly broke a now-24-year winless streak at Royal Melbourne is because the golf course played away from the advantages of the U.S. team (length) and into the hands of a crafty, feisty international team. Of the top nine golfers historically at Quail Hollow who are also in this event, seven are Americans. Furthermore, of the top 10 best fits for this course in the event this week, eight are Americans. It’s difficult to envision either the course or the way it’s set up as anything other than an advantage for Love’s team.
4. Youngster ringers (on the two sides): I’m more charmed than ordinary to watch the beginners this time around. On the U.S. side, Sam Consumes, Max Homa, Billy Horschel and Cameron Youthful are fascinating as players as well as potential future U.S. secures (particularly on account of Consumes, Homa and Youthful). Consumes, Homa and Horschel are genuinely vivified contenders that I hope to flourish in a group climate. For the Worldwide Group, they’ll rest on eight freshmen, however the most convincing are 20-year-old Tom Kim, Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith and Cam Davis; the last two were chosen since they can match a portion of the capability on the U.S. side. In the event that those four play to their moderately high roofs, the internationals could be somewhat fearless.
5. Top Scheff: I joked that the best player in the world and Jon Rahm were playing the singles match of the Ryder Cup last year, and this year it turned out to not be a joke as Scheffler rose to the top spot in the OWGR after four wins early in the year. He was perhaps a bit of a surprise hero last year at his first U.S. team event as he went 2-0-1, but he’ll sneak up on nobody this year. My question is whether he can lead from out in front as one of the Americans with the biggest targets on his back.
6. Foursomes advantage: The big problem for the international team — other than the fact that it has three players ranked in the top 25 of the OWGR and the U.S. has 12 — is that it has been unable to compete in foursomes at this event over the last two decades. The stat below is jarring. The internationals have actually outperformed the U.S. team in singles play and tied them in fourballs over the last 15 years, but have been absolutely torched in foursomes. That’s something to keep an eye on going into the week.

8. U.S. pairings: I care an excessive lot about the in-the-weeds particulars on the U.S. side of things, and I believe we’re most likely going to get a few pairings this week that we’ve either currently seen at the Ryder Cup or will see in the future one year from now in Rome. Here are the cases for the initial two days of training adjusts for the U.S.
9. What does U.S. future look like after optimistic Whistling Straits? I wrote about the U.S. Dream Team that invaded Lake Michigan this time a year ago. In that moment, the future looked indelible as the red, white and blue looked unbeatable. However, nearly half that team is gone (either to LIV or to injury), and in their place steps some question marks. This year’s Presidents Cup won’t determine what the future of U.S. team golf looks like, but it might actually be more representative of what the next five years will look like than last year’s Ryder Cup did. It would be surprising if that resulted in a more optimistic outlook given the talent on that team and what has been lost, but it could result in a similarly unified group that moves into the future of Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups against the best players from the rest of the world.