Team USA faced a tough Friday at Medinah as the International Team took control of the Presidents Cup. After leading 3-2 on Thursday, the Americans were swept 5-0 in the second session and now trail 7-3 heading into the weekend.

As for the format on day two, it was alternate shot, widely considered the toughest format in team golf, where partners play one ball and take turns hitting every shot. That made every missed putt and errant shot even more costly, with no second ball available to bail out a team. Moreover, Medinah No. 3 posed another dramatic challenge. The course has hosted three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, and the 2012 Ryder Cup, although this is a very different Medinah from the one seen in 2012 after a major 2022-23 renovation. Here’s how the U.S. fared against a red-hot International side in round two.

Friday Foursomes 

Match 6: Corey Conners & Nick Taylor vs. Scottie Scheffler & Sam Burns 

Fresh off their nervy 1-up win over Lee and Im yesterday, Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns opened their round against Canadian players Corey Conners and Nick Taylor. To start, Scheffler hit a safe fairway wood off the tee, while Burns’ approach ran through the green, leaving a tricky downhill putt, and both settled for par. Taylor, meanwhile, hit a tee shot to set up for a 12-footer for birdie, but it slid just past the hole. And Conners couldn’t convert the comeback either.

From there, Team USA birdied the second hole to take a 1-up lead. The match was tough here as Internationals answered with a birdie on the par-five third to square the advantage right back. The lead flipped once again on the fourth hole to the USA when Sam Burns made a birdie, but Internationals leveled it again on the par-5 6th. Both sides kept trading pars and matching birdies on the brutal par-three ninth to send them to the turn with Internationals by one up in the lead.

The Americans briefly squared the match with a par on the 10th, but the 11th was halved. The turning point of the game was the 12th. Taylor’s tee shot was bad, but it kicked off a grandstand into a good lie, leaving just 90 yards in. Conners stuffed his shot to six feet, and Taylor drained the putt to go up. Holes 13-15 were all halved with pars. Taylor then rolled in clutch four-footers to tie 16 and 17, keeping the Internationals one up into 18. On the last hole, Taylor’s drive went right, but he stuffed a 148-yard wedge to gimme range. Sam Burns’ 18-foot birdie try didn’t come through, sealing the win for Conners and Taylor.

The finish was particularly painful for Scheffler and Burns, who had the highest pre-match win probability of the five U.S. pairings, according to Data Golf. The loss also dropped the duo to 1-4-1 together in Presidents Cup play. Conners summed up the International approach afterward: “We just tried to be relentless out there.”

Match 7: Sungjae Im & Hideki Matsuyama vs Russell Henley & Jacob Bridgeman

Quiet start, loud finish to the front nine for the Internationals in match two. Jacob Bridgeman birdied the 2nd hole to put Americans in a 1-up lead, but Im and Matsuyama immediately answered with a birdie on the par-5 third and then won the next three holes. That’s when Sungjae Im got hot with the putter. He converted a 15-foot “Texas-wedge” birdie on the fifth before Matsuyama followed with another birdie on the sixth, pushing the Internationals three up. For Team USA, Henley and Bridgeman struggled to match the International pressure, and the four-hole run from Nos. 3-6 put the Americans in a hole they could not fully escape.

Then Americans clawed back with par wins on the 10th and 11th, cutting the deficit to just one. But Matsuyama answered with a 20-foot birdie putt on 12 to push the lead back to two up. Holes 13 to 15 were pars. Matsuyama then buried a 20-foot par save on the par-3 16th. Jacob Bridgeman’s six-footer tried to extend the match, but it lipped out, giving the International Team the closeout at 3&2.

The International duo had made the Americans work for almost every hole, but their putting was the separator. Henley missed six- and eight-footers on Nos. 4 and 6, while Im and Matsuyama kept converting from outside comfortable range. Matsuyama finished the week 2-0 after two matches, while Bridgeman fell to 0-1 in his Presidents Cup debut.

Match 8: Ryan Fox & Min Woo Lee vs Collin Morikawa & Wyndham Clark

Match three was the tightest on the front nine on the board. Wyndham Clark kept the fight strong with a birdie on the 4th, yet the first five holes went by all square. Ryan Fox then rolled in a birdie on the par-five sixth to nose through Internationals ahead, a lead they held through the seventh. But Collin Morikawa answered immediately, making a birdie on eight to square things right back up. Both teams then birdied on the tricky par-three ninth, sending this one to a dead-level turn.

This match flipped late. Morikawa and Clark actually played well enough statistically to suggest they should have been the ones walking away with the point. The American duo gained nearly 3½ strokes combined, making them two of the three strongest U.S. players by that measure on Friday. Yet Fox and Lee stayed alive, carding six birdies to the Americans’ five.

The Internationals were 1-down after 14, but Fox changed the match with birdie putts of 13 feet on No. 15 and 19 feet on No. 16. Morikawa then had opportunities of his own, missing an 11-footer to tie the 16th and a five-footer that would have won the 17th. The Americans never got that final opening. The 18th was halved, with Fox rolling in a four-footer for par to complete the 1-up victory.

“I felt it pretty early today with the putter,” Fox said. “We both read them really, really well coming down the stretch.”

Match 9: Adam Scott & Christiaan Bezuidenhout vs. Justin Thomas & Cam Young

Justin Thomas and Cameron Young never quite found an answer against Adam Scott and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. They dropped the 1st hole with a bogey, and although they squared the match early, the Internationals began pulling away with birdies on Nos. 3 and 4.

The key difference from the original back-and-forth was that Thomas and Young never produced the birdie burst they needed. In fact, the U.S. pair won only three holes all day, and all three came with pars. The Internationals, meanwhile, kept finding birdie opportunities. Then came No. 7.

A heckler called out “Get a longer putter!” as the 46-year-old Scott stood over a 44-foot birdie putt. Scott promptly drained it. Thomas had a 10-footer to answer, but missed, and the Internationals moved two up.

Scott and Bezuidenhout then birdied the ninth to make it 3-up at the turn. When Thomas put his tee shot in the water on the par-4 12th, the lead stretched to four. Thomas and Young couldn’t mount a comeback, and Bezuidenhout’s 31-foot birdie on No. 16 effectively ended it, closing the match 3&2.

It was a particularly stark result for Thomas, who had moved to 7-0 in Four-ball Presidents Cup matches the previous day. The alternate-shot format offered a very different test, and this time the American pairing never made a birdie.

Match 10: Tom Kim & Si Woo Kim vs. Xander Schauffele & Patrick Cantlay

Another hard face-off for the Americans. The Kims opened with a birdie on the first hole to grab an early one-up edge, but Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele forced a tie on the 2nd. Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim answered on No. 5 to regain the lead, and the Americans remained only one down through eight.

Then Si Woo Kim changed the shape of the match on the par-3 ninth, holing a 25-foot birdie putt to make it 2-up. The two Kims celebrated with their first real show of emotion of the match, and that putt gave the Internationals breathing room.

Holes 10 to 13 were all halved, and the Kims protected their two-up cushion. They then closed strong, winning both the 14th and 15th to finish the game 4&3.

The result was more emphatic than the scorecard initially suggested. Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim made six birdies through their first 11 holes, with Tom responsible for four of them. Si Woo’s approach on No. 11, from 167 yards to four feet, also helped keep the Internationals moving forward.

The victory gave the Kims another point over Cantlay and Schauffele after beating them on Thursday as well. The American duo, meanwhile, slipped to 5-6 together in Presidents Cup matches.

As the sun set on Medinah, the leaderboard read 7-3 in the Internationals’ favor after a historic 5-0 sweep. It was only the third session sweep by the International Team in Presidents Cup history and the second straight Friday on which it had taken all five Foursomes points.

That four-point cushion is also the largest the International Team has ever carried into Saturday after two sessions, matching the position it held in 1998 at Royal Melbourne. That remains the only Presidents Cup the International Team has won.

The U.S. captain also tried to keep his team’s head up afterwards: “There’s still 20 points out there. There’s a lot of golf left to play.”

That history cuts both ways. The Internationals also swept Friday Foursomes 5-0 at Royal Montreal in 2024, but the scoreboard was only 5-5 afterward because the Americans had swept Thursday. Team USA then won six of the eight matches on Saturday and went on to lift the Cup.

This time, the International Team has something it did not have in Montreal: a four-point advantage after two sessions. Saturday will feature eight more matches, Four-ball in the morning and Foursomes in the afternoon, before Sunday’s 12 Singles matches decide the Cup.

And that is what makes the 7-3 scoreline so different from a routine Friday setback. The Americans were not edged in one or two matches; they were shut out across an entire session. Yet with 20 points still available, the next eight matches will determine whether Friday becomes the moment the International Team seized control or simply another dramatic swing in a Presidents Cup that has already produced one.