Justin Thomas walked off the 18th green at Medinah Country Club, hit some putts on the practice area, then headed straight to the interview room. There was no time to process what had just happened. The United States had been swept 0-5 in Friday afternoon foursomes, pushing the overall score to 7-3, and Thomas had to explain it before he’d even had a chance to sit with it himself.
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The sweep puts the Presidents Cup format itself under scrutiny, and the numbers behind it tell a story bigger than one bad session. Foursomes has become a recurring problem for the U.S. side across recent editions of both the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup, and Friday’s result at Medinah wasn’t an outlier. It was a pattern repeating itself on a new golf course.
“We got beat today,” Thomas said, speaking to reporters following the conclusion of day 2.
Thomas didn’t hedge on the loss, but he didn’t dwell on it either. He set it against the bigger picture, pointing out the Americans are roughly “30-ish percent” through the week, in a 4-day event that still leaves plenty of room to recover.
“There’s no scenario where you ever want to get swept, but if we’re going to do it, I would say Friday sounds a little bit better than any of the rounds tomorrow,” Thomas added.
The deeper question, put directly to Xander Schauffele, was why alternate shot keeps being the format where the U.S. bleeds points. Schauffele leaned first on the small sample size of the format, then turned to momentum as the real factor. He explained how players constantly check the board for red numbers, and how a string of them from the International Team early in the session changed the tone of the entire afternoon.
“They played really well today. If you look through their alternate shot, they were 4-under, 5-under through a lot, which is some really good golf today with it a little bit cooler and some really tricky pins,” Schauffele said.
That’s the bridge between the format debate and the day’s specific collapse. Two players share one ball across 12 holes, so there’s no chance to individually save a hole. When the International Team caught fire early, it hit the Americans psychologically as much as on the scoreboard, and it kept building as later pairings watched orange and yellow stack up on the board instead of red.
Schauffele didn’t hide from the historical trend when asked directly about it, but he resisted turning it into a crisis.
“You do feel, whether you put pressure on yourself to make something happen or a couple weird things happen on the course, you’ve only got 12 holes to like regroup and try to get something done,” he said.
His comparison point was Montreal, the last Presidents Cup, where the same format, Friday foursomes, produced the same kind of 0-5 sweep against the Americans. The difference is standing: in 2024 the U.S. had already banked a 5-0 sweep of its own the day before, so the loss only tied the match. This time there was no cushion, and the sweep leaves the Americans down 7-3. Thomas, who wasn’t part of that 2024 team, directed credit toward the players who lived through it.
“I was not there, so I obviously can’t speak to the specifics of it, but I watched a lot of it and they seemed to do a great job. I hope we do more of that,” Thomas said.
The box score just says 0-5. It doesn’t say why. Was it something mechanical, a shot pattern that breaks down under alternate-shot pressure, pairings that never quite clicked? Or is it something in the players’ heads at this point, a team that’s started bracing for this exact kind of afternoon before it even happens?
Schauffele’s closing point offered the more useful frame heading into Saturday.
“It’s super early. I think we’re very aware of what the score is, but at the same time, it’s a long week, and we’re just trying to make sure we stay in our lane,” he added.
Saturday is the real test of that message. If foursomes stays a structural weakness rather than a one-day anomaly, the problem travels with this team to Bethpage and past it. Different pairings, a different result on Saturday, and Medinah is remembered as the week the pattern broke. Anything else, and it’s remembered as the week the pattern set in for good.