International Star Power In Decline at 2026 Presidents Cup

For years, the narrative around the uncompetitive Presidents Cup focused on an International team that simply could not keep up because of depth. The end of the bench, the captain’s picks, which Geoff Ogilvy delivered for the 2026 iteration on Tuesday night, have never been a match for the USA side in a competition where everyone has to play, and much more frequently than in the Ryder Cup. International captains were going to all corners of the globe, and way down the Official World Golf Ranking, to find players to fill out the roster and go up against an American side where the lowest-ranked of 12 players might be 25th in the world. It got ugly based on the volume of points offered and players six through 12 on each side needing to play.

It became the narrative because there was truth in the analysis, but a more troubling trend that’s been overlooked in this lopsided competition is the decline at the top of the International roster. Of course, the PGA Tour made the Presidents Cup as a profit-driven creation to get in on some cash from a marketable team event. They had no rights to the Ryder Cup, which was ascending in a major way in the late 1980s and early 90s. But the Presidents Cup was also created in an era when many of the top players in the world were simply ineligible for the Ryder Cup. These were global superstars, world Nos. 1, and major winners like Greg Norman, Nick Price, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Retief Goosen, and others. That kind of strength at the top has simply not been replenished, which is a bigger problem not just for the competitiveness but also the marketability and purpose of the event.

In 1994, the first edition, four of the top nine players and five of the top 12 in the OWGR were eligible for the International team (I say eligible because Norman, Els, and Jumbo Ozaki did not play, but world No. 1 Price did). In 1996, three of the top-six players in the world were International stars. This continued every two years with at least three or four top-10 players in the world. In 2003, the Internationals had four (Singh, Els, Weir, and Goosen) of the world’s top-seven players, and five of the top 12! The International team comprised half of the top 12 of the OWGR in 2007, though this was before Rory Sabbatini became Slovakian (then eighth in the OWGR, and also South African).

You get the point. It made some sense to have a Presidents Cup because there were pillars at the top of the game, often led by legends like Gary Player, who had been on the sidelines of the Ryder Cup. And those pillars were often joined by others who had picked off majors in a given cycle. This just has not been the case in recent editions, including this year, where Si Woo Kim, a phenomenal talent who had a great year but has two top 10s in 38 majors, is the highest-rated player on the team at 13th in the world. The criteria in those rankings have evolved throughout the Presidents Cup era, with an obvious emphasis on PGA Tour play, but the thinness at the top is notable. LIV Golf maybe removed an option from the top of the world ranking, like Joaquin Niemann. Hideki Matsuyama was their only top-10 player in the world in 2024. Before that, it was Hideki at 16th in 2022 and Adam Scott at 18th in 2019 as the highest-ranked players on the roster.

This last decade is when it really started to fall off, with Scott, Matsuyama, and Jason Day trying their best to keep things together with majors (one each) on their resumes and dalliances with the top 10. There hasn’t been much help from elsewhere. This year, after Si Woo, there are four players from Nos. 25-30 in the OWGR. These are all elite pros capable of winning any tournament in the game. Taken in total for this team event, however, it’s grim. At least on paper. The weakening at the top of the International side continues a recent trend that is simply not in line with the purpose and appeal in the origins of the event. But it portends the continued trend of outcomes on the scoreboard.