The United States erased a three-point deficit in Sunday singles to win the 2026 Presidents Cup 17 to 13 at Medinah Country Club, according to Golf Channel's live coverage of the final day. It's the largest final-day comeback in the competition's history, and it stretches the Americans' win streak to 11 consecutive editions.
Team USA had won 10 consecutive Presidents Cups, a streak stretching back to 2003. The International team's only victory in the competition's history came in 1998, in Melbourne. Entering the week, the Americans were significant betting favorites, which is part of why Saturday's scoreline mattered: a loss, or even a narrow win, would have been the closest an International side had come to the trophy in over two decades.
Medinah added its own layer to the story. The club's Course No. 3 hosted the 2012 Ryder Cup, where Europe erased a four-point deficit entering Sunday singles to beat the United States, a collapse still known as the "Miracle at Medinah." Both the preview and pairings coverage of this Presidents Cup flagged that history as a talking point, while cautioning that a course doesn't carry a grudge from one competition to another. This time the roles reversed: it was the Americans staring at a three-point deficit on the same property, and the Americans who did the closing.
Internationals captain Geoff Ogilvy's side took a 10.5 to 7.5 lead into the final day. With 12 singles matches and 12 points in play, the International team needed only five points to retain the trophy outright, a total that looked well within reach after three days of steadier form than the Americans had shown.
Instead, the United States won the session 9.5 points to 2.5, the largest single-session margin in the event's history. Jacob Bridgeman delivered the clinching point, closing out Min Woo Lee with a par putt on the 18th hole. Russell Henley and Nick Taylor played the day's final match to a halve after the outcome had already been settled. Brandt Snedeker's side finished the week 17 to 13, turning a three-point Saturday-night deficit into a four-point final margin in a single session.
Six rookies played across the two rosters, and the highest-profile of them entered as a genuine unknown quantity. Jackson Koivun made his debut for the United States at 21, the youngest player on the U.S. roster, a captain's pick by Brandt Snedeker that the buildup coverage framed as a bet on upside over experience. Chris Gotterup and Jacob Bridgeman rounded out the American rookie class, and it was Bridgeman, not one of the veterans, who ended up with the clinching point. The International side brought in Nick Taylor, Nico Echavarria, and Ryo Hisatsune, playing alongside established figures like Hideki Matsuyama, Adam Scott, and Ryan Fox.
Rookies at a Presidents Cup are as often a liability as an asset, and a captain's pick that puts an untested player in a deciding match is the kind of call that gets litigated for years if it goes wrong and forgotten by Christmas if it goes right, whether it's a golf roster or a hiring decision at any ordinary company. Bridgeman's putt on 18 settled that question for this cycle, at least.
An 11th straight win pushes the series record to 14-1-1, the kind of gap that periodically raises questions about whether the competition needs a format change to stay close. Saturday's three-point deficit gave those questions a rare afternoon of relevance, and then Sunday's record session closed them back down just as fast. Ogilvy's side did enough over three days to make the Americans work for it on the game's biggest stage, which is closer than these things have come in a while, even if it ended the way it usually does.
For Brandt Snedeker, the result validates a captaincy built around the Koivun pick and a rookie-heavy bottom of the roster, a bet that looked shakier on Saturday night than it does now. For Ogilvy, three days of genuine contention are still a result his side can build on, even without the trophy to show for it. The next Presidents Cup will need a new venue to write its own version of this story, since Medinah has now hosted both the most famous collapse in modern team golf and, 14 years later, a comeback that ran the other way.
For more on how the teams were assembled, see our earlier coverage of the Presidents Cup pairings and Koivun's debut and the full preview of the week at Medinah.
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