The 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah Country Club is 48 days away, and there are just three events left before the six automatic qualifiers are locked in for both the United States and International teams.
Once those six are set, Team USA captain Brandt Snedeker and International captain Geoff Ogilvy will have to select six more players to round out their roster. Snedeker in particular faces an interesting conundrum, as some young American stars have picked up wins late this summer to thrust their names into serious consideration for one of those captain's picks.
Michael Thorbjornsen broke through for his first career win at the Rocket Classic last week, adding another name to the mix, but the talk of the golf world is 21-year-old Jackson Koivun, who won the 3M Open in just his third career start to affirm all of the hype about his leap to the professional ranks. Koivun was one of the most dominant amateurs in recent memory during his time at Auburn and had massive expectations placed on his shoulders as he made the transition to being a pro after the U.S. Open.
After missing the cut at the John Deere, he finished in the top 10 at the ISCO Championship opposite the Open and then built on that with a win in Minnesota over world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. That performance confirmed Koivun's arrival as the next young American star, and immediately there were calls from fans for him to make the Presidents Cup roster.
On Tuesday, Snedeker got an firsthand look at the young star as he played a practice round with Koivun and Ben James -- another rising young star -- ahead of the Wyndham Championship. Afterwards, Snedeker was effusive in his praise of Koivun, calling him "generational," which will only ramp up the hype about the young star making the roster at Medinah.
"I don't think my game has probably ever been as good as his. He's a generational player," Snedeker said. "You look at every metric you want to look at. To do what he did in college, to do what he's done as a professional, this kid's really special. Now, the hardest thing to do in golf is how do you handle success. We're pretty good at handling failure, but how do you handle success. Everybody I've talked to, everything I read about him, got to play with him today, he's a great kid and he's not going to stop pushing to be the best he can be."
However, for as much as Snedeker is a fan of Koivun's, he made it clear that he won't just bring him for the sake of injecting some young blood into the U.S. team room.
"I don't ever really look at it like we have to change things or do things different. I think the golf dictates who needs to be on the team. I'm not into, 'oh, let's just take a young kid because we need a young kid on the team,'" Snedeker said. "That doesn't make any sense to me. I think you take the best players who give you the best opportunity of winning. I don't think -- you can't discount what people have done and you can't -- it's really hard to forecast how guys are going to handle those kinds of things. You look at how they've played, what they're capable of, what their ceiling is, what their basement is, what their floor is and kind of go from there."
This is where there's difference in how Snedeker views the Presidents Cup roster and fans do. Snedeker sees his job as putting together the best roster to try and win the 2026 Presidents Cup. Fans view the Presidents Cup, where the U.S. has dominated, as a tune up for the Ryder Cup. There's a real argument for Koivun to be on the roster by merit, but in the eyes of many fans it's not only that he's a good choice now, but he figures to get better over the next year and they want to see him get some reps in team competition alongside many of the players who will be making the trek to Adare Manor in 2027.
That idea is what Snedeker is referring to, and it's why this week becomes incredibly important for Koivun's chances.
Koivun needs another strong performance this week at the Wyndham Championship to lock himself into a spot in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Koivun is not only one of the most talked about players in golf right now, but he's also the FedEx Cup bubble boy, sitting in 70th heading into Greensboro. There are some big names behind him hoping to jump up and knock him out of a spot in the field in Memphis, but if the 21-year-old can put together a solid showing at the Wyndham to lock in his spot at the St. Jude Classic, it would go a long way to giving Snedeker confidence that he's worthy of a spot, even after just a handful of starts as a pro.
"At the end of the day you have to start with the results. You can love a player all you want to, but he's got to go out there and prove it under pressure. This is the way it is," Snedeker said. "From there you kind of branch out, kind of see how they play in big events, see how they -- for Jackson, it's a unique case because he really hasn't played that many events as a professional. Obviously played a bunch of events as an amateur. You look at everything. You talk to people around him, you talk to other players who have played with him, try to get a good sense of who he is and what makes him tick and then go from there. But there's probably 20, 22 guys that have a chance of making this team right now so it's kind of wide open."
This week will bring a unique data point for Snedeker when it comes to Koivun. Playing for your playoff life is a kind of pressure Koivun's never felt, and how he handles that and performs under the weight of being in 70th with a playoff spot on the line will provide some info into how he handles those "big events" even without him having too many big event starts on his résumé. Koivun finished in the top 25 at the U.S. Open to earn co-low amateur honors and has a win under his belt already this season. But if he stumbles this week, he'll be at the mercy of how others on the fringe of the U.S. roster perform in the postseason.
If he can play his way into the playoffs this week and perform solidly in Memphis, even if it's not enough to leap into the top 50 to make the BMW, that would certainly seem to give Snedeker more than enough reason to put him on the roster. It'd also bring the additional benefit of getting him team event experience early in what fans hope is a long career of Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup appearances, even if the captain insists that won't factor into his decision.
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