In many respects, Saturday was always likely to be a more challenging day for the Internationals at the Presidents Cup than a Friday session where they needed to fight back from 5-0 down.
Certainly, what happened on Friday at Royal Montreal will go down in folklore as the Internationals became the first team in Presidents Cup history to respond to being on the receiving end of a clean sweep by dishing out one of their own in the next session.
Mike Weir was rightly receiving plaudits for making some brave decisions, including leaving Tom Kim out of the lineup in the foursomes when the Internationals required a massive performance. But Saturday proved to be a lot tougher for the home side.
Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes could not recapture the magic they had produced on Friday on Saturday morning, while it was a similar story for Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im. And USA went on to win the session 3-1 to take an 8-6 lead overall.
Mike Weir makes baffling decision at the Presidents Cup
Nevertheless, Weir decided to use the same pairings in the afternoon session, meaning that the likes of Min Woo Lee and Byeong Hun An sat out all day. An had won his point alongside Si-woo Kim on Friday, while Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Jason Day also won their second matches of the week.
And speaking on Sky Sports (broadcast on 28/9 from 18:00) ahead of the final session, Brad Faxon suggested that he felt Weir had made a major mistake.
“It’s incredible the amount of modifications each player has to make; they didn’t leave the course last night until 7:30, got back to the hotel at 8:30, had that quick dinner. Up at 4, maybe before, to get here, fog delay,” he said.
“These players never deal with things the same time all over again. And now, the same players for the International team, I can’t believe Mike Weir’s doing this, I just think it’s a show of no confidence in the players who have sat.”
The captain got carried away
Faxon would ultimately be proven correct, with the Internationals suffering another 3-1 session defeat in the afternoon to leave the Americans only one point worse off, in terms of a lead, than when they had been flawless on the opening day.
Some of the decisions Weir made were arguably strange. What was so impressive about the way the Internationals responded on Friday was it seemed that Weir had not deviated from his plan despite their poor start. But that potentially changed on Saturday morning.
Taylor Pendrith, Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes made just two birdies between them on Saturday morning. While you could understand Weir’s thinking in playing the three men in the first session of the day after the evening before, they would have surely been better having Min Woo Lee in the lineup.
And it did appear that the side did start to run out of steam in the final stages of the day. The US won the final three matches out on the course to put one hand on the cup.
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