The Internationals Swept Every Foursomes Match to Seize a 7-3 Presidents Cup Lead at Medinah

The International team erased the United States' opening-day advantage in emphatic fashion on Friday, winning all five foursomes matches at Medinah Country Club to open a 7-3 lead heading into the weekend of the 2026 Presidents Cup. It is a sharp reversal from Thursday's opening session, which we covered separately, when the Americans had taken a 3-2 lead in the four-ball matches behind Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas and debutant Jackson Koivun.

How the sweep unfolded

The PGA Tour's match recap confirms the Internationals won across the board: Corey Conners and Nick Taylor edged their match by a single hole margin, Sungjae Im and Hideki Matsuyama posted a comfortable win, Ryan Fox and Min Woo Lee held on in a tight contest, and Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim beat Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele 4 and 3, the largest margin of the session. A fifth International pairing completed the clean sweep, meaning the strongest session in the tournament's opening two days belonged entirely to the visiting team.

The Americans' toughest day

Yahoo Sports's report on the session describes the American side as struggling across every pairing rather than losing to one or two standout International performances, with none of Thursday's winning combinations, Scheffler and Sam Burns, Thomas and Koivun, or Clark and Morikawa, managing to replicate their four-ball form in the alternate-shot format. Foursomes rewards a different kind of consistency than four-ball, since both players share one ball and one shot each hole rather than each playing their own, and a pairing that clicks in one format does not automatically translate to the other.

A pattern the Internationals have used before

A Friday foursomes sweep is not unprecedented for this team; it is their second in as many Presidents Cups, a repeat performance that suggests the format specifically, rather than a single strong day, favours a group built around players like Kim, Im and Matsuyama who have logged significant team event experience together. The Americans will need a similarly dominant response in Saturday's fourball and foursomes sessions simply to keep the match competitive heading into Sunday's singles, where a 7-3 deficit would require an unusually lopsided points haul to overturn.

What a four-point gap actually means with two days left

Medinah's tournament runs through Sunday, with further four-ball and foursomes sessions on Saturday before twelve singles matches decide the outcome, meaning 7-3 is a meaningful but not yet decisive lead in a competition where 15 points remain on the table. The Americans have overturned larger deficits in past editions of both the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup, but doing so requires exactly the kind of dominant session the Internationals have just delivered against them, and finding it twice in one tournament, once for each side, is the rarer outcome.