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Now, a famous neighbor will get its turn.

The PGA Tour announced Monday that the 2028 Presidents Cup will be held at Kingston Heath, a celebrated course, less than 20 miles south of Royal Melbourne, in the golf-rich Australian Sandbelt.

Ranked 22nd on GOLF Magazine’s list of Top 100 Courses in the World, Kingston Heath is no stranger to headline competitions. A seven-time host of the Australian Open, it has also staged the Australian Masters and the Women’s Australian Open. In 2016, it welcomed the World Cup of Golf. Gary Player, Greg Norman, Tiger Woods, Karrie Webb and Adam Scott are among the notable champions who have won on the course. 

“The Sandbelt region is home to some of the game’s most iconic venues, and Kingston Heath has proven to be a world-class host for a number of golf’s biggest tournaments,” Matt Rapp, PGA Tour senior vice president of championship management said in a statement, noting that the Presidents Cup would “further cement the history and future of this event in the great city of Melbourne.”

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Built in 1925, Kingston Heath was designed by Des Soutar but also bears the imprint of Royal Melbourne architect Alister MacKenzie, who reworked the bunkering as part of his effort, a few years after the course first opened for play. Among its many strengths, Kingston Heath is regarded as a masterpiece of routing, and is revered for the artistry its designers teased from a relatively small and flat site.

The PGA Tour had already designated Australian for the Presidents Cup in 2028 and 2040 but had yet to name the venues. This will be the fourth time the matches will be held in the Sandbelt, with Royal Melbourne having staged the other three.

Included in the official announcement was a video narrated by Adam Scott, who won the 2012 Australian Masters at Kingston Heath. Over imagery of the course, Scott’s voice intones of Kingston Heath: “[it] has withstood the test of the world’s best, but for a global audience, there is yet to be a proper introduction. Come 2028, that will all change.”

First, though, there will be two other Presidents Cups: in 2024, at Royal Montreal, and in 2026, at Medinah.

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Kim finished 2-3, picking up both of his wins on Saturday over the world’s first-, fourth-, fifth- and 12th-ranked players. Decent week at the office, right?

His signature moment came on Saturday afternoon, when he rolled in a 10-footer for birdie on the 18th hole for a walk-off win in the fourballs session.

“I was already thinking in the back of my mind, ‘If this goes in, what am I going to do? How am I going to celebrate?'” Kim said. “That’s if it goes in, right? I did stay in the moment, but that was definitely on my mind.”

Turns out, he channeled Tiger Woods with his animated reaction.

Kim joined this week’s GOLF Subpar Podcast to break down his whirlwind Presidents Cup debut and told co-hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz that the celebration on that match-winning putt was an homage to Woods.

Kim met Woods for the first time at the 2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, which was also Kim’s first major even though he hadn’t played a PGA Tour event yet. He asked Woods for a picture with him.

“It’s crazy how being a fanboy to playing on the same stage as these guys, I can’t really put it into words,” Kim said.

So when Kim, who teamed up with Si Woo Kim in the match, lined up his putt on the 18th hole on Saturday afternoon to beat Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, he was already thinking about Woods. Back in 2008, when Woods won the Arnold Palmer Invitational for the fifth time in his career, he sunk a birdie putt on the 18th and threw his hat on the ground in exuberation.

“And that’s exactly what I wanted to do,” Kim said.

“I knew it was going to go in,” Kim said. “It was such a good line. It had three cups of break. I’m not gonna lie, it had a lot of break to it. I really felt confident with the putter. I missed a couple putts on the high side with a lot of speed and I just knew if I had the right speed — just looking down at the line I was like, ‘This is it. I was born for this. I’m going to make this and let the U.S. team know I’m here to win, I want my teammates to know I’m here to win.’ I wanted to bring them up. It was just perfect.”

You can listen to Kim’s full Subpar interview below, in which he discusses his path to the PGA Tour, his week at Quail Hollow, the Presidents Cup afterparty and more.

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What you missed last week…

— The Americans won the Presidents Cup — surprise, surprise — defeating the Internationals 17.5-12.5. Yet playing out under the cloud of LIV Golf and who wasn’t at Quail Hollow, the Presidents Cup emphatically finished with who was in Charlotte.

— In another lopsided match-play victory at the Presidents Cup, we got more affirmation we’re in the good old days of American golf.

— The Internationals, on the other hand, lost their ninth straight Presidents Cup. But the way in which captain Trevor Immelman led and carried himself made it difficult not to pull for him.

— Screaming, fist-pumping, putt-dropping Tom Kim captured hearts and minds at the Presidents Cup, where the 20-year-old earned star status. Even in defeat, golf’s newest superstar had an epic week.

— LIV golfers want to earn world ranking points from LIV Golf events. But the OWGR has not been quick to recognize them. Here’s why it’s all so complicated.

— You know who wasn’t at Quail Hollow? Tiger Woods. He was busy caddying for his son Charlie’s career-low round.

ICYMI: One story you should read…

At the Presidents Cup, Max Homa earned something he’s always wanted, by Dylan Dethier

Max Homa has been a popular PGA Tour player for years. But he’s been chasing something else: validation. He’s found it at the Presidents Cup.

Tip of the week…

The 1 big putting mistake match-play golfers make on the greens

Match play often allows golfers to be ultra-aggressive on the greens, but according to science, that might not be the best strategy.

One thing to look for this week…

Ready to overhaul your game or reassess goals for 2023? Our massive Play Smart feature from our Sept/Oct 2022 issue of GOLF Magazine hits the site this week. It includes 30 game-changing tips and strategic pointers to be a smarter, better golfer.

Also, exclusive for InsideGOLF members, we’ll break down everything you missed at the Presidents Cup. To subscribe to InsideGOLF and enjoy $100 worth of benefits for only $20, click here.

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1. The heavily favored U.S. team took care of business at the Presidents Cup, defeating the International team, 17.5-12.5, at Quail Hollow. While the outcome was forecast by most, did anything surprise you about how the U.S team won?

Zephyr Melton, assistant editor (@zephyrmelton): It surprised me how difficult a time the U.S. had closing out the plucky International bunch. After Saturday morning, it looked like the rout was on — but the Internationals refused to go away. Despite the obvious talent deficit, they never gave up. Kudos to them.

Sean Zak, senior editor (@Sean_Zak): Jordan Spieth surprised me. He’s got so much experience in team events, but it isn’t exactly bulletproof experience. I figured he might have a tough time this week (he didn’t exactly finish the Tour season on a high note), but the opposite took place. Spieth went 5-0 in the kind of performance every captain wants, but you can never predict who it’ll come from.

Josh Sens, senior writer (@JoshSens): If you’d taken Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler to go a combined 0-6-3, you would have won a lot of money in Vegas.

Josh Berhow, managing editor (@Josh_Berhow): I’m shocked Scottie Scheffler didn’t win a match, which comes exactly one year after he had somewhat of a coming out party at the 2021 Ryder Cup, where he won 2 1/2 points in three matches and dismantled Jon Rahm in singles. And maybe surprise isn’t the right word, but if the U.S. team can get its two key duos of Spieth/Thomas and Cantlay/Xander to click at the same time like they did this week, the Americans are going to be really hard to beat for several more years.

2. One of the big storylines heading into the week was the players who weren’t at Quail Hollow, on account of their deals with LIV Golf. How much do you suppose the absence of the likes of Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann and Abe Ancer hurt the International team, acknowledging, of course, that the U.S. side was also missing at least a couple of its would-be stalwarts?

Melton: I think the absences on the International team were much more pronounced than those on the American side. The depth of talent internationally is just not as good as that of the Americans. With the likes of Smith, Niemann and Ancer replacing a few of the duds on the International side, this thing could’ve gone down to the wire.

Zak: I think it hurt them to start. There’s some easy hindsight in that thought, but never have we seen so many rookies trotted out from one team. They clearly needed to warm up to the event, which would have been much easier had Smith, Niemann, Ancer and even Louis Oosthuizen been involved.

Sens: Huge difference for the Internationals. The American team was so deep, they weren’t going to be significantly better with any of the LIV guys. They might have been worse. Not so for the other side. A giant dropoff from the likes of Smith and Niemann.

Berhow: For all the talk about the players who wouldn’t be there, I don’t think the U.S. team would have been much different. It’s not like Bryson and Brooks and Pat Reed were playing great golf and no-brainers to make this team anyway. But I think it was a significant loss for the Internationals, not only from a talent standpoint but for confidence and comfortability. If you are a rookie, there’s something settling about a big-name, experienced veteran in your team room or on the tee box with you. I’m not sure if it would have been enough firepower to turn the result around, but we can’t act like guys like Cam Smith and Abe Ancer, to name a few, wouldn’t have made a difference.

3. With losses come second-guessing. While International captain Trevor Immelman’s management of his team was roundly praised, is there anything he coulda-shoulda done differently?

Melton: With how Sebastian Muñoz played this week (2-0-1), it certainly seems odd that he only played three sessions. Riding the hot-handed rookie can be a winning strategy in hostile territory (see: Leona Maguire). Alas, hindsight is 20/20.

Zak: I like to call this event (and the Ryder Cup) the Hindsight Olympics. Even the most analytically driven, vibes-savvy captain is going to make decisions that can be second-guessed. And they’ll make moves that work out well that, if a couple putts don’t drop, we would have second-guessed. In other words, Immelman did a fine job. He was led to all those decisions by a deep team of statisticians and golfers. If he could have gotten Hideki Matsuyama and Adam Scott to play better, he would have.

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Sens: Any second guessing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. His team was going down either way. But I was surprised he didn’t put Tom Kim out earlier in singles. They needed a big emotional start. Why not give their most demonstrative player a chance to provide it?

Berhow: These guys used more analytics than I could ever wrap my head around and know how players gel with each other, so I won’t act like I have a better solution when it comes to some of the pairings. It comes down to making putts. Captains said it all week and that was the major difference the first two days. But, as Sens says, I did think it would have been a nice kickstarter to get Tom Kim out early and, if he got hot, send some good vibes to the rest of the squad. The Internationals didn’t have a ton of fiery personalities. He was one.

4. Team golf and match-play golf have a way of showing off different sides of players, be that their competitiveness or another personality trait. What’s one thing you learned about a player from either side that you didn’t know before this week?

Melton: That Tom Kim is an absolute delight! I know the storyline has been beaten into the ground at this point, but the 20-year-old really is a fun golfer to watch. I imagine this isn’t the last time we’ll see him on the big stage.

Zak: The cocky version of Max Homa is probably my favorite. And cocky might even be too harsh a word, but how stone-cold he looked playing the 18th hole during can’t-lose matches is so different than the goofy, heartfelt Twitter user we see 99 percent of the time. Look hard enough into the future and you can imagine that version of Homa coming out down the stretch of a major championship.

Sens: I guess we’d seen Si Woo Kim’s crowd-shushing a few years back at the Presidents Cup. But that was such a beat-down it almost went forgotten. Loved seeing him pull that same move out again this week in a much more pivotal context. That takes a special kind of fire, being the guy willing to make an enemy of the crowd.

Berhow: Besides the obvious Tom Kim answer, I thought it was refreshing to see Max Homa talk so openly about how much qualifying for an event like this would mean to him and then have Max back it up and play out of his mind. He pulled off some big-time shots and putts when he needed to. A clutch gene like that is something not many people have.

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5. Who is your MVP from each team?

Melton: I’ll go with co-MVPs from each side. USA: Jordan Spieth (5-0-0) and Justin Thomas (4-1-0). Internationals: Si Woo Kim (3-1-0) and Sebastian Muñoz (2-0-1). Honorable mention for Tom Kim and the energy he injected into the Internationals each day.

Zak: Gotta go with Spieth, but Thomas deserves a ton of credit. I think he pulls something special out of Spieth during these events. It happened at the Ryder Cup in 2018. Thomas is the heartbeat of the team and probably will be for years to come. As for the Internationals, need we look past Tom Kim? Even Si Woo Kim talked about how Tom’s energy livened him up, too.

Sens: If we’re going by pure on-course performance, then it’s Spieth and Si Woo Kim. You can’t argue with 5-0, and Kim was nails pretty much every time he had to be. For all the little stuff that doesn’t show up on the scorecard, I’m with Sean: Tom Kim and Justin Thomas.

Berhow: Jordan Spieth and Tom Kim, the latter especially since he elevated what some might have thought was a sleepy event they didn’t plan to pay much attention to. But how about Trevor Immelman? I think the leader of the International squad gained a lot of fans this week.

6. The U.S. has now won nine straight Presidents Cups and seven of those by three points or more. Is it time to rethink this event or its format?

Melton: Yes, the Presidents Cup needs some sort of changing or we’ll continue seeing American dominance. While it’s true the Internationals can hold their own, if they don’t put up any numbers in the win column then it’s a moot point. Will the PGA Tour change the event? Not as long as the sponsors keep paying and the fans keep showing up.

Zak: Hell no. Quit it. This event is fine. If LIV Golf doesn’t exist, we may have seen an even greater event. Who knows! This event is just fine. I was entertained; weren’t you?

Sens: Keep it as is. Yeah, the historical record is ridiculously lopsided but there are plenty of entertaining moments, and the Internationals are far from just rolling over in the matches. It actually feels to me a lot like what the Ryder Cup was originally supposed to be. An exhibition of great shot-making, with plenty of patriotic fire but without blowing up into over-the-top nonsense. Plus, who doesn’t like rooting for the underdog?

Berhow: No changes! The Americans — I think? — won’t always dominate like this. And as soon as the Internationals end this skid the victory will be even sweeter.

NEWSLETTER

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When players signed with LIV, the PGA Tour said those players could no longer compete in the Presidents Cup, which is run by the Tour. It was a bigger blow to the Internationals, who lost World No. 2 Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer and Louis Oosthuizen, and perhaps even one to three more players. The Americans lost, perhaps, Dustin Johnson? And that was about it.

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To make matters worse, Smith and Niemann left so late they had already auto-qualified for the team. The marketing posters were already made and everything.

“It’s been a giant pain in my ass,” Immelman said last month.

But this week wasn’t about them, the ones who left, Immelman reiterated. Constantly. It was about the players who wanted to be in Charlotte.

“The 12 that are here are the 12 that wanted to be here,” said Immelman, who had eight rookies among his dozen players. “Those are the 12 that I want to fight with.”

By now, you likely know how it all played out. The Americans dusted the Internationals again, winning 17.5-12.5 at Quail Hollow Club on Sunday. (Jordan Spieth was 5-0, Xander Schauffele smoked cigars. Blah, blah, blah — we won’t do Xs and Os here.) The U.S. continues to dominate the Presidents Cup, which is still in its infancy and trying to be a nice complement to the Ryder Cup and not so much its little brother. But the Internationals are trending.

There’s much credit to go around but surely some belongs with Immelman.

The 42-year-old South African and 2008 Masters winner was announced as captain before the pandemic hit and long before LIV was a thing he thought he had to worry about. The world’s different now, and so is the golf landscape. This Presidents Cup was different, too, for reasons already stated. But once players and captains and fans arrived at Quail Hollow, it was just a normal golf tournament again, with a bunch of guys on a private course trying to shoot the lowest score possible.

On his first day on site, and the first time he saw his team room, Immelman teared up. (That turned out to be a common theme during the week.) It was the realization of everything finally coming together; one of the first real hints that the week had arrived. Past hurdles be damned.

When the shots started to count, it wasn’t exactly the start Immelman envisioned. The Internationals lost the two opening session 4-1 and trailed 8-2 heading into the weekend. Social media was buzzing. Could this thing actually be over before Sunday?

“This team is no joke,” Immelman said on Sunday night, “and I’m sick and tired of it being spoken of as a joke.”

He spoke with authority and sounded like a man fed up, a captain defending his guys, which is exactly what captains, and leaders, are supposed to do. All week, Immelman carried himself with grace. Even the one time he broke character, taking a second to fire back at Greg Norman via social media, he wasn’t chastised for it. In fact, he received the opposite reaction. (He’s human! Of course he should be mad!) Sometimes you can have it all.

But the Presidents Cup script flipped on Saturday. The Internationals tied the morning foursomes session and won afternoon fourballs, cutting the deficit to four heading into Sunday. Four points is doable for a comeback. When it was all over, after Tom Kim made his winning putt on 18 to essentially hand the Internationals the session and steal the momentum, players and caddies celebrated on the green. Immelman did too, but eventually he returned to the putting surface long after everyone left. He was fixing blemishes on the green, making sure the team’s celebration didn’t do much damage.

“We are a group of random PGA Tour guys, you know, got together, started believing under one symbol,” said Sebastian Munoz, who won a singles match on Sunday. “You know, we had great guiding under Trevor and the co-captains, and it just took that little belief, a little trust, and we can do great things.”

But the U.S. had too much firepower. For moments on Sunday, it looked as if the Internationals had a path to victory, but those times were few and fleeting. Immelman said he still had hope late. He was probably the last one.

About an hour after Xander Schauffele clinched the Cup for the Americans, Christiaan Bezuidenhout beat Kevin Kisner to put a bow on the 14th Presidents Cup. During the closing ceremony near the clubhouse, Immelman made a few closing remarks. He looked at his team.

“To my team, I love you guys,” he said, “and I’ll go to battle with you anytime.”

The feeling, one would think, was mutual.

NEWSLETTER

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The isn’t a new observation, but I was reminded of it yet again as I sat on my couch Sunday afternoon watching the final session of the Presidents Cup. The U.S. held a commanding four-point lead to begin the day, but with 12 singles matches being contested concurrently and the International team battling hard, the situation still felt fluid. And yet without a steady flow of visually digestible scoring updates, it was difficult for viewers to grasp exactly how fluid.

As we’ve seen in other match-play telecasts, such as the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup, NBC/Golf Channel leaned on scoring graphics to help tell some of the story — for example, individual match updates as the telecast jumped from one match to the next, or another graphic that showed the overall status of the matches along with how many matches each side was winning or losing.

But one critical element was missing from that data: the status of each match.

Take Sunday singles. Alerting viewers that, say, the “U.S. is leading in 3 matches, down in 3 matches and tied in 2” is a helpful update but also wholly incomplete. Leading by how many? Losing by how many? And in which matches? That’s information — and context — that fans are eager to know, ideally without having to endlessly refresh their phones.    

Here, traditionalists will scoff. Surely, you’re not suggesting 12 match scores on the screen at once? Surely, I am! Yes, it would add more clutter but it’s doable, and, in this observer’s mind, the good would far outweigh the bad. LIV Golf’s perma-leaderboard, which runs down the left side of the frame, is actually a good model, minus the garish team logos. Why couldn’t team match-play telecasts do something similar, employing a slender graphic throughout the telecast that immediately gives viewers a snapshot of where each match stands?   

Here’s a (very) raw mock-up pairing a screen-grab from the Presidents Cup telecast Sunday with the PGA Tour’s mobile leaderboard. A graphics whiz could dream up a much cleaner execution, but you get the idea:

This graphic could and should easily include more than just scoring. Another nifty add would be the probability that each team would win a match in any given moment, based on historical data from past events. Three-up through 13 holes? Here are the odds that the leading fourball team will prevail. The graphic could also include the odds that one side or the other, based on their lead in any given moment, would go on to win the overall competition. Bettors, in particular, would dig the intel, but so would casual fans.

With so few match-play events on television, it’s not hard to understand why the networks might not pour their creative energy into the presentations of these telecasts. But providing viewers more context should always be a top priority. It makes golf-viewing more fun.

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As Xander Schauffele poured a par putt into the center of the cup, his countrymen let out a raucous cheer and those gathering around the 18th green began to chant.

USA! USA! USA!

With that par, the Yankees put a punctuation mark on a performance that further solidified their dominance in the biennial competition. Of the 14 iterations of the Presidents Cup, 12 have been won by the Americans, with another ending in a tie.

Some of the Americans streamed onto the green to congratulate Schauffele on his clinching point, while others stayed behind to get a head start on cracking their first adult beverages. Michelob Ultra tastes a little different when it signifies victory.

Back up the fairway, the International team stood and watched. Each wore an empty expression as they took in the scene in front of them. When they arrived at Quail Hollow earlier this week, they’d dreamed the roles would be reversed.

Wives hugged their husbands and patted them on the back for their efforts. Although they came up short, they had nothing to hang their heads about.

Just then, Trevor Immelman emerged from the throngs of Americans near the green. He made sure to congratulate each on a job well done. Now, the field general walked back to his disappointed soldiers. None of them knew much what to do. The Americans might’ve clinched the Cup, but there were still several matches on the course that were unsettled.

Immelman looked at his team and read their despondent faces. The golfers looked back at their captain and his steely resolve as he said one simple remark.

“Let’s keep fighting.”

The mantra had powered the Internationals through the week to this point. Even if the scoreboard reflected an insurmountable lead, the fight wasn’t over yet.

The International team wasn’t supposed to be here.

All week they heard about the big bad Americans and how this week would be a coronation rather than a competition. How, without the LIV defectors, they stood no chance. And even with them, how it wouldn’t be a fair fight. To hear some talk about it, you’d think they were breaking down a matchup between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals.

The Presidents Cup was supposed to be over far earlier than late in the afternoon on Sunday. Hell, there were murmurs that this thing might end by Saturday night. And through the first two sessions, those scenarios seemed plausible.

The Americans came out swinging on Thursday, and led 4-1 by sundown. If not for some late heroics by Cam Davis, the Americans would’ve blanked the Internationals.

“We’ll keep going, man,” Immelman said. “We’ll keep going until they ring the bell.”

After Day 2, it looked as though the referee was ready to stop the fight. Again, the Americans came out swinging, and again, the Internationals couldn’t land a meaningful counterpunch. Ten matches into the event, it looked all but over. The Americans were ahead 8-2 and had trailed for just eight total holes. It was as if Ivan Drago wore red, white and blue.

In the press center that night, Immelman remained resolute.

“We’ve just got to keep fighting,” Immelman said. “Keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

The answer seemed like boilterplate coachspeak. The U.S. had delivered not one, but two haymakers, and the Internationals had few answers. Once the weekend hit, however, the Internationals found their identity.

Saturday morning arrived early at Quail Hollow. Players could see their breath in the crisp morning air as they warmed up under spotlights on the range, and the sun barely peaked over the horizon as the first foursomes match teed off.

Through nine holes of Day 3, it seemed as if nothing had changed. American duos held the lead in each of the four matches and the rout looked to be on. But just as the International’s obituary was set to hit newsstands, they began phase two of the rope-a-dope.

Adam Scott and Hideki Matsuyama flipped their match to earn a point, and K.H. Lee and Tom Kim did the same. The session ended in a 2-2 tie, but from that point forward, one thing was clear: the Internationals were beginning to believe.

The Internationals absorbed the Americans best punch, and they were still standing. Now they were ready to throw haymakers of their own.

It started with energetic and fearless Tom Kim, and soon spread to the rest of the team. Each time an opportunity for blood presented itself, the Internationals threw their best punch. By Saturday night, they had closed the gap to 11-7. The once coronation had turned into a dogfight, and the visitors had no intention of backing down.

“We’ve been fighting our guts out all week,” Immelman said. “If we’re 10 up or 10 down, we run our system, and we see what happens.”

As the final day of play commenced at Quail Hollow, a new buzz circulated the grounds. The social-hour vibe was long gone. In its place was an energized crowd ready to cheer their team to a hard-earned victory.

The calculus for an International comeback was simple: Get out to a fast start and make the Americans sweat. It was the recipe at Brookline and Medinah, and Immelman hoped it would be the recipe at Quail Hollow.

For his fast start, Immelman tasked Si Woo Kim with a lead-off match against Justin Thomas. The emotional leader of the Americans owned a 4-0 record coming into the match, but just like Immelman implored, Kim kept the fight. And after 18 hard-fought holes, Kim put a point on the board for the Internationals.

“It’s really special for me because I play with J.T. a match like three years ago,” Kim said. “I finish at the 13th hole, and I was a little emotional. But this time, I [got revenge].”

For a moment Sunday afternoon, a path to victory for the Internationals emerged. The margin for error was narrow (if barely possible), but still, there was hope. The scene was nearly impossible to imagine just 48 hours earlier.

It just wasn’t meant to be. Too many putts failed to fall in crucial moments. Too many matches failed to flip. And too many American flags flashed on the leaderboard. By day’s end, the Americans had clinched the Cup, sending the Internationals home empty-handed once again.

“We’re a little disappointed now. We believed in ourselves,” Immelman said. “But hat’s off to the Americans. They’re extremely strong and played some great golf.”

Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” played over the loudspeaker as the International team filed into the interview room. All 12 golfers, plus their captains, filed in and took a seat atop the platform at a long, white table.

Immelman began by praising the efforts of his team. He smiled as reporters recounted the high moments of the week. He called them warriors and said that outside of winning the trophy, they’d accomplished every goal they set out to.

Then, his tenor changed.

“This team is no joke,” he said. “And I’m sick and tired of it being spoken of as a joke.”

He seemed upset — and he had every reason to be. The International team had been a punch line for much of the week, and few in the room had given them a chance. Now, sitting in front of those same pundits, he wanted it known — they were for real.

Not that Immelman needed to say it. Everyone knew it. Every writer who had to rewrite their stories and every gambler who’d had to sweat out their bets. The Internationals never seemed like they had a chance — until they did.

This week wasn’t supposed to be so hard-fought, so closely contested. The American talent advantage was supposed to be too large to overcome, and the home-field advantage too hostile to navigate. But thanks to their fight, the Internationals proved everyone wrong.

“We’re going to win this event,” Immelman said. “We’ll keep fighting. At some point, we’re going to win.”

If they continue to bring the spunk they brought to Quail Hollow, it’s hard to doubt him.

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