It may not seem like it, but this was the ideal Presidents Cup for America

I’m going to do something that will probably annoy anyone affiliated with the Presidents Cup, which is, of course, to immediately assess the weekend’s results in the context of next year's Ryder Cup. I also will not feel guilty about it, because until the International Team can access a deeper talent pool (maybe in the post-LIV Golf era), or until the worrying trend in global player development reverses itself (not likely), the Presidents Cup will remain a very entertaining but ultimately uncompetitive venture. When even a sober assessment of the three-point International Saturday-night lead ultimately defaulted to “hmmmm, that doesn't seem like nearly enough,” and when one team holds a talent and World Ranking edge in almost every singles match, the best-case scenarios for the underdogs are going to yield exactly what we saw Sunday at Medinah Country Club—which can best be described as a regression to inevitability.

So, with no apologies, what does this mean for the Ryder Cup, and the incredibly difficult task waiting for the U.S. at Adare Manor in a year? From where I sit, the action at Medinah looked like a best-case scenario. It affirmed America’s strengths in a way that should infuse them with confidence, while also highlighting their glaring deficiencies in a way that, ideally, makes those deficiencies impossible to ignore.

Let’s start with the positives. At Bethpage last fall, an absolutely beaten-down American Ryder Cup team led by an incompetent captain almost pulled off an impossible comeback against a suddenly terrified European team. Trailing 11½ -4½, the U.S. came out Sunday and reminded everyone that when you strip away tactics and the need for even basic strategic intelligence—i.e. when the bosses step aside and let the talent shine—these were the best players in the world, and they weren’t scared of anyone. It brought a late thrill to an otherwise dismal weekend for the Americans, and they came close to pulling off the greatest team comeback in the history of golf. The final score of the singles session, 8½-3½, matched the most lopsided score in the Team Europe era of the Ryder Cup and would have been enough to overcome anything but the most egregiously bad performance over the first two days. Sadly for them, that opening performance had indeed been egregiously bad.

On Sunday at Medinah, the U.S. was in a similar but not quite as dire situation, trailing the Internationals by three after another head-scratching captaincy. Only they one better than at Bethpage, scoring a 9½-2½ win in singles that annihilated their opponents and saved themselves from disgrace. Let’s put that win into context: Before Medinah, 15 Presidents Cups had been contested, along with 23 Ryder Cups since Europe joined and the current format of 12 singles matches was adopted. In those 38 combined events, the largest victory margin for a singles session was 8½-3½, which has been achieved four times in the Ryder Cup and never in the Presidents Cup. On Sunday, the U.S. beat that by a full point. By the numbers, it was the greatest singles performance in professional team match-play history.

That matters more than you might think. Taken in conjunction with Bethpage, this paints a picture of players who are supremely confident once they are left to their own devices, and will always—repeat, always—be dangerous on Sundays. No lead is safe with the Americans as your opponent. (In fact, you have to go back to 2018 to find the last time the U.S. lost a singles session in a Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup.) When you consider that 43 percent of Ryder Cup points are at stake on a Sunday (40 percent at the Presidents Cup) that's a massive weapon. After what happened at Medinah, the American players will be deservedly brimming with confidence when the ball is in their individual hands, and deservedly so. They have solidified themselves as a dominant and fearsome singles force.

That's the completely good news. The other bit of good news comes from some bad news: They still stink at pairs golf. They are particularly bad at foursomes, where in the past four Cups, they have amassed a combined 8-26 record, which is frankly insane. As DataGolf noted, you don't have to go that far back to find examples of Americans being competent or even good at foursomes, but you do have to go a little back. Even in fourball, which should in theory be more like singles in that every player simply has to play his own ball, the U.S. has been only fine against the Internationals, and bad against Europe. Consider this stat: Since 1983, the first competitive Ryder Cup of the Team Europe era, the U.S. has had a 75½-92½ record in fourball, despite the fact that each player is playing his own ball, and they almost always have the better players. By comparison, in that same time span their singles record is 131-121.

How is any of this bad news actually good news? Simple: The tone coming out of this Presidents Cup is not very celebratory or self-congratulating. U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker spent the first 72 hours of the competition second-guessing himself and admitting he screwed up his matches. When the tide turned and the Americans won Sunday, he was viewed, correctly, not as a good captain, but as some semi-clueless guy who got bailed out by talent.

All of which means that the U.S. has a problem it cannot ignore, and that's a good thing. I've written that I thought Jim Furyk was the best realistic choice for the U.S. Ryder Cup captaincy, and I think he understands at least the contours of the problem and how it stems both from captaincy errors and a certain undeniable discomfort from the players themselves that leads to subpar performance.

There was a bit of snarky rejoicing from a few European fans on social media Sunday, their theory being that the Sunday comeback would disguise the core problems at the heart of U.S. pairs golf and keep the Americans in a state of blithe ignorance ahead of Adare Manor. I think that's wishful thinking. Furyk gets it, and if he didn't get it, the 0-5 nightmare in Friday foursomes will have underlined the point: There is a serious weakness here and winning any future Ryder Cup hinges on figuring it out. (Of course, maybe this is wishful thinking by me, but I believe it to be true.)

All this said, whether Furyk or anyone else can solve that weakness is a different question; the Americans writ large have spent decades not solving it. Yet in the aftermath of Bethpage (and Rome, and Montreal, and Paris, and even Melbourne in 2019), it cannot be shunted aside any longer. Should the U.S. superstructure continue flitting from Cup to Cup with no underlying philosophy, they will now do so under the watchful eye of a public who is starting to get it and knows what they're doing wrong.

In summary, this Presidents Cup further infused the U.S. players with confidence in their best format, singles, and highlighted a weakness in pairs play that badly needs addressing. All of that, and they managed to avoid the disaster of losing to a far inferior team, which I believe would have been less galvanizing than dispiriting. Combine that with some ancillary benefits—finding out you have a legitimate badass in Jackson Koivun, getting some extremely valuable pressure experience for Jacob Bridgeman, establishing a bulldog in Cameron Young and a brilliant partnership with him and Chris Gotterup—and in the context of Adare Manor, this feels like an ideal Presidents Cup result. It will be up to Furyk and the Americans to apply real brain power to what they've learned, and it’s true that they're facing the hardest task in sports in winning a Ryder Cup in Europe. Still, the lessons of Medinah, both good and bad, are crystal clear, and they look like an education and a foundation. Now they just have to learn and build.