MEDINAH, Ill. — Seconds after they wrapped up their greenside television interview, best friends Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler smiled wide and wrapped their arms around each other to share a best-friend hug. The occasion was a win four years in the making. They finally got off the schneid.
Their 1-up victory over Min Woo Lee of Australia and Sungjae Im of Korea Thursday in the opening session of the Presidents Cup was more of a gift than a get, but scoring their first full point together in five tries superseded the manner in which they achieved it.
In all honesty, Lee and Im could have won this fourball match and probably should have won it. But the International duo’s inability to pull away from the U.S. pair despite multiple chances to do so and then handing them a late lead with bogeys that would make 10-handicappers wince represents a prime example of why the International team hasn’t won this thing in 28 years.
Scheffler wasn’t quite World No. 1 sharp, but semi-good Scottie is still tough. Burns, meanwhile, picked up the slack, ranking third in strokes gained/total among the 20 players in action at plus-2.88 at Medinah Country Club’s No. 3 Course. Right to the end, though, a win wasn’t assured, not until Im’s desperation birdie attempt at 18 from 41 feet to earn a half-point slammed into the back-center of the cup and popped up and over.
“We just did our best to stay in it,” were the first words out of Scheffler’s mouth while standing on the 18th green, a sure tell that the Texan knew they had gotten a little help from their opponents.
OK, more than a little.
Only five holes were won between the two teams, none more important than the three-foot birdie putt Burns nonchalantly brushed in at the par-4 14th to square the match after Im gave the International team its only lead by stealing the par-3 13th with a 10-footer for birdie. Moments later, Scheffler jabbed a seven-footer too hard to lose the hole, and the specter of the U.S. pals falling to 0-4-1 was hovering ominously over them.
A Louisiana native with two top-three finishes in majors this year, Burns responded on the next hole with his best shot of the day, an 8-iron from 172 yards that he said, “came off exactly how I wanted.
“It was kind of a key moment in our match just to kind of snatch back some of that momentum,” added the World No. 8. “The hole before, Scottie and Sungjae had hit some really good iron shots in there, and Sungjae holed the putt and Scottie just missed. It was kind of a good moment for the next hole for us to kind of get that back.”
“I was basically out of the hole after my second shot,” Scheffler said. “Sam was essentially playing two-on-one there. So for him to step up there and hit a really nice shot, I think you can definitely feel the momentum. He was put in a tough spot there, and he responded the way he knows how.”
Scheffler holed a downhill 12-footer to start the opening match but Im converted from 18 feet at the fifth, his third birdie in a row, to restore a tie. Then the Internationals proceeded to allow the Americans to hang around when they could have pulled ahead by multiple holes.
Lee and Im had two chances apiece at Nos. 10 and 11 to push them out front but failed to convert birdie putts. Im had a third look for birdie at the 12th and couldn’t get that one to go, either, burning the right edge from eight feet.
“Yeah, it was a tough match,” Burns said. “We knew these guys were going to come out and play well, and we all kind of stalled out a little bit there in the middle of the round, but we continued to try to play tough and keep ourselves in it.”
The events at 17 decided the outcome, and this is where the visiting squad will look back with the deepest regret as both Im and Lee suffered bogeys from the middle of the fairway. Im came up 37 feet short of the hole on his approach and needed three to get down after he punched his first putt 14 feet by and onto the back fringe. Lee, meanwhile, nuked his approach from 142 yards over the green, putted up to 12 feet and then missed, making a winner of Scheffler’s two-putt par.
Scheffler’s par save from a greenside bunker at the par-4 18th set the stage for Im’s last-ditch effort that was perfectly on line and patently too firm.
Ben Jared
“I feel like they did a really, really good job to push them to the 18th,” said International captain Geoff Ogilvy, who was naturally disappointed to see the U.S. win the session, 3-2. “I'm sure they're kicking themselves because they probably feel like they had an opportunity, but that will motivate them for [Saturday] when they come out and maybe get another crack at that; you know what I mean? They both would have, I'm sure, enjoyed the experience, much preferred to have won the point or get a half point. They hung in there really well. That's obviously a really, really difficult match to win. They got it to the 18th hole, so I'm really pretty proud of them.”
The American duo was naturally elated after coming up short together in the 2022 Presidents Cup (0-2-1) and 2023 Ryder Cup (0-1-0). The last two years they were teammates for the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup but did not partner in two-man formats. Reprising their cooperative obviously came with risk that their frustrations could continue. Instead, they shared an embrace with the possibility for more to come as they are going out first again on Friday for the U.S. team in foursomes.
“We certainly haven't had the results that we've hoped for,” Burns said. “I feel like at times in the past we've played pretty well and just gotten beat. So it probably just was a little bit of a sigh of relief to finally get a point and just kind of let that out.”
Scheffler was asked if he had anything to add. “My partner speaks for me as well,” he said with a laugh.
“It's a team statement,” Burns added.
Yes, that it was. Finally.
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