At a dinner just outside Dallas earlier this spring, over sushi and steak during the week of The CJ Cup, Mike Weir addressed a group of almost 20 golfers who were hoping to become part of his International Team at the Presidents Cup. He said he felt like that week’s winner was going to come from the group seated in front of him.
Turns out, he was right, as Canadian Taylor Pendrith would go on to claim his maiden PGA Tour title a few days later.
Pendrith parlayed his victory into a sizzling summertime stretch – becoming the only Canadian to earn a spot in the season-ending Tour Championship to put a bow on his best-ever PGA Tour season – and a captain’s pick from Weir.
He, Corey Conners, and Mackenzie Hughes will fly the Red-and-White for Weir as part of the International Team, while Min Woo Lee of Australia, Si Woo Kim of South Korea, and Christiaan Bezuidenhout of South Africa rounded out his six selections.
The Canadian trio, along with the other three picks and the six automatic qualifiers, will try to do something done only once in the 15 previous editions of the Presidents Cup – lead the Internationals to victory.
“It’s been the best year of my career so far, and I kept telling myself to keep doing the right things. But it’s been a crazy year for me,” Pendrith said on Golf Channel Tuesday afternoon. “It’s been super good but to top it off at the end of the year with this event. Couldn’t be more excited to do it and do it in front of the home crowd.”
On the other side of the happiness for Conners, Pendrith, and especially Hughes – who was not picked for the International team in 2022 when it was played at his home course in Charlotte, N.C. and delivered an emotionally charged interview after the first FedExCup playoff event when he thought he might have missed his opportunity to show Weir what he could do – is the sadness of having to tell other players they did not make the team.
Specifically, in this case, Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor.
Hadwin made the BMW Championship and had five top-10s on the season, including one alongside Taylor at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans (the PGA Tour’s lone team stop), but was outside the top-90 on the PGA Tour in most key ball-striking categories and was 70th in strokes gained: putting.
It’s jarring to think that Taylor, who delivered Canada’s most electric golf moment ever at the RBC Canadian Open last year (prompting tournament organizers to completely change the logo to feature a silhouette of him), and who followed that victory up with another just eight months later at the WM Phoenix Open, would not be on the team. But Taylor missed the cut at each of the four major championships this season and had, unfortunately, played himself out of contention.
Taylor had just one solo top-20 result after his win in February.
Making those calls weighed heaviest on Weir. When he was asked for the first time about leaving Hadwin and Taylor off the team he got choked up and had to compose himself through misty eyes.
“I respect those guys. I love those guys. And they’re like brothers. You know, they’re Canadians. And the toughest part of being a captain was those calls,” Weir said.
“(Taylor) was looking very good to make the team, and as it happens in golf, sometimes you go through a little spell that’s not your greatest. It was a super tough decision for me but one that was well thought through, and through a number of different analytical things and gut feelings and all kinds of things, it came to that conclusion, but it was very difficult.”
This group of Canadians on the PGA Tour is the most impressive ever, but Weir has long said it’s “not Team Canada” and needed to construct the best possible squad to break the long-standing drought against the Americans.
Obviously, a raucous crowd would be eager to cheer on a team chalk full of Canucks, and, sure, that could be an ‘X’ factor. But Weir didn’t want to lean on a what-could-be.
“As captain you have to be fair to the whole international community. I think I was very justified with the three (Canadian) picks, very exciting […] I think it just shows the state of Canadian golf that we can pick three for five or six guys that were in the mix,” Weir said. “You do want the Canadian fans. I think they’re going to be very engaged with all our international players. But having some Canadians on there brings a little bit more juice, so to speak, to our team.”
American captain Jim Furyk also made his six picks Tuesday afternoon, rounding out his team with Sam Burns, Brian Harman, Tony Finau, Max Homa, Russell Henley, and Keegan Bradley – who will be relieved of his assistant captain duties in order to play on the squad.
The Americans are all playing under the Stars and Stripes, and Weir acknowledged it’s been harder in the past for the International Team to unite across countries and languages. But ever since 2019 – captain Ernie Els had a friend who was part of SEAL Team Six that created a singular shield logo for the International Team – things have gotten better.
There were multiple team dinners this year, including the one in Dallas, and the International Team made it up to Montreal Monday and Tuesday for some golf, team bonding, and a dinner at Park – an upscale Japanese restaurant in Westmount.
“The guys have formed a bond. They bought into that. They’ve bought into our team strategy and the way we’ve tried to create our team, form our team,” Weir said. “We do know the past, and we want to change that, and we’re doing all the little things behind the scenes to help to change that.”
The picks are in. It’s time to get to work.