Think You Want to Be Team USA Captain? Think Again

MEDINAH, Ill. — Brandt Snedeker spent much of Sunday evening pacing between the 15th green and 16th tee. From a distance he looked composed; up close, he was overwhelmed by the decisions in front of him. His phone moved in and out of his pocket, one hand nearly always covered his mouth as he spoke into the radio. He whispered to his staff, raised his voice to his increasingly excited American players, then lowered it again for his assistant captains.

Then an expletive burst into the microphone.

The Presidents Cup matches were hanging in the balance. Most of the crowd had moved toward the 18th hole, and Snedeker badly wanted to be there to watch “the kid,” Jackson Koivun, close out a full point. But he looked around and thought about Russ Henley, tied in his match and reading a putt on the 15th. Henley would soon leave the green and see none of his teammates. Snedeker stayed where he was for a few more moments as the consequences of his many decisions built toward a climax hundreds of yards away.

It felt fitting that even as the Presidents Cup moved toward a victorious finish for the United States, Snedeker remained under immense stress.

In the end, the team favored from the start won. But the process became a four-day reminder: You do not want that job. Yes, you—the ordinary viewer at home who watched hours of golf during a fall football weekend. You think you would make a great captain. But you would not want the U.S. captaincy.

Do you bench the best golfer since Tiger Woods in foursomes? Maybe—if he were not playing like the best golfer since Tiger.

Do you fall in love with Justin Thomas after a great Thursday and sit Chris Gotterup following his early struggles? On Friday night, that makes you feel foolish as the International team sweeps the session. By Saturday night, you are simply falling behind. Gotterup and Cameron Young tear Medinah apart, and Gotterup posts a photo of Young to his Instagram story with the caption, “My mf [dog emoji].”

Does friendship come first? Fourth? Do you let Scottie Scheffler play with his best friend because relationships matter? Then how much do they matter when those friends keep losing their foursomes matches? And are those friendships any different from the bond between Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay? You send them out again, just as you did in 2021. Together, they are invincible. Unfortunately, it is 2026, and they are not so invincible. They lose 4 and 3, and you wonder: Am I doing any of this right?

The immense roster depth that routinely makes American teams the betting favorites in team events is the same depth that makes the captain’s job crippling. No one publishes stories about players snubbed by the International team. No one criticizes Luke Donald when he sits one of the Højgaard twins more often than he plays him. But on the American side, three or four professionals—led chiefly by J.J. Spaun—are upset, annoyed or disappointed that Snedeker did not select them.

These weeks are defined by so many coin-flip decisions that they have become a haunted house of second-guessing for American captains. Zach Johnson’s captaincy in Rome went so poorly—despite his close relationships with the players—that he has been kept “out of the loop” ever since, as he recently explained to GOLF.com. American fans have not treated him especially well, either.

Keegan Bradley’s Ryder Cup captaincy ended in what he called “the darkest time of my life.” He spent much of 2026 in a deep, highly visible depression over it. Only Sunday, after a historic performance in the singles, did he feel some release from those negative memories.

This is not meant to inspire sympathy alone; much of the stress is deserved. Snedeker made mistakes, just as Bradley and Johnson did. Some were public, and, if his account is accurate, more happened behind closed doors. But one thing became clear in each daily pairing session: The International team accurately predicted many of his moves and disrupted him with some of its own. Geoff Ogilvy and Trevor Immelman deliberately maintained close relationships with European captain Luke Donald to better understand the blueprint for beating the Americans. It nearly worked.

If Donald is an example of anything, it is that successful captaincy can produce a positive legacy late in a playing career. Captaincies are among the final golf responsibilities by which these professionals may be remembered.

So how should we remember Brandt Snedeker, victorious Presidents Cup captain?

To me, he was a man who badly, badly wanted the job and came close enough to the life of a losing U.S. captain to fully understand it while it was happening. Fortunately for him, that fate never became reality, leaving relief as the dominant emotion of his final press conference rather than jubilation.

“I was surprised [by how stressful it was],” Snedeker said late Sunday night. “I don’t think anybody knows the weight a captain carries on his shoulders all week. I don’t think they realize that you are not just making a decision that affects you; you are making a decision that ripples through the whole team—people’s families, people’s lives. Every decision you make carries serious consequences.

“You think you know, but you don’t until you’ve done it.”

Seated a few spots down the podium from him was Jim Furyk, a man who has already learned far too well how a captain can be remembered. Now Furyk takes the baton for an even higher mountain to climb in Ireland.