When Presidents Cup rosters were finalized Tuesday, a few notable exclusions stood out. On the American side, captain Brandt Snedeker went with budding young star Jackson Koivun and Genesis Invitational winner Jacob Bridgeman over Ryder Cuppers Ben Griffin and J.J. Spaun. For the Internationals, one big name did not make Geoff Ogilvy’s squad: Jason Day.
The 2015 PGA Champion and former World No. 1 has played in five Presidents Cups and is one of the biggest names on an International side that lacks star power outside of Hideki Matsuyama and Adam Scott. But the 38-year-old Day dealt with a back injury for a big part of the 2026 season. It forced him to withdraw pre-tournament from the 3M Open and the Rocket Classic and contributed to Day missing the FedEx Cup Playoffs for the first time in 18 years.
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On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Ogilvy explained that Day’s nagging back injury is the reason he decided not to select him for his team. While discussing Day’s back ailment, Ogilvy noted the Viktor Hovland situation from last September’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black was in his mind as he tried to decide if he wanted to pick Day and gamble on his back holding up for four days. At Bethpage Black, Hovland tweaked his neck on Saturday and was unable to play in Sunday singles, meaning his match with Harris English, whose name was in captain Keegan Bradley’s injury envelope, was halved. The envelope rule requires each captain to put one player’s name into an envelope. That player will not play if a player on the opposing team is injured and can’t compete.
Ogilvy wanted to avoid a similar situation at Medinah Country Club at the end of September.
“Absolutely,” Ogilvy said when asked if Day’s back played a role in him being left at home. “I spoke to Jason quite a lot, sort of between post-British Open, I would say. He obviously was struggling with it, from a bit earlier than that, U.S. Open time. It just didn’t feel [like a] 100 percent guarantee that he could make it through four days of the Presidents Cup. It was a bit risky. He’s clearly one of the first players from our list of players to choose from, and he needs to rehab it and make it feel better, and to rush his rehab and hope it lasts for a week, that feels a bit risky.
“With sort of the Viktor thing at the Ryder Cup last time, it was sort of on my mind a little bit, too. I talked about it with Jason a little bit, and it’s a shame, as I said, because he’s played a lot of Presidents Cups, and he’s clearly a class act and a major winner and former No. 1 in the world. It was my decision in the end, but it felt like the right decision. He needs to go and look after his back and get himself back to 100 percent.”
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After Hovland was unable to go on Sunday at Bethpage, Bradley called for the envelope rule to be changed, believing a full point should be awarded to the team that is fully healthy instead of the match being halved. Hovland said the situation was “upsetting” and that he “felt bad for Harris,” who was unable to play on the final day. But Hovland also noted that the rule is rooted in the fabric of what is supposed to be a friendly exhibition.
“It’s tough. I think we’re so used to in sports that if you can’t play because you’re hurt, obviously that should be a loss of a point,” Hovland said at the DP World India Championship. “But I think in the spirit of the Ryder Cup and the spirit of the game and the history of it, knowing that this Ryder Cup is just a part of many, many Ryder Cups to come, I think it’s more of a gentlemen’s agreement that okay, you were hurt this time and maybe the next time there’s a guy on the U.S.’s team and we’re all kind of sympathetic about the person being hurt and not being able to play.
“I think there’s kind of a mutual understanding that if we were healthy, we would all go out there and play. I don’t think people are using that to really finagle the system and try and squeak by.”
The biggest Presidents Cup captain’s pick mirrored another big-picture decision
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By: Josh Schrock
The rule has been in place at the Ryder Cup since 1979, but it hadn’t been used since 1993. The rule has only been enacted twice previously, with American Steve Pate being unable to play due to a rib injury in 1991 and Sam Torrance having to sit with an infected toe in 1993. The rule has never been used in a Presidents Cup.
With Day not headed to Medinah, Ogilvy used his six captain’s picks on Corey Conners, Sungjae Im, Ryo Hisatsune, Nick Taylor, Nico Echavarria and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Bezuidenhout was the most surprising selection. The South African made 18 of 21 cuts this season but only had two top-10 finishes this season. Ranked 96th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Bezuidenhout looks like “an outlier” on paper, but Ogilvy wanted the South African’s 3-1-0 record in his team room.
“He’s finished really solid in a lot of tournaments, and his strokes gained and all his skill sets when you measure him up against all of the other players, he was well inside our top 12, believe it or not,” Ogilvy said of Bezuidenhout. “And that combined with he’s a fantastic team guy in the team room, and his record in the Presidents Cup is really strong. He’s a fantastic putter and a fantastic iron player. It was pretty easy to find a way on the team for him because the only measure of his sort of thing that doesn’t look as good is probably the Official World Golf Ranking. Every other metric, he became really obvious for us.”
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The Americans are 13-1-1 all-time in the biennial competition and haven’t lost on home soil. The International Team’s only win came in 1998, but Ogilvy believes they have been closer than it appears to knocking off the Americans. They just have to take a page out of a different Ryder Cup book to get over the hump.
“If you actually look statistically afterwards, it’s really — it’s very close,” Ogilvy said. “It’s just whatever it is, some of those X-factors you have to pull out in this tournament. You see the Europeans do it in the Ryder Cup pretty regularly. They seem to elevate themselves more than the U.S. Team do, and we’ve just got to find a way to do that.”
They’ll have to do so against a loaded American team that includes World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Cameron Young, Wyndham Clark, Collin Morikawa, Sam Burns, Russell Henley, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Chris Gotterup, Patrick Cantlay, Bridgeman and Koivun.
And they’ll have to do it without Day.
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