At Presidents Cup, who ISN'T playing stands out. And the roster is ‘a beast'

MEDINAH, Ill. — My email friend Sam wants me to start a movement.

Here’s what he wrote to me a couple of weeks ago:

Hi, Mr. Piastowski.

Week after week during the golf season as we watch the LPGA tournaments, we mostly see players from Korea, Thailand, Japan and China dominate the leaderboard.

When Nelly Korda plays, we will almost always see she is among the top three or five. Other than Nelly, there are not many others from the U.S. or Europe to challenge the players from the above countries.

Well-recognized journalists like you should start a movement to encourage the LPGA Tour to organize a new Cup that will pit the best of the Asia-Pacific and other parts of the world against U.S./Europe.

Undoubtedly, the Solheim Cup has a long history and is a well-promoted event. But that does not change the fact that many of the best women players today come from elsewhere.

So let’s start a movement. OK, what do we need? First the truth, which is this:

Have you freaking seen what a women’s international team would look like? It doesn’t just include players from the world rankings. It is the world rankings. Below is a potential 12-woman roster, plus a sub (who’s included for a reason, which we’ll get to in a sec):

Jeeno Thitikul, Thailand, world No. 2
Haeran Ryu, Korea, world No. 3
Hyojoo Kim, Korea, world No. 4
Miyu Yamashita, Japan, world No. 5
Ruoning Yin, China, world No. 6
Sei Young Kim, Korea, world No. 9
Hannah Green, Australia, world No. 10
Brooke Henderson, Canada, world No. 11
Lydia Ko, New Zealand, world No. 12
Shiho Kuwaki, Japan, No. 13
Gaby Lopez, Mexico, world No. 14
Minsol Kim, Korea, world No. 15
Minjee Lee, Australia, world No. 16

Tuesday afternoon, I scribbled out that list on a notepad and showed it to Ryan Fox of New Zealand.

“No. 16 being the worst?” Fox said. “That would be the strongest team on paper of any of the teams — U.S. team, U.S. men’s team, whatever.

“Maybe that’s why they won’t do it.”

Maybe. Thing is, there is an International team — an International men’s one. This week at Medinah Country Club, Fox and 11 other of the best golfers outside of Europe are playing their event, the Presidents Cup, where they’ll meet a dozen of the best Americans. And there’s also the Solheim Cup, which pits 12 U.S. women against 12 European women — and it had its latest playing two weeks ago, leading to Sam’s email. But there’s no 12-woman International team. Because there isn’t a 12-woman International women’s event.

There is a four-woman, eight-team event with international players — the Hanwha Lifeplus International Crown, and next year, it will be played at Lake Merced Golf Club in California. But why no International version of the Solheim? One answer may come from TV ratings — after all, this year’s Solheim, according to the Sports Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter, attracted just 179,000 viewers to Golf Channel on Saturday and 170,000 on Sunday (By comparison, Sunday singles at the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black peaked at 5.3 million viewers). But it was also played in the Netherlands, which is six hours ahead of the East Coast, and it was played on week one of the NFL season, which dominates all. You’d also have to think, though, that an International women’s event would go over well in the golf-mad countries of the international side.

What about a mixed — six men and six women — International event? It’s a good idea, and it’s occasionally suggested during Presidents Cup years, due to lopsided results (the Internationals have won just once in 15 tries.) I actually asked my email friend Sam about that, and he thought it could work, before adding: “It may be a disservice to those women players. They need to showcase their talents on a one-on-one against the Europe/USA women. That will get lost when you mix it up with men.” International men’s team members will also say, of course, they believe they can close the gap on the record on their own.

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But what our movement really needs is high-profile support, and here at Medinah we got that over and over.

From Fox. From Corey Conners. From Adam Scott. From Nick Taylor. From Si Woo Kim. From Tom Kim. From those players’ International captain this week, Geoff Ogilvy. To save you time, trust us that Si Woo Kim’s thought on a potential women’s team reflected everyone else’s: “These are a beast.”

But what about the brother of the 13th woman on the list? I also showed the roster to Min Woo Lee of the Internationals.

“That’s a pretty — yeah, I mean the worst player is my sister, and she’s 16th in the world,” he said.

“Yeah, it would be a pretty good team.”

Even the Americans were on board. Xander Schauffele said he thought sponsors would buy in. Speaking of selling …

What our movement really needs is a bit of spice.

And we got that, too.

I showed the list to Wyndham Clark of the U.S.

“Yeah, we’d have stress,” he said. “I mean, it’s basically two through 16 [in the world]. Yeah, that would be tough.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do it because we’d probably lose.”