First choice 2023 Ryder Cup captain Henrik Stenson heads a cast list of 12 players that have played in at least one LIV Golf event who are due to take part in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the first Rolex Series event of the DP World Tour’s 2022-23 season, which gets under way on January 19.

Stenson, who was forced to give up the captaincy as soon as the he announced his defection to the LIV Golf series, will be among a large contingent from the breakaway tour that will be teeing it up at Yas Links in the United Arab Emirates, which will cause a great deal of consternation in the corridors of power on Europe’s top tier tour.

LIV golfers are still eligible to compete in DP World Tour events, but that may change after an independent arbitration panel presided over by Sport Resolutions UK meets in London next month to rule on whether they will be able to do so in the future. That impending deadline has no doubt led to the rush of entries to upcoming DP World Tour events from members of the Saudi-backed tour, along with a run of events in the Middle East that will conclude with the Asian Tour’s Saudi Invitational, to which LIV golfers will be welcomed with open arms, as it is funded by the Saudi PIF, which is also funding the LIV series.

In addition to Stenson, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Patrick Reed, Bernd Wiesberger and Adrian Otaegui are among those who have played on the LIV tour whose names are on the entry list for Abu Dhabi, where the DP World Tour begins its 2023 season. Luke Donald, the man brought into replace Stenson as Ryder Cup captain in Rome, is also on the entry list. It is unlikely that he will be paired with his predecessor, although it would be fun to watch the social dynamics on the first tee if they were.

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Golf has never been in better hands as some of the biggest names in the sport are still on the younger side. Securely in the prime of their careers, these players have been able to etch their names into golf’s history books and will continue to add to their stories in the coming years. 

In 2022, all four major championship winners checked in as golfers under age 30, and the same would be true for 2021 if not for Phil Mickelson’s memorable PGA Championship victory at Kiawah Island. Dating back to 2017, 16 of the last 23 major championship winners were yet to reach 30 with outliers like Tiger Woods’ 2019 Masters triumph and Dustin Johnson’s green jacket win a year later.

Some of those also included Hideki Matsuyama and Brooks Koepka, who have since surpassed age 30. Patrick Cantlay is another player who recently celebrated his 30th birthday, and as such, will not be on the list below.

While the world of golf is divided, for this particular list, the focus remains on the PGA Tour. Cameron Smith should be among this group of players and Joaquin Niemann perhaps on the outskirts, but without playing against the best on a consistent basis, the water in which they tread has only become muddier.

Here’s a look at 10 best golfers under the age of 30 on the PGA Tour and what to expect from them in 2023.

Top 10 under 30

1. Jon Rahm (28): Three wins was considered a down year by most prognosticators, just not by Rahm himself. Winning the Mexico Open, Open de España and the DP World Tour Championship, the man who began 2022 as the world No. 1 ended his year winning three times in his last 14 worldwide starts. Making all four cuts in the major championships, the Spaniard’s best finish was T12 at the U.S. Open where he shot 5 over his last 36 holes. Contention and victory in major championships is the barometer in which success is defined for him moving forward — whether he likes it or not. If able to recreate his 2020-21 where in six major championships he captured five top-10 finishes, including his lone major title at the 2021 U.S. Open, there is a good chance Rahm returns to the top of the golf world in 2023.

2. Scottie Scheffler (26): His coming out party was the spring of 2022, but the rest of Scheffler’s year was still impressive. Winning four times in a six tournament stretch, the Texan captured a World Golf Championship, rose to world No. 1 and donned the green jacket all in less than two months. Scheffler went onto squander late leads at the Charles Schwab Challenge and the Tour Championship where he ultimately finished runner up. A third second-place finished occurred at the U.S. Open where had a near birdie miss on the 72nd hole dropped, a playoff with Matt Fitzpatrick would have been forced. The Presidents Cup was a letdown, but even the best players have lulls from time-to-time. Scheffler will be a fixture on this list for the foreseeable future and given the well-rounded nature of his game, additional major championship trophies are likely to be his.

3. Xander Schauffele (29): This past year was a transformative one for Schauffele, who much like Tony Finau was labeled as a player who shrivels down the stretch of big tournaments. Winning the Zurich Classic alongside Cantlay added to the bizarre nature in which he raised trophies (limited field, no cuts, The Olympics), but Schauffele added to his own total during the summer. Outlasting Sahith Theegala at the Travelers Championship, he returned to the winner’s circle again in his following start at the Scottish Open. A strong showing in the FedEx Cup Playoffs put a bow on a nice season, but similar to Rahm, the major championship acumen we are used to seeing was nowhere to be found. Since 2017, Schauffele has 15 top-20 finishes in 22 major championship appearances. With six of those coming in the form of top-five finishes — and two of those runners-up — Schauffele may have shed one label in 2022 but will likely add another in “best player without a major” in 2023 unless he does something, well, major.

4. Justin Thomas (29): Now 15 times a winner on the PGA Tour, Thomas is firmly among the elite in the game. Placing him fourth on the list may even be a bit harsh, but while the quality of his victories persist, the quantity has lagged behind. It took a herculean effort — and some help from Mito Pereira — at the PGA Championship to nab his second Wanamaker Trophy for his lone title of 2022. Outmanned by Sam Burns at the Valspar Championship and Rory McIlroy at the Canadian Open, Thomas put himself in contention enough to garner a multiple-win season, but was unable to do so. This marked the third season in the last four years where he came away with only one trophy. Those may consist of the 2022 PGA Championship and 2021 Players Championship; however, Thomas is too good a player to enter the winner’s circle one time a year. Expect this to change in 2023.

5. Collin Morikawa (25): Tell most players they would finish inside the top five in two of the four major championships, and they would take it and run. Morikawa? Not so much. Nearly tracking down Niemann at the Genesis Invitational, the two-time major champion looked prime to enter the winner’s circle in the early spring. Not to be, Morikawa finished solo fifth at the Masters before a relatively uneventful start to his summer. Fighting his swing, he arrived at The Country Club for the U.S. Open frustrated with the flight of his iron shots, only to be the 36-hole leader days later. A 7-over 77 in the third round derailed his chance to add the third leg of the career grand slam, but still he battled in the final round to finish T5. Without a worldwide win in over a year, Morikawa is remains a top-tier player. Given the quality of his irons and the implementation of a putting coach, he should have no problem ending this dry spell in 2023.

6. Matt Fitzpatrick (28): The perception of Fitzpatrick changed in 2022. Once a scrawny Englishman in need of a hot putting week to just contend, he transformed into a major champion wielding his driver with the best of the them. While it appeared to happen overnight, consistent speed training sessions and hard work were the cog for Fitzpatrick’s ascension. Joining Jack Nicklaus and Juli Inkster as the only players to win the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open on the same golf course, Fitzpatrick squashed the haters who questioned if he would ever win on the PGA Tour. In total, Fitzpatrick captured 17 top-25 finishes in 24 worldwide starts and showcased his upside that has been on full display in Europe since 2015.

7. Will Zalatoris (26): He is built for the moment, and while the bounces didn’t go his way for much of 2022, they finally did in the end. Zalatoris continued to be one of the best major championship competitors this past year as he lost in a playoff at the PGA Championship and fell one stroke short of Fitzpatrick at the U.S. Open. In 10 major championship appearances, he has three runners-up and three additional top-10 finishes. His ball-striking allows him to factor at difficult golf courses and it did just that at the St. Jude Championship in August. In unison with some timely putting, Zalatoris beat Sepp Straka in a playoff in Memphis to win his first PGA Tour title. The floodgates were promptly shut the following week when he was forced to withdraw during the BMW Championship due to a back injury, and he has not been seen in action since. Back injuries are always scary when discussing golfers, and Zalatoris will be no different. Possessing a wiry frame, he will make his return at the Tournament of Champions and hopefully put any health concerns in the rearview mirror.

8. Viktor Hovland (25): Simply put, Hovland wins. It may not be pretty, it may not be flashy, and it may not happen at the most prestigious tournaments, but still, the Norwegian finds a way to collect hardware on a consistent basis. That has to count for something. Since 2020, he has won seven times worldwide and 2022 showed us he may soon rise to the occasion in the biggest of championships. Alongside Rory McIlroy in the final pair in the final round of the 150th Open at St. Andrews, Hovland ultimately fell off the pace to finish T4. Experiencing his first taste of contention in a major championship, this should only aid him in his future endeavors. His short game has improved drastically from the low point of the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational where he let that trophy slip from his grasp, and if it continues on this trajectory, Hovland’s underrated win total should only tick up.

9. Jordan Spieth (29): This time next year, he’ll be 30, but still Spieth finds his way onto this list. Since going through the lowest of lows from 2018-20, he has clawed his way back into relevance with wins at the 2021 Texas Open and 2022 RBC Heritage. A member of winning Ryder Cup and Presidents teams the last two years, the next step in the three-time major champion’s return to prominence is to bag a a big one. He has been close with a couple podium finishes in 2021 and given his improvements both off the tee and on approach in 2022, this upcoming year will say a lot about the state of Spieth’s place in the game. The putter will unquestionably have to be on better behavior, and if it is, Spieth could be on the cusp of his first multiple-win season since 2017.

10. Cameron Young (25): He will win in 2023. Finishing on the podium seven times in his rookie campaign — without getting over the hump once — Young consistently put himself in position to win golf tournaments. Variance, luck and perhaps some inexperience hindered his efforts to raise a trophy, but that will no longer be an appropriate excuse in 2023. Finishing second at the Genesis Invitational, third at the PGA Championship and second at The Open, his name became a staple on the first page of the leaderboard in some of the biggest events of the year. His father has left his post at Sleppy Hollow to join him on Tour on a full-time basis and perhaps this familiar face will propel Young to new heights and into the winner’s circle.

Honorable mentions: Sam Burns, Sungjae Im, Tom Kim

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The 2023 golf year is just around the corner, and it’s time to evaluate where the best players in the world stand going as the new season unfolds. Depending on where you look, most players are properly rated, but there are always those who are either a bit overrated because of recent conquests or a bit underrated because it’s been a while since they raised a trophy (or perhaps for other reasons).

I put together a list of players underrated by the golf community heading into 2023. It includes some serial candidates (Keith Mitchell and Sungjae Im) but also some surprises (Collin Morikawa and Jon Rahm). This is not meant to be a list of players who have an equal chance of doing something great in 2023 but rather a list of players I believe will, over the next 12 months, perform at a level beyond the current expectations folks have for them.

Here’s a look at seven golfers I pinpointed with evidence for why they are currently being underrated and have a chance to thrive in 2023.

1. Sungjae Im

Arguably the best player in the world who didn’t win anywhere in 2022. Im put together three runner-up finishes, six other top-12 finishes and had the best strokes gained number (1.6) of any golfer who did not have a victory in 2022. At just 24, he still has room to grow, too. He’s improved statistically in six of his last seven seasons, and I think he wins one-to-three times in 2023 and contends for at least one major championship.

2. Aaron Wise

He’s been a sexy “this guy could be on the U.S. Ryder Cup team next year” pick over the last few months, but there is plenty of evidence to back that up. Wise is a tremendous ball-striker, who seemingly solved his putting woes in 2022. It resulted in five top-15 finishes, including at big boy events like the CJ Cup and the Memorial. Similar to Im, he’s improved statistically in three of his last five seasons, and a 2023 in which he wins a few times and gets himself to Rome is not out of the question.

3. Keith Mitchell

You can count the number of drivers that are better than Mitchell on one hand. It’s Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Cameron Young, Im and that’s about it. Obviously driving doesn’t lead to victories, but with all the focus on distance in the modern PGA Tour game, it’s a skill that, if you’re better than nearly everyone in the world at, you’re going to contend for some golf tournaments. Mitchell put up six top 12s in 2022 and improved his tee-to-green game overall. If that happens again in 2023, he’s going to snag a victory.

4. Collin Morikawa

This a strange name to have on this list considering he’s a two-time major champion and one of the most prolific early-career winners on the PGA Tour in its history. Still, there was some angst during the back half of 2022 about Morikawa’s lack of wins. This happens often when top players come into a given year off an incredible run and fail to win a tournament. Still, there should not be panic for Morikawa. Consider that he ranked sixth in the world in ball-striking in 2022, and the two players below him and five above him combined for 18 wins. The adulation for Morikawa probably went a bit too far in 2021, but now it has completely swung the other way to the point that he’s one of the more underrated players in the world going into 2023.

5. Will Zalatoris

Again, I’m not sure the No. 7 player in the world can be considered underrated, but Zalatoris’ ball-striking has been so good (No. 1 in the world in 2022) and he’s had so many near-misses (nine top fives in 2021-2022 but just one victory) that he has to be on this list. He could win three times in 2023, and nobody would be surprised.

6. Matt Fitzpatrick

Perhaps my favorite stat in golf is that Fitzpatrick has improved his strokes gained in each of his last 11 seasons. That is remarkable and not something I imagine has happened very often. The result is that he has turned into — along with Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele — one of the most complete players in the world. He gained at least 0.38 strokes per round in each of the four major categories last season and is the caliber of ball-striker now that results in becoming the No. 1 player in the world.

7. Jon Rahm

Another strange name to have on this list, but I’m not positive everyone understands just how elite Rahm is. He basically wins three times a year every year without fail, and his strokes gained numbers are astonishingly consistent (between 2.0-2.4 in five of the last six seasons). One of these years, the luck will fall his way a bit, and he’ll win five times including a major or two. I don’t know if that will happen in 2023, but his statistical profile suggests that it will at some point, and whenever it does it’s almost certain that Rahm is going to have one of the great seasons in the modern era.

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Saturday’s The Match 7 wasn’t the most competitive night of golf this year, but it was entertaining, which is always the intended outcome with these events. 3 and 2 at Pelican Golf Club before spiking the football, doing the Griddy and then following that by performing the Waddle all over two of the best to ever do it. 

As far as exhibition golf goes, it was perfect.

There have been many iterations of this type of golf with more ideas coming to fruition along the way. In fact, seemingly every generation has its variation of The Match, and this one is no different. What has changed over the last 10, 20 and 30 years, however, is the technology available to deliver the golf to a captivated audience.

The Match has appropriated this technology and delivered good player-broadcaster interviews, put cameras all over the courses involved and delivered on having a microphone and camera on players at all times (including selfie-taking times while driving golf carts). It’s better now than it was 20 years ago because we’re closer to the action than we’ve ever been.

While I’m not positive how much the technology part of The Match should — or even could — expand, there are still a few ideas floating out there that would make this property even more valuable going into the future. This is about combining the currently-used technology with some alternative options for this style of televised golf. Following J.T. and Spieth downing Tiger and Rory, I compiled a few of those ideas for future matches and what they could feasibly look like.

1. More unique formats

The one-club challenge on Saturday only worked because all four of the competitors are professional (I don’t need Josh Allen and Aaron Rodgers playing a 450-yard hole exclusively with a 4-iron), but it was so incredibly compelling that you could make the entire event a one-club challenge; I would absolutely be more interested than if guys were playing with all 14 sticks.

There are myriad variations of this you could run — make the losing team of each hole take a club out, three-club challenge, driver only on one hole and so on — but the crux is the same regardless: Make pros show us how talented they are by playing holes with one club better than the rest of us could with all of them.

2. Title belt

This is not an original idea to me, and in fact it’s not even original to Shane Bacon (who tweeted about it on Monday). Rick Gehman brought this up on the First Cut Podcast last week, and I think it’s brilliant. Make The Match a title belt. The options this gives you are as limitless as they are obvious. If J.T. and Spieth are the current belt holders, a different twosome can be pitted against them to try and win the belt away from them.

Eschew those The Match bracelets the duo won on Saturday and go full 1860s Open Championship by handing out belts. You wouldn’t even need to pit two golfers against them as long as you implemented handicaps. This would provide a bit of an edge to something that, at times, perhaps lacks it.

Furthermore, as Joseph LaMagna pointed out, you could establish some rivalries that we rarely get at regular events. Obviously, they wouldn’t be played with the same intensity of a Players Championship or a Memorial, but it would still provide a fun wrinkle to this series of events.

3. Skills challenge

Speaking of LaMagna, he has (and others have) been big on this idea.

While this is not a variation of The Match, it is somewhat an extension of it. LaMagna has pointed this out, too, but something like an all-star challenge could be a better (and certainly more transparent) way to distribute the $100 million PIP fund than just … online mentions and television time throughout the season. You could field your all-star weekend through a fan vote, or a combination of superior play plus a fan vote, and basically arrive at the PIP — except you would be monetizing it, and it wouldn’t function as a top-secret endeavor.

4. More player commentary

One way to rev up the interaction on the broadcast is to have a current player who’s not a broadcaster as part of the team. This was done a few years ago with J.T. on the microphone, and he was fantastic. It’s too risky for a current broadcaster to really go at players, but if they’re getting it from peers, it could provide even better banter for the show.

5. Go to better courses

The way this exhibition is constituted lends itself to going to the Bandons and Sand Hills’ of the world. That’s a great thing, and something I hope the institution of The Match leans into. You don’t need 10,000 people there to make it exciting. Hell, you don’t need anybody at all. You don’t need massive infrastructure or anything like you would need at a normal PGA Tour event. This frees the event up to go to some golf courses we rarely (if ever) get to see on television — sort of like the U.S. Amateur or U.S. Women’s Amateur but with (presumably) four of the best players on the planet.

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The first round of this year’s Houston Open is in the books, and if leaderboards are any indication of the quality of an event — and they are — then this tournament is going to be a great one over the next three days.

Former Ryder Cuppers Alex Noren and Tony Finau are tied at the top at 5 under along with potentially future Ryder Cupper, Aaron Wise as well as Tyson Alexander who only completed 17 holes before darkness. Between the three players at the top who completed their rounds, they made just two combined bogeys in 54 holes at a tough Memorial Park Golf Course, and there’s some distance between them and the rest of the best players in the field.

Let’s take a closer look at their first rounds and what to expect over the weekend in Houston.

The leaders

1. Tony Finau, Alex Noren, Aaron Wise, Tyson Alexander (-5): Gone are the low 60s scores of last week signifying an easy resort golf course that professionals can light up. Memorial Park Golf Course is a Tom Doak redesign and has proved to be tricky over its first two PGA Tour events. This one looks to be much of the same.

Wise has been playing terrific golf this fall and seems to have solved some of his putter problems, which could also be a problem for the rest of the fields he plays in. It’s been en vogue to suggest him as a potential breakout star this year, but there’s a reason for that — he’s a terrific ball-striker — and it’s looking at least now like it could be true.

“I feel like I’m getting there,” said Wise of the state of his game. “I’m pretty hard on myself, there’s always things I want to improve, but I feel like I’m well on my way. I feel like I’m in a way better spot than I was a year ago or two years ago. I just want to keep pushing and keep getting better and see how good I can get”

Finau has been one of the hottest players in golf over the last two months, and Noren has caught a bit of that heat as well — he finished second at the Barracuda Championship in July and T2 at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at the beginning of October. Both are tremendous ball-strikers and Noren led the field in iron play on Thursday. I would be surprised if one of these three players didn’t end up winning the tournament.

Other contenders

T5. Zack Fischer, Ben Taylor, Keith Mitchell, Taylor Pendrith, Wyndham Clark, Mackenzie Hughes, Max McGreevy, David Lipsky (-4)

T13. Scott Piercy, Denny McCarthy, Brendan Steele, Maverick McNealy, Justin Rose, Marty Dou Zecheng, Joel Dahmen, Zack Fischer, Brent Grant, Trey Mullinax, Yechun Yuan, Ben Griffin (-3)

That’s a lot of names but not a lot of depth. Who’s the best player in this group right now? Mitchell? Dahmen? McNealy?

McNealy has probably been playing the best golf of anyone in this collection of players with four consecutive top-20 finishes after a missed cut at the Fortinet Championship to start his 2022-23 season. He drove it poorly on Thursday (only two golfers hit fewer fairways) but his immense short game kept a round together. If he gets it rolling off the tee, he could certainly jump up into contention on the weekend.

Dahmen, too, has been trending in the right direction. After a T37 at the Shriners, he finished T16 at the Zozo and T3 last week at the World Wide Technology Championship in Mayakoba. He was good across the board on Thursday, and it would give this tournament a bit of a jolt to see one of the more popular men in golf get his second career victory.

Sam Burns’ struggles

As one of the two top 12 players in this field, much was expected of Burns. Unfortunately he shot a 77 on Thursday and has only four golfers behind him on the leaderboard. Normally a strong putter, Burns lost nearly five (!!) strokes to the field on the greens on Thursday and put himself in a corner that’s going to be difficult to get out of.

2022 Houston Open odds, picks

• Tony Finau: 4-1
• Aaron Wise: 5-1
• Alex Noren: 12-1
• Taylor Pendrith: 14-1
• Maverick McNealy: 14-1
• Scottie Scheffler: 18-1

Normally I like to look pretty far down the board to find somebody with longer odds. However, I think one of the co-leaders is going to end up winning this tournament. I would simply sprinkle on those three and hope that Noren hits but not be disappointed if it’s one of the others.

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TMRW Sports, a venture founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, has aggregated investors from all over the sports world, and it’s hard to imagine a more impressive list. Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Steph Curry, Gareth Bale, Jayson Tatum, Chris Paul, Shohei Ohtani, Tony Romo, Justin Timberlake and Sidney Crosby are all among the lengthy list of folks who are backing TMRW Sports, a company that is “harnessing technology to build progressive approaches in sports, media and entertainment.”

TMRW is the organization behind the upcoming TGL, a screen golf league that will launch in 2024 and feature PGA Tour players. If this initial group of backers — which represents eight NBA titles, seven F1 world championships, 42 grand slams (tennis) and 21 Olympic medals — is any indication, then TGL is going to have a long runway and a lot of high-powered support to find its footing.

“Over the past year we’ve assembled a team of investors who will help deliver on the TMRW Sports’ mission to positively impact how sports are experienced in the future,” said CEO (and co-founder) Mike McCarley in a statement.

“From the very beginning our plan has been to partner with the best-in-class in every way imaginable and Tiger, Rory, and I value the support of this unrivaled team of investors, advisors, and ambassadors who believe in our vision to harness technology to create progressive approaches to sports. Their combined broad reach and cultural relevance will expand potential opportunities and fanbases for TMRW projects. Plus, many share a passion for golf that only adds more fuel to TGL, our first project in partnership with the PGA Tour.”

It is indeed a monumental list of investors Woods, McIlroy and McCarley have put together. What will be interesting is where the company goes from here. Do they expand beyond the TGL (which has yet to launch), or do they focus on that for several years and pour all of their resources into that league and push it as much as possible starting in January 2024?

The creation of the TGL, which was built in conjunction with the PGA Tour, was a direct response to the threat of LIV Golf. It’s a shift from traditional PGA Tour protocol in which players were rarely able to engage in televised events in the U.S. without the Tour’s blessing or some sort of monetary compensation (which was one of Phil Mickelson’s grievances earlier this year and part of the reason he left for LIV). Instead, this will be a partnership with the PGA Tour and an opportunity for star golfers to earn money outside of the league’s meritocratic structure.

Even more intriguing to me is how Woods transitions from his role as the greatest golfer of all time into business mogul. If we’ve learned anything about him from Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups, it’s that he loves to be involved and engaged on a micro level. He loves to be in the weeds more than most athletes of his stature. Will that remain true here, or will he be more hands off with this venture?

Regardless of the answer, it’s clear that TMRW has the firepower to do pretty much whatever it wants in the near future. Though its mission is broad, it seems like much of that will be focused in the golf world, which is a great thing given who all is now involved with the company and what they could accomplish together.

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Presidents Cup week is here, and while it doesn’t hold the excitement everyone thought it would after the United States narrowly eclipsed the international team in Australia three years ago, team golf at the highest level is always a thrill.

The heavily favored U.S. side seems poised to rout Trevor Immelman’s International squad, but the projection of a rout is something that has often led to some of the greatest moments in sports history. Davis Love III is leading the stars and stripes into a true David vs. Goliath situation this week in Charlotte. The level of play on both sides is inequitable, but there are still plenty of storylines to pay attention to this week at Quail Hollow Golf Club.

This event also represents a reprieve from the long, (sometimes) slow slog of individual stroke play that we get throughout the year. Even in a massive victory back in 2017 at Liberty National Golf Club, the days were still compelling. We got to see future U.S. stars, a variety of pairings on both sides and the types of exhilarating celebrations match play golf often offers up.

Let’s take a look at a few narratives that could develop this week at Quail Hollow and break down what we’ll be watching over the remainder of what should be an awesome week of golf.

1. Over by Saturday? We know the first few days of golf will be a blast because the first few days of Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups are always fun, no matter the matchup or score. You always get insane hole-outs, weird, golf-y celebrations and interesting pairings that may or may not foreshadow the future of either team. In 2017, however, the U.S. led 14.5-3.5 after the Saturday matches, and the entire event was completely over going into singles play. That’s a rarity, even when teams are mismatched like this; team competitions are normally close until the last few hours of the week. Hopefully this one will be, but the threat of a boat race exists here in a way that it has not in most recent team competitions (specifically the Ryder Cup last year at Whistling Straits).

2.  Who’s not there: Normally at team events, we discuss who got snubbed by one of the captains. Instead, this year is about who snubbed themselves. No LIV Golf League players are permitted at the Presidents Cup, which means that international team stars like Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer and Louis Oosthuizen will be watching from home and possibly texting with LIV Golf colleagues Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, all of whom were Team USA pillars over the last five years. While this should not (and will not) be the primary talking point of the week, it’s another way LIV has permeated into every crevice of the golf world, including one of the handful of sacred team weeks that we have every year.

3. Course fit: One of the big talking points going into this week is that even with the international team at full strength, the U.S. advantage at a long, brawny track like Quail Hollow would be too much for them to overcome. One reason they nearly broke a now-24-year winless streak at Royal Melbourne is because the golf course played away from the advantages of the U.S. team (length) and into the hands of a crafty, feisty international team. Of the top nine golfers historically at Quail Hollow who are also in this event, seven are Americans. Furthermore, of the top 10 best fits for this course in the event this week, eight are Americans. It’s difficult to envision either the course or the way it’s set up as anything other than an advantage for Love’s team.

4. Rookie ringers (on both sides): I’m more intrigued than normal to watch the first-timers this time around. On the U.S. side, Sam Burns, Max Homa, Billy Horschel and Cameron Young are all interesting not only as players but also potential future U.S. anchors (especially in the case of Burns, Homa and Young). Burns, Homa and Horschel are all fairly animated competitors that I expect to thrive in a team environment. For the International Team, they’ll lean on eight rookies, but the most compelling are 20-year-old Tom Kim, Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith and Cam Davis; the latter two were selected because they can match some of the firepower on the U.S. side. If those four play to their relatively high ceilings, the internationals could be a little plucky.

5. U.S. leaders: Want to feel old? Jordan Spieth is the most experienced U.S. player … by three events (Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup). Even with the LIV players in the mix, Spieth and Justin Thomas would have likely been the heart and soul of this U.S. squad, but it’s unquestionably true now with D.J., Koepka and DeChambeau out of the picture. Phil Mickelson talked about Spieth as the future guy for the U.S., and it has turned out to be true. It will be especially true this week without Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson around as assistant captains. J.T. and Spieth are an interesting duo. The latter a chest-thumping monster who is 10-2-3 in team sessions at these team events, and the former a calm, confident presence in the press tent and, presumably, the locker room for players who aren’t much younger than him. They should be who we thought Mickelson and Woods were going to be for the next 10 years of U.S. team golf.

6.  Top Scheff: I joked that the best player in the world and Jon Rahm were playing the singles match of the Ryder Cup last year, and this year it turned out to not be a joke as Scheffler rose to the top spot in the OWGR after four wins early in the year. He was perhaps a bit of a surprise hero last year at his first U.S. team event as he went 2-0-1, but he’ll sneak up on nobody this year. My question is whether he can lead from out in front as one of the Americans with the biggest targets on his back.

7. Foursomes advantage: The big problem for the international team — other than the fact that it has three players ranked in the top 25 of the OWGR and the U.S. has 12 — is that it has been unable to compete in foursomes at this event over the last two decades. The stat below is jarring. The internationals have actually outperformed the U.S. team in singles play and tied them in fourballs over the last 15 years, but have been absolutely torched in foursomes. That’s something to keep an eye on going into the week.

8. U.S. pairings: I care way too much about the in-the-weeds minutia on the U.S. side of things, and I think we’re probably going to get some pairings this week that we’ve either already seen at the Ryder Cup or will see again next year in Rome. Here are the pods for the first two days of practice rounds for the U.S.

Burns-Scheffler is an obvious pairing. So are J.T.-Spieth and Cantlay-Schauffele. Finau is so pliable from a personality standpoint that you could plug him in with any of the three guys in his pod and it could make sense. Kisner and Horschel are pretty interesting, and though they’re not necessarily off the charts statistically at Quail Hollow, they would be a nightmare to go up against. Morikawa-Homa is a ball-striking extravaganza. I cannot wait to see how these play out.

9. What does U.S. future look like after optimistic Whistling Straits? I wrote about the U.S. Dream Team that invaded Lake Michigan this time a year ago. In that moment, the future looked indelible as the red, white and blue looked unbeatable. However, nearly half that team is gone (either to LIV or to injury), and in their place steps some question marks. This year’s Presidents Cup won’t determine what the future of U.S. team golf looks like, but it might actually be more representative of what the next five years will look like than last year’s Ryder Cup did. It would be surprising if that resulted in a more optimistic outlook given the talent on that team and what has been lost, but it could result in a similarly unified group that moves into the future of Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups against the best players from the rest of the world.

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