Following its counterpart’s announcement on Tuesday, the United States team revealed its six captain’s selections for the 2022 Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow in two weeks. Captain Davis Love III dealt with twists and turns of his own as presumed pick Will Zalatoris bowed out of consideration following his withdrawal from the 2022 Tour Championship due to two herniated discs in his back.

In his place, Love’s selections of Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Billy Horschel, Cameron Young and Kevin Kisner will don the red, white and blue in Charlotte. They join the six automatic qualifiers of Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Sam Burns, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas and Tony Finau, and make up the 12 men responsible for defending the dramatic 2019 triumph at Royal Melbourne led by Tiger Woods.

Burns is the lone automatic qualifier who will be making his team-competition debut, but he is joined by a number of rookies among the captain’s selections. While Spieth is set to compete in his fourth Presidents Cup and eighth team event, this marks the first Presidents Cup for four of the selections. Only Kisner has any prior Presidents Cup experience under his belt, while Morikawa was an integral part of the U.S. Ryder Cup team last fall.

Morikawa collected a 3-0-1 record in the 2021 Ryder Cup victory at Whistling Straits and Kisner was a member of the 2017 Presidents Cup team at Liberty National where he garnered a 2-0-2 record. A native of South Carolina and a staple at the WGC Match Play, Kisner was the likely the last man selected and the beneficiary of Zalatoris’ injury.

“There are a lot of great players who excel in match play, but Kisner thrives off of this format and I know he is eager to compete at Quail Hollow,” said Love. “As a South Carolina native and one of the more popular players on Tour, he will bring some vocal fans with him and help to build an atmosphere that our team embraces.”

Homa enjoyed the strongest season of his PGA Tour career in 2021-22. Winning the Fortinet Championship and the Wells Fargo Championship, he was one of nine multiple-time winners on the season and gained strokes in each area of the game for the first time in his career. Known to play his best golf on long, classical golf courses, the return to Quail Hollow — the site of his first career victory in 2019 — should bring a sense of comfort for the rookie.

Horschel brings a fieriness to the U.S. side that is typically reserved for the likes of Thomas. Not receiving a phone call last fall for the Ryder Cup, the former FedEx Cup champion harnessed this disappointment into a victory at the DP World Tour’s flagship event, the 2021 BMW PGA Championship, the following week. A player capable of making putts in bunches and having won at Muirfield Village this past summer, 35-year-old Horschel will be ready for his debut.

As will Young, who appears to be wise beyond his years. Likely to be bestowed the honors of PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, the former Wake Forest Demon Deacon returns to state of North Carolina with plenty of confidence and game. The 25-year-old finished inside the top three on seven different occasions in his first season on the PGA Tour, including his T3 finish at the PGA Championship and runner-up result at The Open.

2022 Presidents Cup teams

With half the U.S. team boasting zero experience in this particular competition, it will need to lean on their form — of which there is plenty. All but one player — world No. 26 Kisner — find their names inside the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings and are led by world No. 1 Scheffler, who will be making his Presidents Cup debut.

This is a stark contrast to an international team that boasts only two top 20 players in the world and featured zero top 40 players in its captain’s selections. With the recent dismissal of Cameron Smith and Joaquin Niemann from the team, the international side has seen its chances dwindle without sticking a peg into the ground.

Previously listed as -330 favorites at Caesars Sportsbook, the U.S. team can now be found at -500. Having won each edition of the Presidents Cup on home soil, oddsmakers believe this one will be no different.

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International team captain Trevor Immelman had an impossible task in front of him as he made his 2022 Presidents Cup picks. He had to fill up spots that would have otherwise been taken by the No. 2 player in the world, Cameron Smith, as well as another top 20 guy in Joaquin Niemann after both left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf and became ineligible for the competition. 

On Tuesday, with two weeks to go until the Presidents Cup begins at Quail Hollow, Immelman made his selections.

Cameron Davis, Si Woo Kim, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, K.H. Lee, Sebastian Munoz and Taylor Pendrith will join Adam Scott, Mito Pereira, Tom Kim, Corey Conners, Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im — all of whom qualified on points — on the international team. Originally, Immelman was slated to have just four picks, but the departures of Smith and Niemann gave him two more openings.

None of these six captain’s picks are ranked among the top 40 golfers in the world — K.H. Lee is the highest-ranked at No. 41 — but all are intriguing as talents, which will be needed against a loaded United States team. Pendrith and Davis are monsters off the tee. Munoz and Lee are former PGA Tour champions. Bezuidenhout is arguably one of the best putters in the world, and Kim is an immense (if enigmatic) talent who has won three events, including a Players Championship, and lost three others in playoffs by the age of 26.

Kim is the only player with any previous Presidents Cup experience.

One of the international team problems’s (among many) is Quail Hollow’s length and how little of it the team possesses, which is something they clearly tried to solve with these six captain’s picks.

“Quail Hollow is a golf course which rewards length,” said Immelman in a statement. “And [Pendrith] is without doubt one of the longest drivers of the ball in our sport. The way he responded to the adversity of a serious injury in his rookie season, rejoined the PGA Tour and had five top-15 finishes in his last six events highlighted by a T2 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, meant that he was someone we couldn’t look past.”

Immelman joined The First Cut Podcast last week to talk about some of the players on his squad, and he was unsurprisingly high on both Im and Tom Kim, both of whom had terrific years. They will be among the better players on this team and looked at to carry much of the load against the Americans.

2022 Presidents Cup teams

* Projected captain’s picks for the U.S. team on Wednesday

The international team is up against both a tepid past and an overwhelming present. Only six players automatically qualified for U.S. captain Davis Love III, but he is expected to pick Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Billy Horschel, Cameron Young and Collin Morikawa for his captain’s picks. With Will Zalatoris’ injury, the 12th is undetermined, but the U.S. depth is staggering compared to the international team.

Immelman will try and combat the immense U.S. talent with all the talent he has at his disposal. He could have easily gone with some other older players with more experience, but instead, he chose five rookies who are unproven but also not scarred. This is a methodology that the U.S. team actually employed last year against the European Ryder Cup team, and it worked splendidly.

While I don’t really expect the international team to ultimately compete with the U.S. squad at Quail Hollow given the depth and strength of the latter over the former, Immelman has at least been wise with how he’s gone about constructing his team in the wake of the LIV departures and team anchor Smith not getting another run. He’s at least given himself and his team a chance.

The international team has not won a Presidents Cup since 1998 and has never won one inside the United States.

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