Just over three months remain until the top players on each team officially qualify for the 2022 Presidents Cup, with Scottie Scheffler sitting at the No. 1 position on the U.S. Team and Australia’s Cameron Smith leading the standings for the Internationals.
The Presidents Cup will be contested in Charlotte, North Carolina, at Quail Hollow Club for the first time in tournament history, where Captain Trevor Immelman’s International Team will look so secure its first win on U.S. soil against the U.S. Team led by Captain Davis Love III.
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Smith, a five-time PGA TOUR winner, holds the No. 1 position in the International Team Standings, earning two of his five career titles this season alone. The 28-year-old started the year with a win at the Sentry Tournament of Champions before adding THE PLAYERS Championship to his resume with a victory in his adopted hometown of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Smith will look to make his second appearance at the Presidents Cup after debuting in 2019 in his home country at The Royal Melbourne Golf Club, where he delivered a 1-1-1 record.
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Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, an eight-time PGA TOUR winner including this season’s ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP and Sony Open in Hawaii, and Korea’s Sungjae Im, a two-time TOUR champion, look set to make their fifth and second appearances respectively for the International Team where they are ranked second and third on the standings. Im was one of the stars in the 2019 edition when he secured 3.5 points at Royal Melbourne in his debut appearance while Matsuyama holds a 6-7-4 record in the Presidents Cup.
Other Asian golfers in the running for the automatic top-8 qualifying places in the International Team include Anirban Lahiri (No. 12) and Korea’s Si Woo Kim (No. 14). Lahiri became India’s first golfer to feature in the Presidents Cup in 2015 and made the team again in 2017 while Kim, the 2017 PLAYERS Championship winner, played in 2017.
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In 2019, a record five Asian golfers – Matsuyama, Im, Chinese Taipei’s C.T. Pan, China’s Haotong Li and Korea’s Byeong Hun An – featured for the International Team.
World No. 1 Scheffler leads the standings for the U.S. Team with 18 events remaining before the qualification window closes following the 2022 BMW Championship. This season, the 25-year-old earned his first four PGA TOUR titles in the span of six starts, winning the WM Phoenix Open, Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play and the Masters. In what would be his Presidents Cup debut, Scheffler brings a plethora of team match play experience as a member of the 2017 U.S. Walker Cup team and the winning 2021 U.S. Ryder Cup Team.
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The top 10 for the U.S. Team remained unchanged following the completion of the Mexico Open at Vidanta, with Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas rounding out the top five. Tony Finau, who made his debut at the 2019 Presidents Cup, moved from No. 24 up to No. 17 with a T2 finish in Mexico after closing in 63 to wind up one shot shy of winner Jon Rahm.
The only change inside the top 10 in the International Team standings was Canada’s Corey Conners moving up to No. 6, with Mexico’s Abraham Ancer dropping down to No. 7.
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