Presidents Cup 2015: Match results, live updates, and scores from Thursday in Korea

The Presidents Cup cannot match the current appeal, competitiveness, and tension of the Ryder Cup. It’s the neglected little brother of these international team match play competitions. I will not argue that it’s the peer of the Ryder Cup, but I still cannot trash it. It’s fun to watch the most famous players in the world play a completely different game and format and have to rely on a partner. If the Internationals can actually make it competitive, the event would take off in the same way the Ryder Cup delivers each fall.

Here’s some background info and a primer on this 2015 Presidents Cup in Korea, as well as a full match board which we’ll update as the event progresses.

On a day when Team USA once again dominated the Internationals 4-1 in the opening foursomes matches at the Presidents Cup, Phil Mickelson put himself in position to match Tiger Woods’ all-time PC record of 24 wins.

Mickelson was a controversial captain’s pick to play on his 11th Prez Cup team (and 21st straight U.S. team overall) after a pretty lousy PGA Tour season that featured three missed cuts and just three top-10 finishes in 19 starts. His short-game wizardry was on full display, though, when he holed a shot from the bunker on the par-3 13th hole on the Jack Nicklaus GC. The shot gave him and teammate Zach Johnson a 2-up edge over Jason Day and Steven Bowditch.

We should know pretty early in Friday’s second session at the Presidents Cup whether this will be a competition going into the weekend. USA captain Jay Haas put his heaviest hitters and strongest teams at the front of the rotation for Friday’s Four-ball session, choosing to lead off with the power pairing of Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson. Those two anchored the first session.

All of the American partnerships, aside from Patrick Reed and Matt Kuchar, looked strong in Thursday’s opening session. Three of the five pairings never trailed, so it made sense that Haas would keep the duos together. Johnson and Spieth were the headline group, but really everyone cleaned up in the alternate-shot format. Haas will lead with the four winning pairs on Friday, then sit Reed and Kuchar and put Bill Haas and Chris Kirk out in the anchor match for their first appearance in this 2015 Cup.

The Presidents Cup started the same way it always does, with the Americans racing out to a commanding lead and owning the opening session on Thursday in Korea. Jason Day tried to earn a late half-point, but could not even things up against Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson on the 18th green.

The Foursomes session ended with the Internationals in a 4-1 hole and the prospects for an actual competitive Presidents Cup dwindling. Here’s how it went down while you were sleeping:

We needed a Phil Mickelson jolt in the first session of the Presidents Cup. It was getting late and everyone was starting to fade amid a flurry of awful golf shots. Then Mickelson dropped this one in the cup from a downhill bunker lie and got real business-like celebrating the hole-out with his partner, Zach Johnson.

That’s a little different reaction than we’re used to seeing from Phil. He’s usually butt-slapping and fist-bumping rowdily with Keegan Bradley. It looked like he wanted to after the shot of the session, but ZJ is keeping him in check.

The golf in the first session at the Presidents Cup is horrible. It’s atrocious. Ugly. Awful. It’s not what you would expect from 24 of the best players in the world on a relatively easy course set up mostly to promote birdies. There have been eight balls dumped in the water -- on one hole (the 11th)! And that’s with just 10 balls live in five matches out on the course, not some full field dumping them in the drink.

The golf is bad on both sides, with a variety of chunked chips, sliced drives and duffed wedges. But the Internationals are on the wrong side again, and this sequence from partners Marc Leishman and Danny Lee sums up the first session best.

No matter how hard they try, golfers simply cannot celebrate, high-five, or first-bump in any way that resembles something smooth.

We’re just over an hour into this year’s Presidents Cup and the Americans are already working on what looks like another rout, so expect plenty of celebrating on the USA side. Zach Johnson and Phil Mickelson, who are an awkward pairing for several reasons, will author plenty of the decidedly un-smooth moments.

It is the International team’s turn to host the Presidents Cup and this year’s edition will be the first in Asia. Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in Incheon, South Korea is the venue for the 11th Presidents Cup and that means middle-of-the-night viewing back in the United States.

It’s rare to get primetime golf, but this silly season stretch from October through December often provides it with a string of events in Australia and Asia that attract some of the top American pros. The Presidents Cup will start at different times all four days, ranging from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the eastern United States and running as late as 4 a.m. the next day.

If you have ever wondered what it might be like to combine the power and talents of Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson into some sort of super golfer, Wednesday night may be the closest we’ll get. Spieth and DJ, perhaps the two most talented American players going right now, will pair up in the first session at the Presidents Cup.

The session will utilize the foursomes format, otherwise known as alternate shot. So Spieth will get to play his ball from some of those massive bombs off the tee that DJ regularly hits 30, 40, and even 50 yards past him week-to-week on Tour. And DJ will get to watch Spieth bury those moderate-length putts he, uh, sometimes leaves himself up on the greens. The foursomes pairings for Wednesday night’s opening session are not all the most intuitive or put strength with strength, but the DJ-Spieth duo is definitely the headliner and they will anchor the session against Internationals Danny Lee and Marc Leishman.

The end of the FedExCup heralds in the start of the “silly season” in golf. The last three months of the year are largely a time when the best players in the world disappear, work on their games, fiddle with equipment, and maybe work out and get some exercise. The new wraparound schedule has added a few more meaningful PGA Tour events during this stretch, but it’s still an off-time. The top players in the world pop up at different quirky events around the globe, many of them paying out nice appearance fees.

Before that all sets in, however, there is one last competitive event that attracts the best players in the world. The team match play competitions have become an annual season-ending event and this year it’s the Presidents Cup. The event matches a 12-man USA roster against 12 International stars who are not from Europe and would otherwise play on that Ryder Cup team. It carries nowhere near the weight, appeal, and importance of the Ryder Cup, but it’s still fun to watch these world-class pros play in such different circumstances than the rest of the year.

The Presidents Cup should be one of the best events of the golf year. It’s an exciting team event and in a format, match play, that we almost never get any more in the modern game. These team events with the best players in the world are rare and fun to watch when we get them.

Emily: Meh. With the page definitively turned from the narrative of the old guys to that of the next generation, picking someone from the rookie ranks of Daniel Berger, Justin Thomas and Tony Finau -- rather than captain Jay Haas’ boy, Bill -- to join Jordan Spieth and the rest of the same ol’ usual suspects (we’re looking at you, Phil Mickelson, Matt Kuchar and Zach Johnson) might have infused some youthful energy into the proceedings. Mickelson is back by popular demand of the players, apparently. It will be interesting to see how Lefty performs, inside the ropes and in the all-important ping pong room, in what could be his PC swan song.

The Presidents Cup is one of the most unique events in golf. The best players in the world turn up for the rare opportunity to play as a team and under match-play format. The Ryder Cup is more competitive, has more history, and because of that, is much more appealing at the moment. The Presidents Cup cannot match it, but I’ll still tune in to watch 24 of the world’s best play in a totally different format.

Unlike the Ryder Cup, this event is split across four days and puts more match points on the table. Nick Price, however, managed to convince the PGA Tour to eliminate four matches for this year’s Cup. The matches and points went from 34 down to 30 -- Price wanted to get it all the way to 28, which is the same number at the Ryder Cup. Eliminating some of those matches in the early sessions is an advantage for the Internationals, who are not as deep and can hide some of their weaker players on the bench now.