MONTREAL — Patrick Cantlay couldn’t have hit the putt — he might not have seen the hole — without lights from a videoboard and the headlamps from golf carts surrounding the 18th green at Royal Montreal Golf Club in the final match of the longest day at the Presidents Cup.
And then he delivered another “Patty Ice” moment that might have been enough to turn the lights out on the International team Saturday.
Scottie Scheffler delivered big moments late in both of his matches, and teammate Cantlay’s putt from just inside 17 feet in the dark gave the Americans another win, another point, moving them one session closer to another Presidents Cup victory.
“Huge putt,” U.S. captain Jim Furyk said. “If you had to hand select someone to hit a big putt on your team, I think Pat would come to a lot of people’s minds.”
The United States won the day’s fourballs and foursomes sessions by a 3-1 margin in each case. Cantlay and Xander Schauffele won on the 18th over Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim, the high-charged South Korean duo, to give the Americans an 11-7 lead going into the final day.
“Xander helped me read it,” Cantlay said of his winner in near darkness. “It was like a cup-out with some speed, and a putt like that will make me sleep a little better tonight.”
It was Si Woo Kim who chipped in from deep rough below the 16th green that gave his side hope, and he leaned his cheek into his hands the “Good Night” gesture made famous from U.S. men’s basketball star Stephen Curry in the Paris Olympics this summer.
That turned out to be an early call.
Tom Kim said he could hear some American players cursing at them, though it wasn’t corroborated, and Schauffele said he didn’t know to what the 22-year-old was referring. Most of the matches have been tight over the first three days. The crowd has been loud. It has gotten chippy at times, expected in these team competitions.
What hasn’t changed is the Internationals face a big deficit.
They need to win eight of the 12 singles matches Sunday for a tie, and halve another if they want to win for the first time since 1998 — four years before Tom Kim was born — and only the second time since the Presidents Cup (which does not include players from Europe, who compete against the U.S. in the Ryder Cup) began in 1994.
International captain Mike Weir sat out four players all of Saturday, wanting to ride the teams that helped get his side back into the match with that 5-0 shutout in Friday’s foursomes.
One of them was Australian veteran Jason Day, who will be first out Sunday against Schauffele.
It’s the same deficit from two years ago, and Weir recalls the Internationals — a team at the time facing the distraction of losing players who defected to Saudi-backed LIV Golf — making the crowd quiet and the Americans sweat on Sunday at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“We just have tremendous belief in our guys,” Weir said. “Might feel similar to what it was in Charlotte, but I’m just telling you, maybe there’s an upgrade in belief for our team.”
Tom Kim sounded even more determined, bordering on angry.
“I am so motivated to go out tomorrow … because we’ve lost so many times, there’s going to be one day where it’s just going to be our day,” he said. “I believe it’s tomorrow.
“If we fall short, we’ll try again. That’s what we are. We’ll keep trying. There’s going to be one time when we’re going to hold the cup, and it’s going to be sometime soon.”
Scheffler finished off a tight fourballs match with two late birdies in a morning session delayed 90 minutes by fog, and then he gave the Americans their first lead in foursomes with a wedge shot into a foot on the 14th hole that led to another point.
Scheffler started both matches slowly. Collin Morikawa kept the Americans in the game in fourballs until Scheffler hit a dart from 195 yards to eight feet for birdie on the 16th, and rolled in a 15-foot putt from off the green on the 17th for the win.
Russell Henley carried him in foursomes, especially after Scheffler missed par putts from six feet and three feet as they fell 3 down after five holes. But the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking delivered late with a wedge into a foot on the 14th for their first lead and a 12-foot birdie on the next to take control.
“I have the best player in the world on my team, and we just kind of hung in there,” Henley said.
Australia’s Adam Scott, playing in his 11th Presidents Cup without ever being on the winning side, carried Canada’s Taylor Pendrith to a 2-and-1 victory in the afternoon foursomes over Brian Harman and Max Homa, the only International point in foursomes.
Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim won big over Keegan Bradley and Wyndham Clark in morning fourballs for the lone International victory.
They were all square or leading in all the afternoon matches at one point until the Americans took control, as they often do. Burns and Morikawa dug out of an early hole and beat the Canadian duo of Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes on the 18th hole when when Hughes hit a poor chip and Conners never came close on the 12-foot par putt.
In the anchor match in the morning, Im three times matched birdies against Burns and Cantlay to keep the match from getting out of hand. Cantlay chipped in for an eagle on the 12th for a 2-up lead, and he twice kept the Internationals from coming back by making putts from 25 feet and 18 feet when they were in tight.
Said Burns of Cantlay: “The guy’s an absolute assassin.”