Im made a 10-foot birdie putt to win the par-three 13th hole, but a Burns tap-in birdie at 14 lifted the US duo level. Scheffler won the 17th with a par and tied the 18th with a par for the victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just did our best to stay in it,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cWe stepped up when we needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really proud of them. So happy for Scottie and Sam to get that big lead-off win for us,\u201d added US team captain Brandt Snedeker.<\/p>\n
While Scheffler\u2019s match was first to tee off, Justin Thomas and 21-year-old rookie Jackson Koivun bagged the first point of the 16th Presidents Cup.<\/p>\n
They defeated Canada\u2019s Corey Conners and Colombia\u2019s Nico Echavarria 4&3.<\/p>\n
The Americans never trailed, with Thomas winning the fifth hole on a 22-foot birdie putt for a 2-up edge then making birdie from 12 feet to win the 14th and 16 feet to win the 15th and clinch a win.<\/p>\n
The two-time major winner improved to 7-0 in Presidents Cup four-ball matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatch play is such a bizarre thing,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cI\u2019ve played great with some great partners. Happy we got a point today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Internationals equalised when Japan\u2019s Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune defeated Cameron Young and Xander Schauffele 3&1.<\/p>\n
Matsuyama gave the Japanese duo the lead for good by winning the eighth on a six-foot par putt to 1-up and ninth on a birdie from just inside 10 feet for a 2-up edge.<\/p>\n
He halved the next five holes with pars or better, then won the match with a 10-foot birdie putt at 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe played well and I did the best I could. I was just happy to get the point,\u201d Matsuyama said through a translator.<\/p>\n
\u2018Accelerator\u2019<\/p>\n
After Scheffler and Burns had made it 2-1, Clark and Morikawa added a further US victory, going 3-up within six holes against Fox and Scott.<\/p>\n
Fox hit back with a birdie on seven, but Clark immediately responded with an 18-foot birdie putt on the eighth.<\/p>\n
Scott birdied the par-three 13th to again reduce the gap back to two, before a Clark birdie on 15 prompted a 3&2 win.<\/p>\n
The day\u2019s final match pitted South Koreans Tom Kim and Kim Si-woo against Chris Gotterup and Patrick Cantlay.<\/p>\n
The Korean duo never trailed, winning the first two holes.<\/p>\n
Tom Kim nearly had a walk-off ace on the par-three 16th. The ball ricocheted off the flagstick, but his birdie was still enough to seal a 3&2 win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to put the accelerator down. We kept the pressure on and played well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The United States has a 13-1-1 edge in the rivalry with the Internationals.<\/p>\n
The non-European global squad\u2019s only victory came in 1998 at Australia, and the US is seeking an 11th consecutive victory in the biennial competition.<\/p>\n
International captain Geoff Ogilvy said the 3-2 deficit was \u201cnot that bad\u201d.<\/p>\n
Teams need 15.5 of the 30 points on offer to capture the trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSaw some good stuff… We will take that,\u201d said Ogilvy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Im made a 10-foot birdie putt to win the par-three 13th hole, but a Burns tap-in birdie at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85430,74,10542,35142,5504,301088,1464,194,7240,13085,12235,111,139,69,10521,1523,29312,5128,213,9939,6382,9938],"class_list":["post-611009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-85430","tag-after","tag-cup","tag-debut","tag-following","tag-fourball","tag-internationals","tag-kiwi","tag-lead","tag-matches","tag-mixed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opening","tag-over","tag-presidents","tag-ryan","tag-sports","tag-states","tag-took","tag-united"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}