What Presidents Cup teams could look like if the best women were added

What if Lydia Ko hadn’t boarded a plane bound for South Korea immediately after winning the Kroger Queen City Championship and instead headed north of the border to Montreal for the 2024 Presidents Cup?

It’s been talked about for years, this idea of making the Presidents Cup – a lopsided affair that tilts toward the Americans – into a mixed event.

Wouldn’t it be something to see Ko team up again with Australia’s Jason Day, as they did in the inaugural Grant Thornton Invitational last December? Ko and Day, of course, won that event at Tiburon Golf Club, a spark that spurred Ko on to a magical 2024.

Ko, who got into the LPGA Hall of Fame this summer after winning Olympic gold in Paris, isn’t eligible for a Solheim Cup, and New Zealand doesn’t have enough good players to qualify for the LPGA’s International Crown.

It’s a shame to have one of the game’s biggest stars shut out of these team events.

The U.S. has won every edition of the Presidents Cup since 1994, with the exception of 1998 when the Americans lost, and in 2003, when the two teams tied. Two-time U.S. captain Stacy Lewis brought up the idea of making the Presidents Cup a mixed event earlier this month at the Solheim Cup.

“It’s the perfect way to blend the two tours,” she said. “The international team will get better very quickly.”

Indeed, if the International team included women, there would be six players ranked in the top eight in the world added to the roster. That’s seven more top-10 players than are currently on the men’s International team.

In Naples, Florida, last year at the Grant Thornton, Billy Horschel told Golfweek that a bigger team a competition that involves men and women would be a home run for golf.

“If it’s not being talked about, then I don’t know,” said Horschel, “maybe we need to change the people in the positions and get some more innovative thinkers in there.”

Of course, if the LPGA gets involved in the Presidents Cup, that takes away opportunities for the men as well as revenue, since the tours would have to share the pie.

One has to wonder, though, how much longer the PGA Tour thinks this event can go on as is and be relevant. A more competitive cup would go a long way toward growing the game both at home and internationally, which should be at the heart of this competition’s mission.

Not…