Lhuan-Dre Pretorius bettered his previous T20I top score of 51.© AFP via Getty Images

The rosters are set. The hour-long TV special is over. And the Presidents Cup has taken shape.

U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker had six automatic picks and six to make on his own for September’s meeting at Medinah. A few of those seemed obvious — but the bottom of the roster seemed like a massive question mark. Here are three surprises about the way Snedeker chose to fill it.

1. The Bridge Man cometh

At the beginning of the 2026 season, Jacob Bridgeman seemed like a no-brainer pick for the U.S. side. His first eight starts of the year yielded seven top 20s, three top-fives and a statement win at the Genesis Invitational.

But after that? Bridgeman’s golf remained remarkably consistent, but it dropped a tick. His T13s became T33s. He logged just one top-20 finish in his next 13 starts. Granted, Bridgeman missed just one cut in that stretch, but by the time the playoffs rolled around, he was at the edge of the conversation.

It’ll be interesting to hear just how much Bridgeman’s case changed with his playoff performance, then. His ninth-place finish at the BMW Championship and his T4 at the Tour Championship provided an impressive bookend to his breakout year.

It also doesn’t hurt that he’s statistically the best putter on the PGA Tour.

2. An American in Europe

After his solo third-place finish at the Tour Championship, Ryan Gerard got on a red-eye flight to Europe for this week’s Omega European Masters, where he’s the betting favorite. Why play there? In part, he said, to prep for a potential Presidents Cup pick.

“Full transparency, if I get a Presidents Cup spot, I’d love to kind of roll into there being a little bit more prepared,” Gerard said. “I like to play a lot of golf. And if I don’t, I’ll probably just stay over there and play Wentworth and the France Open after that.”

On Tuesday, Gerard earned the unfortunate (and unofficial) honor of first man out when Snedeker left his name unsaid. Gerard was among the hottest players on the U.S. side, entering with five top-10s in his last 11 starts — but it wasn’t enough to leapfrog veteran presences like Justin Thomas or Patrick Cantlay.

Based on his comments from Sunday, it sounds like Gerard will extend his fall Eurotrip; that’ll mean a few more chances to show the U.S. side what they’re missing out on.

3. The Rookie

Jackson Koivun has made just six starts as a pro. The third of those starts was a statement win at the 3M Open, where he fended off World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and validated the hype that had followed him throughout his time as Auburn’s superstar.

Koivun snuck into the FedEx Cup Playoffs, too — a particularly impressive accomplishment given his limited starts.

But a solid, if unremarkable finish to his PGA Tour season — T31 in Detroit, T29 in Greensboro, T24 in Memphis — left his Presidents Cup future up in the air. Would a U.S. team-golf outfit known for playing it safe really roll the dice on an unproven 21-year-old?

Yes.

Snedeker seemed slightly gleeful to announce Koivun with the final pick of the session, knowing he’d saved the biggest, boldest move for last. The move echoed the European Ryder Cup selection of Ludvig Aberg in 2023, when he was a recent college grad.

Koivun will be the youngest player at Medinah, by far. He’ll also be among the most talented.

Game on.

HoYoverse has been releasing new Honkai Star Rail updates on time, except for some occasional hiccups. However, the fandom is not very content with this direction and is finally losing patience. Over the years, the overall quality of the title has been going down bit by bit, including mediocre story missions, power creep, and more.

While Honkai Star Rail has the potential to be an exceptional gacha title, the devs are holding it back. Read on as we further discuss this matter.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect the author’s opinions.

Honkai Star Rail fandom is not happy about the title going downhill

If you have been playing Honkai Star Rail since launch, you’ll know the game isn’t the same as it used to be. In earlier patches, the story actually mattered and was engaging. Although some bits and pieces were a little depressing, players looked forward to the update’s story missions. The Penacony Arc was the best storyline released by HoYoverse. Compared to the aforementioned Arc, the Amphoreus Arc was a little boring, as each update featured long quests.

However, the story missions were still engaging, especially the version 3.4 quest, which was probably the best of all 3.x updates. With version 3.8’s release, everything started going downhill and didn’t stop, even after HSR 4.0’s release. Although the aforementioned update was delayed by two weeks, Planarcadia’s story is exceptionally mediocre.

Besides mediocre story quests, the lack of events in Honkai Star Rail has played a huge role in the title going downhill. After the update’s release, you will get access to the patch’s flagship event, which requires a couple of hours to complete. When you are done, there’s nothing to do until the second half starts. When it does, the phase two event is also not very engaging and can be completed in mere hours. This means during the majority of the update, all players have nothing to do except Daily Training.

On top of that, the powercreep in all endgame activities is worth noting. Most of the bosses have an exceptionally large HP pool, forcing everyone to pull all the meta-defining characters. Most of the recent 5-star units require other premium characters to unleash their full potential, such as Silver Wolf LV999 and Sparxie. Since casual/free-to-play players won’t have an endless supply of Stellar Jade, it’s exceptionally hard for them to pull these characters, which prevents them from fully clearing the endgame modes.

Going back to the topic of endgame activities, the devs have been increasing all bosses’ HP to make the mode challenging. However, it’s not very enjoyable, as you’ll just spend a bit more time clearing that particular stage.

Since Honkai Star Rail is a gacha title, its main revenue source is the Warp banners. While overall banner sales have been somewhat stable, Himeko Nova didn’t do well, considering the Warp event lasted the whole patch. As mentioned, Phainon is a version 3.4 character. His Warp event only lasted for 3 weeks. As you can see in the picture above, Himeko Nova only generated roughly $25 million, while Phainon’s banner garnered almost $44 million. These amounts are estimates from Sensor Tower, a legitimate source for app revenue data.

Besides that, many players are also fed up with SPs becoming more and more common in Honkai Star Rail. This somewhat kills the excitement of an upcoming patch, as a version of that particular unit already exists in the game.

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