Trevor Immelman’s Presidents Cup Headache

You have to feel for Trevor Immelman, the International Team Captain for the 2022 Presidents Cup.

Immelman’s side were already significant underdogs heading into this year’s competition against the United States, and that was before recent reports started surfacing around a handful of qualified players making the jump to the LIV Tour.

The pool of American players for U.S. Captain Davis Love III to pull from is deep and talented if say someone like Cameron Young had headed off to LIV in the coming weeks as he had been rumored to do.

But unfortunately for Immelman, the same can’t be said about his International side. There is a potentially developing scenario in which the South African will need to find replacements for three of his top eight automatic qualifiers, and that doesn’t even include an additional four Captain’s picks that he will need to make in the coming weeks.

The reason for this is that those who choose to participate in the next LIV Golf Boston event will not be allowed to compete in this year’s Presidents Cup.

Immelman already lost past International stalwarts like Louis Oosthuizen and Abraham Ancer to the LIV Tour and now the International Team Captain may be without all three of Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, and Mito Pereira as well.

All three have been rumored to be joining LIV and all three were amongst eight players who had automatically qualified for the International side following the conclusion of the BMW Championship just over a week ago.

That would leave Trevor Immelman’s International side with auto qualifiers Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im, Tom Kim, Corey Conners, and Adam Scott.

"“There’s a ton of depth, but we’d be foolish not to acknowledge players who may go to [LIV] have the potential to hurt our team,”"

Immelman acknowledged in a Golf Digest article last week. Their absence would leave the International Captain choosing from players like K.H. Lee, Erik Van Rooyen, Sebastian Munoz, Adam Hadwin, Ryan Fox, and maybe even Taylor Pendrith to name a few.

Dwindling Presidents Cup options for Trevor Immelman?

But the players who may be going to LIV before this year’s Presidents Cup doesn’t stop with the aforementioned three, it may also include Marc Leishman and Anirban Lahiri as well. Both players were amongst the top 20 on the International points list.

If every single player who is supposedly joining LIV Golf for their next event does in fact leave, it would mean that Trevor Immelman would need to find an additional seven players to join him and the International Team on the trip to North Carolina in several weeks.

That’s a lot of work for the International Captain and what once was already a steep task going up against a favored U.S. Team on their own turf has seemingly gotten even more difficult for Immelman and Co.

Only time will tell what the final makeup of the International Team will look like for this year’s Presidents Cup, and with very little time remaining and a significantly difficult task at hand for the International Captain, one certainly has to feel for Trevor Immelman.