THE MODERATOR: Captain Geoff, we'll just start with you. Just maybe a couple of comments on the day and the entire event this week, and then we'll just jump straight into questions.
GEOFF OGILVY: Obviously pretty disappointed. We had a pretty good Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We put ourselves in a really good position today. I thought we had some pretty good matchups out there, and I thought we did all that stuff pretty well.
It was just one of those days; it just felt like it was sort of right on a knife edge for a massive part of the day. If you hole a couple of putts at the right time and get a bit more yellow on the board at the right time, the momentum, and the crowd sort of stays out of it a little bit. Just sort of started drifting away for us in the last few hours.
Pretty disappointed, but pretty impressed with this group of guys. They were pretty committed to this this week. They all put in. The spirit in the room is great. The energy is amazing. They're all incredibly motivated to come back in '28 and do it again. We gave it a good crack. We nearly got there, but pretty disappointed for sure.
Q. Geoff, your team put up a great effort. Does that make you feel better about it or worse? Moral victories tend to feel halfway good, halfway not. What's your overriding emotion from all this?
GEOFF OGILVY: Look, the effort makes me really happy as a captain. They did an amazing job this week. It was incredible. It doesn't make it any less disappointing. Proud to be a captain, disappointed that it didn't go their way. They wanted it, and they did everything they could to win this tournament this week.
We tried to put them in the best position possible. Clearly we'll go back to -- we'll have a debrief at some point in the next month and see if we can keep polishing the way we go about this. I felt like we did a pretty good job of this tournament. A few putts here and there in the middle of the day, like I say, and the momentum goes back our way. Could have made a bit of history with that.
We'll keep trying. It's a hard thing to do to beat the U.S. Team in singles in the U.S. We gave it a pretty good crack.
Q. Geoff, along those lines, what would you tell your team to hang onto that you learned this week that's good that you can use in two years, and what would you tell them to forget about and just put in the past from this week?
GEOFF OGILVY: Look, to be proud of themselves. I saw some unbelievable golf under pressure this week. Yesterday especially was getting sort of -- the momentum was all going the wrong way the front nine of the first session yesterday, and we turned it around and got something out of that session. The same thing in the afternoon; we turned it around and got something out of that session.
We played the back nine really, really well. We finished off matches really well. Just be proud of themselves. And to pull the belief out of all the great shots that they hit this week under pressure, this is a really difficult thing to do, to play in an environment like this in a team event.
You guys have been told this by the players who play in these for a long time, but this is -- you've never had your hands feel like that. You've never had your body feel so different. This is a challenging thing to do, and I think they did an amazing job.
Take the positives out of all the great shots they hit and the points that they won and help you on with your career. Put your head down and say, look, in 2028 I want to make this International Team, and I want to win this tournament.
Q. Adam, been through this a bunch obviously over the years. Just curious your overall thoughts on how this week stacked up and your own personal play and sort of what you take away from it.
ADAM SCOTT: Well, the week stepped up really good, and we've had a tough day today. From my experiences, the environment is definitely getting tougher to play, and this was a tougher environment. There are no excuses, but we've got to learn from that and be ready for it.
I think as I look at the group on the whole, all these guys are going to be much better players in two years. So I like where it's going for the International Team.
The American Team, it's a tough lineup. For me, playing for the week, I think I played okay, but okay doesn't win a lot of points against an American team.
Q. Geoff, in 2022 - I'm going to read this quote - Trevor said, this team is no joke, and I'm sick and tired of it being spoken of as a joke. What does this week say about the International Team?
GEOFF OGILVY: Well, Trevor said it pretty well in 2022, I think. This is an incredible group of people, and it's not just the players here, it's -- the International Team is a very big group of people, and they're very passionate about this team. They love the shield. They love this -- they love everything about this tournament and this team.
Trevor's right; this team is no joke. We're coming, and when we crack this thing, it's going to get really good.
Q. Nico, I wonder if you could share your thoughts on what happened on 14 and what Scottie said to you with having you pick up your ball there by the green.
NICO ECHAVARRIA: Someone yelled on my backswing. It didn't happen just once. It was a tough environment. Yeah, it's unfortunate that in some way the crowds can affect performance like that. But we have the No. 1 player in the world who's a class act. I wasn't expecting for him to give me that putt for par, and he did, and we tied the hole.
It was just unfortunate, a couple things here and there.
Q. Si Woo, can you talk about playing against Jackson Koivun today and maybe what impressed you about him?
SI WOO KIM: I think he's just a really great player. As a rookie this year, he played really great. I feel like he'd never was under pressure pretty much every hole, even the last few holes. I think he's just a really good player and that he played great.
Q. Geoff, obviously Tom couldn't be around for the end, but just capped off an absolute helluva week. What did he mean to this team this week and for future cups as well?
GEOFF OGILVY: Tom's a fantastic player. The Kims make an incredible pair. They're fun to watch. They bring so much energy to this team. And they're very reliable, and they win us a lot of points. As I said, they just bring so much to this team. They're great. We love having them on our side.
Q. Geoff or even Trevor, if you want to take it, we've gone over 10, 20 years of one-sided cheering to now cheering/cheering for unfortunate shots. Do we ever get back to the other? What would you want or expect from a crowd at Kingston Heath?
GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know if we ever get back to the other. Hopefully we do. I think for the most part out there it was great. They took a while to warm their voice, Chicago, but they got there today.
Look, I wasn't -- I can only be in one place at one time. I thought they should be yelling for their team. They shouldn't be yelling in swings. I didn't hear too much of that, but I'm sure it happened. It sounds like it's happened a little bit.
I don't know, I would hope -- Melbourne are great sports fans. Chicago are great sports fans. Melbourne are great sports fans.
Look, when you've got a national team or your team, gaining momentum on a day like that and you've got this many people and you're hearing cheers everywhere, it's sort of contagious. It grows and it builds. That's just the nature of being crowds.
So I would hope that we wouldn't have any stories like Nico's in Australia, but you can't guarantee anything. Like I said, momentum of a crowd when they get excited. They should get excited; their home team was turning it around.
Q. Was the strategy to back-load the lineup for the singles today, or was it something that developed along the way?
GEOFF OGILVY: We come up with -- yes and no. No, but we see it how it plays out, and we deal with it along the way. You know what I mean?
Q. Were you surprised at all that Brandt put out Scottie first rather than matching against one of your guys?
GEOFF OGILVY: No, not really. Brandt's lineup came out pretty close to what we sort of guessed. He ran with -- yeah, he had to front-load. Like, he had to do that. There wasn't a whole lot of surprises there.
Q. Adam, I know this is very fresh, but I'm just curious if in your head you already have thoughts about whether you'd like to play in Australia or be a captain?
ADAM SCOTT: I don't know. It's a long way away. Sounds like a lot of work (laughter).
Yeah, I don't know. It's a long way away. We'll see if I'm -- if I can contribute to the team in any way, I'll do whatever for this team.
Q. Geoff, your counterpart this week, Brandt, shared some vulnerable thoughts about mistakes he felt he was making. It seemed like it was causing him a great deal of stress. You just completed a captaincy, which is more than just a one-week thing. What's the most stressful part about it, something that we will never do? What was atop that list of stresses?
GEOFF OGILVY: This part's not all that fun. Not this place in general; you know I like it in here, but this result today is not a whole lot of fun.
Look, it's been an amazing journey. The amount of work that goes into this in the background is a lot. Being out of control out on the golf course, it's always harder to watch people play golf than it is to actually play golf, believe it or not, at least on your stress levels. Yeah, being out of control.
Once they hit off the first tee, it's like, I'm just going to watch and we can get some messages around and there's a whole bunch of stuff we do out on the golf course, but we're not hitting the shots. We're all golfers, so we're control freaks. We like to be hitting the golf shots. But yeah, being out of control, it's tough.
Q. Geoff, as somebody who renovated the golf course, what were your general feelings about it? Did it go the way you thought? Did it play harder than what you thought? Any future -- any thoughts about future events here, majors?
GEOFF OGILVY: That decision is up to Mr. Rolapp out there. It's not like it's got anything to do with me. I think events here in the future would be great. I think it's a fantastic venue for a golf tournament. Aside from the golf course, I think as a venue it's amazing.
Look, the golf course played well, I think. It changed a lot. I don't know if I've ever seen a golf course change more from a Monday to a Sunday. Going back a year or so ago with the Presidents Cup coming here, we were hoping it was going to play firm. We, as in OCM, because that's really the best way to show a golf course is when the ball bounces. Then the angles matter and the way you hit it.
I thought it played great. I'm sure some of these boys might be grumpy with some of the shots they were left with out there, like what are you doing, Captain? No, I thought it was great. I thought that stretch through the middle there, the middle in this routing, 11's a beast, 12's a really fun hole, 13 is a really tough hole. I thought that stretch of 14, 15, 16, I thought it did really well.
The 1st hole, Medinah's 5th hole, the 1st hole this week, that was a pretty good hole for a tournament. I saw some pretty cool drives down there. That must have been a hard swing to make. That's a crazy environment having out-of-bounds on the edge of the fairway.
That would have been quite the pressure shot. No, I thought it did well. Mostly positive stuff. I'm sure they'll be grumping at me tonight. I thought it did really well.
Q. Did you find yourself in that kind of hopeless situation of just being able to watch, doing any math, and how often you did math? There was a time late when there were five matches that were really on edge. How often were you counting scores, or were you?
GEOFF OGILVY: I've been doing math for like 18 months. Yeah, all day. Like it's tough because the phone wasn't reloading. When everyone's using their phone at the same time, it was hard to get the refresh on the thing, but we've got communication around the groups.
One of the tough things about today, I guess as a captain, is the whole leadership group is -- we've only got five of us, and there's 12 players on the course, and you can't be everywhere at once. You kind of want to be everywhere at once. We were checking leaderboards, and I was trying to get my phone to refresh a little bit.
Yeah, I did some -- probably the last two hours I was crunching numbers.
Q. Is this as emotional as you've ever been? Not weeping, but just your range of emotions as you watched it?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, maybe. I used to get pretty emotional in the wrong way when I hit bad shots on the golf course. It's different, though. It's like in a collective like this in such an amazing group of people and it's such a buildup for such a long time, we've had such an amazing week, it's tough at the end like this. I'm sure it would be amazing at the end the other way.
Collective energy inside a group is a very powerful thing, and I think that brings stuff out in you that doesn't happen if you're just playing for yourself.
THE MODERATOR: On behalf of the International Team, we thank you for your coverage this week. Gentlemen, thank you for your time.
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