Patrick Cantlay arrives at Medinah carrying two reputations. One is one of the most dependable American team golfers the team has produced this decade. The other is the man who takes forever over the golf ball, a habit that has followed him through the Masters, Ryder Cups, and now once again a Presidents Cup build-up. That double-edged reputation was the focus of Trey Wingo’s golf podcast, but the veteran broadcaster did not hold back, humorously calling out Cantlay’s slow play.
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“The Cantlay thing is interesting on a bunch of levels because, and I want to make sure I do this comparison correctly, there are guys that when, let’s say, you’re playing baseball or basketball or football, when they’re on the other team, you hate them. But when they’re on your team, you kind of love them.
“I think Cantlay brings a little bit of that to the equation. Look, it’s been shown and played out a hundred million times. He takes forever over the golf ball. You know, someone once compared Brian Harmon’s pre-shot routine versus Patrick Cantlay’s, and Harmon did it in like 13 seconds quicker. And Brian Harmon is not quick over the golf ball. How much of that, I mean, and again, you have to put this in the proper context; it can be irritating. And I think the idea that someone who is on some level an irritant is a really good thing to have on your team.”
Justin Ray, who co-hosts the show and works as a stat analyst for the 15th Club, backed Trey’s point with an amusing comparison of his own. He linked Cantlay to Patrick Beverley and Dillon Brooks in the NBA, players fans love on their own team but can’t stand on another. “There’s a little bit of that maybe with Cantlay. When he’s on your side, we absolutely love him.”
The conversation reopens as Cantlay is one of Brandt Snedeker’s six captain’s picks for the 2026 U.S. team. He will be joining Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas, Jacob Bridgeman, Chris Gotterup, and Jackson Koivun for the September 24-27 event at Medinah Country Club. Notably, it will be his fourth Presidents Cup, and he arrives with a 10-4-0 record in the competition, most of it built alongside Schauffele. The duo already shared a 4-1-0 foursomes mark, unmatched by any other American pairing.
That being said, Wingo makes the sharp observation that he has followed Cantlay’s team event career for years. It’s also part of why his slow play resurfacing ahead of another team event lands as more than a passing gripe.
The slow-play reputation itself goes back to 2023. At that year’s Masters, the slow-play reputation became a national talking point when Cantlay shared the penultimate pairing with Viktor Hovland on Sunday. Brooks Koepka was playing behind in the final group with eventual champion Jon Rahm, who called the pairing “brutally slow” afterward. Hovland appeared restless, chipping onto the green while Cantlay was still deliberating in the fairway. That week is generally regarded as the moment his pace of play turned from a minor quirk into a running storyline.
Cantlay, of course, has repeatedly defended himself, mentioning course setups and hole locations as the problem. But the criticism never really faded away. At the 2025 Tour Championship, officials put Cantlay’s final group on the clock over the back nine at East Lake, and clips of his lengthy waggle routine went viral again. Golf coach Claude Harmon III said on his own podcast that he didn’t understand “what the hell is going on,” while Phil Mickelson took a dig at the routine. On the other hand, PGA Tour pro Michael Kim defended Cantlay directly, saying he takes no practice swing and is “nowhere close to being the slowest guy out there.”
That aside, the pace issue has followed him to team events as well. At Royal Montreal in 2024, Cantlay and Schauffele played a marathon foursomes match against Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim that stretched into near darkness—twelve hours into the day. Even fans needled Cantlay over his “notoriously deliberate play.” Yet Cantlay answered by draining a 19-foot birdie on 18 to win it.
The moment that summed up exactly what Wingo is describing. Slow play makes Cantlay easy to nettle, but it has never stopped him from being one of the most productive players the team has had in years.