On Tuesday afternoon, hours before Brandt Snedeker read his six names on Golf Channel, a contract paying $1 if Ryan Gerard plays in the 2026 Presidents Cup traded at 91¢ on Kalshi. By the time the special was over it was worth a penny. The name that replaced him in the market's imagination belongs to a 21-year-old who turned professional after the 2026 U.S. Open: Jackson Koivun, a PGA Tour rookie whose roster contract sat at 26¢ on Friday and closed Tuesday night at 99¢, with more contracts traded than any other golfer on the board. Snedeker's captain's picks did all of that in one broadcast. What they did not do is move the price of the event itself. Team USA still asks 80¢ to win at Medinah Country Club on September 24-27, within a cent of where it sat on August 29, for a side that has not lost a Presidents Cup since 1998. A settled roster and an unmoved price need explaining together, and the busiest contract of Wednesday morning, which was neither USA nor the Internationals, sits at the bottom of the explanation.
The Quick Answer
Kalshi's winner market for the 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah (ticker KXPRESCUP-26) prices Team USA at an 80¢ ask, about an 80% implied chance, with the International side, which Kalshi labels Team World, at 18¢ and a tie at 6¢, on roughly 14,900 contracts of lifetime volume and about 12,000 still open as of Wednesday, September 2. Both 12-man rosters are final. The full roster board that repriced on Tuesday night, both lineups side by side, and the tie contract that out-traded Team USA this week are all below.
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Ten Straight Wins And An 80-Cent Price
The United States has won 13 of the 15 Presidents Cups ever played. The Internationals' only win came in 1998 at Royal Melbourne, the 2003 edition at Fancourt ended in a 17-17 tie that the captains agreed to share, and the U.S. has won every one of the 10 played since. Turn that record into a percentage and a heavy favorite is the only honest starting point. Thirteen wins in 15 editions is 87%, and the run since the tie is 10 for 10.
The market sits below both numbers. An 80¢ ask says the buyers standing behind Team USA want a 25% return on their money by the September 27 settlement, and the sellers filling them believe there is at least a one-in-five chance the Cup does not go to the home side outright. Part of that gap is the tie. A 15-15 finish across the 30 available points would leave the Cup shared rather than won, so Kalshi runs a separate tie contract at a 6¢ ask, and every cent priced into it comes out of the two team contracts. Part of it is simple arithmetic on a young board: the three asks add up to 104¢ and the three bids to 99¢, and the truth sits somewhere between, a mechanic covered in how prediction markets work. And part of it is the same thing the sportsbooks say: Sports Illustrated quoted FanDuel at -400 on the U.S., +350 on the Internationals and +1000 on the tie on September 1, and -400 converts to the same 80% that 80¢ does. Two different kinds of market, priced independently, landed on the same number.
The price, then, is a statement about this specific week and this specific roster, and it leaves the record alone, which is why the roster board was the market that actually moved on Tuesday. All of the week's real volatility lived there. Readers who want the general primer on trading golf on an exchange before diving in can start with how to bet golf on Kalshi; everything below assumes a cent price reads as a probability.
What The Roster Board Did On Tuesday Night
Kalshi's second Presidents Cup market is a 20-golfer board (ticker KXPGACOMPETE-PRESCUP26SEP) where each contract pays $1 if that player competes in the event. It opened in late July, well before the six automatic qualifiers locked in, and on the final weekend it turned into a live poll of who Snedeker would call. Across its 20 markets it has traded about 88,500 contracts, roughly six times the lifetime volume of the winner market, and about 55,300 of those came in the 24 hours through Wednesday afternoon: a single day on the roster board is nearly four times what the winner market has traded in its life. People were far more interested in who would play than in who would win.
Jackson Koivun is the reason. His contract sat at 26¢ on Friday, August 28, and briefly printed as low as 2¢ in the early hours of Saturday morning. On Monday morning, in the hour ending 9 a.m. ET and with no official word from the captain, about 4,900 contracts pushed him from 21¢ to 66¢. He whipsawed all Monday night, trading as high as 84¢ and back down to 32¢ inside the same hour, then climbed through Tuesday: 79¢ by late morning, 88¢ around noon, 92¢ by 5 p.m. ET. The hour ending 6 p.m. ET Tuesday, as the picks landed, put through roughly 14,900 contracts, printed as low as 10¢ on the way, and closed at 98¢. He finished the night at 99¢, carried a 97¢ bid into Wednesday, and sits on about 43,900 contracts of lifetime volume and 30,100 still open, both the largest figures on the board by a wide margin. The last two cents price three weeks of injury and withdrawal risk: the contract pays only if he actually competes, so a buyer at 99¢ is insuring against a late withdrawal. The captain's decision itself is no longer in the price.
Justin Thomas tells the other half of the story: his market printed all over the place before Tuesday afternoon, 63¢, then 99¢, then back to 70¢, on a grand total of about 660 contracts, which is a price with nobody behind it. Then it did almost all of its business at once. A block of 5,000 contracts crossed at 78¢ in the hour ending 3 p.m. ET Tuesday, and the hour the picks came out put through about 23,100 more as the price ran from 94¢ to 99¢. Jacob Bridgeman went from 67¢ on Sunday night to 88¢ on Monday to 99¢ Tuesday. And then there is Gerard. His contract did not trade at all until Tuesday afternoon, opened at 26¢, and in the hour ending 3 p.m. ET printed as high as 91¢ before collapsing to 4¢ inside that same hour. By the time the broadcast ended he was 1¢, and the market had processed about 6,600 contracts on a golfer who was never going to Medinah. Whoever paid 91¢ that afternoon was wrong by three hours' worth of information, and then just wrong. On a board this thin, a price is only as good as the last person who believed it.
The Full Kalshi Roster Board
The table below is every golfer on Kalshi's Presidents Cup roster market, fetched on Wednesday, September 2, at about 2:50 p.m. ET, about a day after both captains announced. Each row is a separate contract that pays $1 if the golfer competes. The bid is what buyers are offering, the ask is what sellers want, and the volume column is lifetime contracts traded in that golfer's market. Cent prices read roughly as implied probabilities, the translation walked through in our guide to Kalshi odds.
| Golfer | Status | Yes Bid | Yes Ask | Contracts Traded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jackson Koivun | Captain's pick | 97¢ | 99¢ | 43,915 |
| Justin Thomas | Captain's pick | 87¢ | 99¢ | 28,806 |
| Ryan Gerard | Not selected | 0¢ | 4¢ | 6,603 |
| Jacob Bridgeman | Captain's pick | 76¢ | 97¢ | 3,325 |
| Ben Griffin | Not selected | 0¢ | 5¢ | 1,631 |
| Akshay Bhatia | Not selected | 0¢ | 10¢ | 1,405 |
| Chris Gotterup | Captain's pick | 99¢ | $1.00 | 796 |
| Patrick Reed | Not selected | 0¢ | 6¢ | 651 |
| Patrick Cantlay | Captain's pick | 75¢ | $1.00 | 300 |
| Russell Henley | Automatic qualifier | 96¢ | $1.00 | 199 |
| Scottie Scheffler | Automatic qualifier | 77¢ | $1.00 | 126 |
| Cameron Young | Automatic qualifier | 60¢ | $1.00 | 125 |
| Sam Burns | Automatic qualifier | 99¢ | $1.00 | 125 |
| Collin Morikawa | Automatic qualifier | 60¢ | $1.00 | 125 |
| Wyndham Clark | Automatic qualifier | 62¢ | $1.00 | 125 |
| Xander Schauffele | Captain's pick | 61¢ | $1.00 | 125 |
| J.J. Spaun | Not selected | 0¢ | 8¢ | 105 |
| Harris English | Not selected | 0¢ | 6¢ | 0 |
| Brooks Koepka | Not selected | 0¢ | 6¢ | 0 |
| Jordan Spieth | Not selected | 0¢ | 4¢ | 0 |
Two things about the table matter more than any single row. First, the six automatic qualifiers, who clinched their spots weeks ago, have traded 125 to 199 contracts apiece; the market never had a question about them, so it never had a reason to trade them, and the 60¢-to-62¢ bids against $1.00 asks on Young, Morikawa and Clark are the look of a settled contract nobody is bothering to quote. Second, the four names Golf.com listed as the players he considered and did not take, Gerard, Griffin, Bhatia and Spaun, are now displayed markets with no bid: all four show 0¢ bid against asks of 4¢ to 10¢, and so do the four other unselected names below them. Nobody is offering to buy those contracts at any price, and the asks only look like probabilities. Griffin's 5¢ ask is a seller waiting for a buyer who is not coming, and it says nothing about the odds of a late call-up.
The row that still moves is Bridgeman. His 76¢ bid against a 97¢ ask on Wednesday is a 21-cent spread on a contract that put through about 1,700 contracts in the last 24 hours, and nobody is bidding anywhere near fair for a pick that, by every reasonable reading of the announcement, is already decided. That costs a buyer nothing: the ask is 97¢ on a contract that should settle at $1, so the wide quote only makes it expensive to get out early. On a thin board, the spread is the position risk, and it is the first thing to check before sizing a golf trade, a habit our Kalshi golf picks page works through on a normal tournament week.
Both 12-Man Rosters At Medinah
Here are the two teams the roster board was pricing, as announced on Tuesday, September 1. The U.S. qualifiers are the top six in the Presidents Cup points standings; the International qualifiers are the top six by world ranking through August 30. Captain's picks are marked.
| Team USA (Brandt Snedeker) | International Team (Geoff Ogilvy) |
|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | Si Woo Kim (South Korea) |
| Cameron Young | Ryan Fox (New Zealand) |
| Wyndham Clark | Hideki Matsuyama (Japan) |
| Russell Henley | Min Woo Lee (Australia) |
| Sam Burns | Tom Kim (South Korea) |
| Collin Morikawa | Adam Scott (Australia) |
| Chris Gotterup (Pick) | Corey Conners (Canada, pick) |
| Xander Schauffele (Pick) | Nico Echavarria (Colombia, pick) |
| Justin Thomas (Pick) | Sungjae Im (South Korea, pick) |
| Patrick Cantlay (Pick) | Ryo Hisatsune (Japan, pick) |
| Jacob Bridgeman (Pick) | Nick Taylor (Canada, pick) |
| Jackson Koivun (Pick) | Christiaan Bezuidenhout (South Africa, pick) |
The three veterans among Snedeker's six picks are what the 80¢ price is really built on. Per the PGA Tour's own announcement, Schauffele carries a 10-4-0 Presidents Cup record and has never lost a singles match, Thomas is 10-3-2 with a perfect 6-0-0 in four-ball, and Cantlay is 10-4-0. Those three alone have banked 30 wins in this event. Gotterup, seventh in the standings with three wins this season, was the highest-ranked American who did not qualify on his own, and the closest thing to an automatic pick who needed picking. Bridgeman is the outlier in the golf-stats sense: the PGA Tour notes he led the Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting this season, and in a format where every one of the 30 points is decided by match play, a player who takes strokes from the field on the greens is exactly the kind of partner a captain wants in the alternate-shot sessions. And then Koivun: 48th in the U.S. standings, 66th in the world, the youngest American on a Presidents Cup team since Jordan Spieth in 2013, and the owner of a 3M Open win in his third professional start in which he beat Scheffler. Snedeker's explanation, per Golf.com: "Jackson, what he did at 3M, what he has proven in his amateur career, what he brings to the table is something that we wanted to take a hard look at."
The roster board also measured how much information those six picks actually carried. Gotterup, Schauffele and Cantlay traded between 125 and 796 contracts apiece across the whole life of the market, the volume of a question nobody needed to ask. Koivun, Thomas and Bridgeman traded about 76,000 between them. Traders had a live question about three of Snedeker's six names, answered all three on Tuesday, and the winner price did not move for any of them.
Ogilvy's side is the one the market is discounting, and it never even got a poll: all 20 contracts on Kalshi's roster board are American golfers, so the 18¢ on the Internationals was set without a single traded opinion on who Ogilvy would pick. The roster itself shows why the discount is there. His six picks split three veterans and three debutants by Yahoo's count, and Jason Day, who sat 11th in the International standings, was the highest-ranked player he left home. The two Canadians, Conners and Taylor, were his first two calls, and Adam Scott, at 46, qualified on his own. Ogilvy's is a roster with real experience at the top and a long tail of players making their first appearance, and 18¢ is what the market charges for the possibility that the tail plays over its head for four days.
Medinah itself is not neutral in the memory of American team golf. Course No. 3 was set up at 7,657 yards for the 2012 Ryder Cup, the U.S. led 10-6 after Saturday, and Europe won 14½-13½ in what is still called the Miracle at Medinah. Those matches were the last time a U.S. team competition was decided on this property, and a reminder that a heavy favorite on a Sunday morning is still a favorite that has to close. On an exchange that history is also a mechanic: an 80¢ contract is a position that can be sold at 95¢ on Saturday night if the U.S. leads big, rather than a ticket that has to survive Sunday.
The Winner Market: USA, World, Or A Tie
The market that did not move is the winner board, fetched on Wednesday, September 2, at about 2:50 p.m. ET. The three contracts settle once the outcome is official on Sunday, September 27, and only one of them pays.
| Outcome | Yes Bid | Yes Ask | Contracts Traded | Open Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team USA | 79¢ | 80¢ | 3,269 | 2,921 |
| Team World | 15¢ | 18¢ | 5,651 | 4,147 |
| Tie | 5¢ | 6¢ | 5,970 | 4,952 |
Read the price column and the board is a heavy favorite and two afterthoughts. Read the volume column and the favorite is the least-traded contract of the three. The favorite has put through about 3,300 contracts lifetime and only 108 in the last 24 hours, and its price has stayed between 79¢ and 81¢ on every print since August 29. The Internationals have traded almost twice as much, including about 1,280 contracts in a single hour on Tuesday afternoon at 19¢ as the picks approached. And the tie contract, which pays only if 30 points split exactly 15-15, is now the most-traded market on the board: about 4,850 contracts crossed at 6¢ in the hour ending 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday, which is more than Team USA has traded in its entire life. About 4,500 contracts of new open interest were created at 6¢ in that hour, and the tape cannot say who started it. Someone bought a shared Cup at roughly 16-to-1 the morning after the rosters were set, and someone else was happy to write it at that price. The interesting part is that the tie found a two-sided market at all.
The flow has a reason behind it, even if nobody should mistake it for a forecast. The tie has its own precedent, the 17-17 draw of 2003, and it is the one outcome the historical 87% win rate has nothing to say about. Before fees, a $100 position in the tie contract at 6¢ turns into about $1,667 if Medinah ends level, and nothing if either side wins. At 18¢, $100 in Team World becomes about $556. At 80¢, $100 in Team USA becomes $125. The fee-adjusted version of the same arithmetic is worked below. Whoever bought the longest of those three payouts, on the outcome the record says has happened once in 15 tries, and whoever sold it to them, produced the most interesting order flow of the week. The 2003 precedent is the one piece of history that matters again on September 27.
Worked Example: What An 80-Cent Team USA Contract Pays
Say you agree with the record and take the favorite at the ask. One hundred yes contracts on Team USA at 80¢ cost $80.00, plus Kalshi's trading fee of 0.07 × contracts × price × (1 − price), which at this price works out to $1.12, for $81.12 all-in. If the U.S. wins outright, the position settles at $100, a profit of $18.88, or a return of about 23% by the time the singles settle on September 27. If the Internationals win, or if the match ties at 15-15, the contract settles at zero. The full fee schedule, including why an 80¢ contract pays less in fees than a 50¢ one, is on our Kalshi fees page.
The same arithmetic on the other side: 100 contracts on Team World at 18¢ cost $18.00 plus about $1.04 in fees, $19.04 all-in, and pay $100 if the Internationals win their second Presidents Cup ever. After fees, that is the exchange version of a roughly 4.25-to-1 payout, and it is worth holding against the sportsbook number before committing to either venue. FanDuel's +350 on the Internationals converts to a 22% implied chance on its face, four points above what 18¢ implies, but the raw numbers are not on the same footing. FanDuel's three-way book, -400, +350 and +1000, adds up to about 111%, an 11-point hold, while Kalshi's three asks add up to 104%. Strip the margin out of both and the Internationals come out near 20% at the book against roughly 17% on the exchange: a smaller gap than the raw prices suggest, in the direction a lower-margin venue should sit, and it means 18¢ on the exchange beats +350 at the book for anyone backing the underdog. Such a comparison is what our live odds screen is built for: it lines up golf prices across every major sportsbook so an exchange quote gets judged against the consensus instead of floating on its own, and the implied-probability math behind the strip-out is the tiebreaker whenever two venues disagree.
Two mechanics separate this from a futures ticket at a book. Kalshi is an exchange, not a sportsbook, so nothing is locked: if the U.S. leads 8-2 after Friday and the price runs to 95¢, a holder can sell before a single singles match tees off and keep the difference, which is exactly the trade that 2012 at Medinah would have rewarded. And settlement follows the official result, so a shared Cup pays the tie contract and neither team. Kalshi operates as a CFTC-regulated exchange, and where you can legally trade is worth two minutes before a first order.
One honest warning before treating any of these prices as a probability pie: every number above is the ask at the moment we pulled it, on a board that had been open to the public for a little over a day in its final form. The Koivun contract moved 73 cents in four days; the Gerard contract fell from 91¢ to 4¢ inside one hour. Re-run every line of arithmetic above at the price you are actually offered, because this board will not hold still, and we will refresh this page on the same URL as it moves.
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The Read Heading Into Medinah
Step back and the two Kalshi markets are telling two different stories about the same event. The roster board spent a week pricing a question and answered it on Tuesday night, loudly, with Koivun at 99¢ and Gerard at a penny. The winner board never asked one. Team USA was within a cent of 80¢ before the picks, during the picks and the morning after, which means the market had already decided that six captain's picks, whoever they turned out to be, were not going to change whether a team carrying Scottie Scheffler and three 10-win Presidents Cup veterans beats a side making its case with debutants. A 13-1-1 record makes that a defensible read. It is also, at 80¢, a smaller edge over the history than the history itself suggests, and once both margins come out the exchange is even surer of the favorite than the sportsbook, which says the two markets have not finished arguing about how small.
The number to watch between now and September 24 is the tie, and the U.S. price can wait until Thursday's first tee. A contract that was a rounding error before the rosters were set became the busiest market on the board within 15 hours of them being final, and if that flow keeps coming, the 6¢ ask will not survive it. Play begins Thursday, September 24, with 30 points across four days, 15½ to win it outright, and one 21-year-old on the first tee who was a 26¢ contract five days ago.
We gave the St. Jude longshot board the same kind of read during the FedExCup playoffs, and the daily Kalshi picks hub grades a board like this one every morning. For expert angles on the sports OddsShopper covers every day, including golf when the calendar cooperates, start with the free expert picks hub.
