The next two Presidents Cups? Here’s where they’ll be held

In the beginning, the Presidents Cup pressed repeat.

For its first two editions, in 1994 and 1996, the Ryder Cup-style competition pitting the United States against the world (minus the UK, Ireland and continental Europe) was played at the same course: Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, in Gainesville, VA, a venue chosen largely for its proximity to the nation’s capital. The event, after all, was called the Presidents Cup, with Gerald Ford as its honorary chairman. It made sense to keep things close to Washington, D.C.

In those early goings, the PGA Tour, which created the event, had no plans to take it overseas at all. Not until it had gathered momentum — with the stirrings of a fan base and sponsor interest — did the competition settle into its current rhythm, shifting back and forth, every two years, between the U.S. and overseas (it was postponed in 2001 by the attacks of Sept. 11, and then again in 2020 by the pandemic). In 1998, the biennial battle moved to Australia; Royal Melbourne Golf Club was the stage.

In the years since, the Presidents Cup has gone back to the well more than once. It returned to Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in 2000 and then again in 2005. It has also double-dipped at Royal Melbourne (2011 and 2019) and Royal Montreal Golf Club (2007 and 2024). This year’s edition wraps up today, with Sunday singles at Medinah No. 3 in the Chicago suburbs deciding whether the U.S. extends its stranglehold on the event or the International team pulls off its second win in 16 tries.

Like the team rosters, Presidents Cup venues have grown more diverse. In the first two playings, the International team had no players from Canada or Korea; on this year’s roster, it has four. And now the event is set to broaden its horizons further: in its next two iterations, it will visit two courses for the first time. Here’s what to look for in 2028 and 2030.

Kingston Heath, Melbourne, Australia (2028)

The 2028 Presidents Cup heads back to Australia’s Sandbelt — just not to Royal Melbourne. Kingston Heath, a few minutes down the road, will get its turn, marking the event’s fourth visit to Melbourne overall, tying Gainesville for the most Cups hosted by a single city.

Kingston Heath has been a fixture of Australian golf for a century, hosting seven Australian Opens and multiple Australian Masters, most recently in 2012, when Adam Scott — a potential International captain for 2028 — won on his home Sandbelt turf. But its reputation among architecture buffs rests less on trophies than on land. Dan Soutar laid out the course in the 1920s, and Alister MacKenzie, fresh off his work at Royal Melbourne, refined the bunkering in 1926, with construction led by the legendary green-keeper Mick Morcom. Together they turned a modest, largely flat piece of sandy ground into one of the most studied routings in golf, and one of its most compelling tests.

Bellerive, St. Louis, MO (2030)

Two years later, the Cup returns to St. Louis and Bellerive Country Club, a course with a big-event pedigree: the 1965 U.S. Open (Gary Player’s career Grand Slam, on the youngest course ever to host one), the 1992 PGA Championship (Nick Price’s first major), the inaugural U.S. Mid-Amateur in 1981, and, most recently, the 2018 PGA Championship, won by Brooks Koepka.

The club itself traces to 1897, but the course the Presidents Cup will play dates to 1960, when Robert Trent Jones Sr. was brought in to design an entirely new 18 holes on land west of the city — a muscular, bunker-heavy layout nicknamed the “Green Monster of Ladue.” His son, Rees Jones, gave it a $9.5 million overhaul in 2005-06, rebuilding bunkers, tightening fairways and adding water on the second hole. The result is a brawny championship course,  and the fifth different U.S. venue to host the Presidents Cup.