A three-time International Team representative and an Assistant Captain in the past four Presidents Cups, Ogilvy has been handed the reins for the 2026 matches to be played at Medinah Country Club in Chicago from September 24-27, 2026.

Ogilvy was only just beginning to make his way as a professional when Thomson led the International Team to a dominant victory at The Royal Melbourne Golf Club in 1998.

With the exception of the tied matches in South Africa in 2003, the star-studded American team has won all 11 Presidents Cups since, Ogilvy looking to sprinkle some ‘Thommo’ magic into a team that continues to grow in identity.

As two major champions who both played out of The Victoria Golf Club, Thomson took a keen interest in Ogilvy’s early development in the professional game.

Some 30 years on, Ogilvy wants to meld some Thomson methodology with modern data analytics to break the US stranglehold.

“He just had a way of making the complicated so simple,” said Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion.

“He used to wonder why I made it so complicated. ‘Tee the ball up Geoff and hit it that way. It’s not that hard.’

“When you’re 19 and 20, it’s too simplistic. It is hard to hear that. But now I think back and I’m like, well, 30 years later, he was right. He was spot on. Why am I making it so complicated?

“He was the one captain that we’ve ever had on this team that’s made the job look pretty simple. And he did it with typical ‘Thommo’ class.

“He didn’t make it too complicated and they just went and smashed them.

“An amazing guy. I feel very privileged and lucky that I got to spend a bit of time with him.”

While Thomson (pictured) espoused keeping it simple decades before it became a popular acronym, Ogilvy acknowledges that he can’t purely go on gut instinct.

South African great Ernie Els leant heavily on data analytics as he very nearly engineered an Internationals victory at Royal Melbourne in 2019 and it will be an element Ogilvy uses in the lead-up to the 2026 matches.

“It’s the way the world is now, and you can go either way with that world these days,” said Ogilvy of data analysis.

“It’s easy to get lost in the weeds and the numbers sometimes, but you’re not turning over every stone if you don’t at least have a look at that side of things.

“You’ve got to approach it with, ‘How can I use analytics to make this simpler rather than make it more complicated?’

“You see that with great coaches of footy and of anything, they make the complicated simple.

“We’ll be using it, but I’ll be certainly doing my utmost to not get lost in the weeds.”

A long-time favourite to lead the Internationals when the Presidents Cup returns to the Melbourne Sandbelt that he knows so well in 2028, Ogilvy is refusing to look beyond his first assignment as Team Captain.

“We just want to win this one and then we’ll circle back and see about Kingston Heath,” added Ogilvy, whose course design firm, OCM (Ogilvy, Cocking, Mead), recently completed a redesign of Medinah’s No.3 course that will host the Presidents Cup.

“Maybe if I win, I get another go. Maybe if I lose, I don’t get another go.

“We’re just focused on this one. Let’s start winning this thing first and then we’ll get to Kingston Heath.”