Absolut Cup 2026 · Seaview · September 16–18
The Twelve
Ten of them played the last one. One missed it and has since changed colours. One has not been seen since Mississippi. And the man they all got measured against sits at the bottom of the page, on sabbatical. One year on the left of every card, five on the right — and every figure on this page is counted, not predicted.
Team Grit
Champions · 511 The bigger the hole got, the more they took.ZC
Chain Reaction
Four holes of the Friday Duel went by with nobody able to win one. Thirty points were stacked on the eleventh tee. Z and Spence took every one of them, then took the next two holes as well — a six-point deficit became a fifty-four-point lead.
He opened the week playing a match on his own, because his partner wasn’t there, and still finished joint-best in the field on the greens.
Nobody on this trip improved more. Seventy-five per cent last year against forty-seven across the five before it — a twenty-eight point jump, the biggest of the twelve. Best man on the Bay, best in the shamble.
- Pairs with Boxcar
- Bay Course
- Biggest riser of 2025
Dave
One-Man Franchise
Four of his six matches came without a partner and he won three of them against full pairs, including a 23 to 6 — the heaviest scoreline of the entire tournament.
Thirty per cent of everything Grit scored came off his card, and the five years behind it say the solo run was never the whole story: ten wins and five losses with ten different partners.
The only man in the field who landed exactly on his own five-year rate — sixty-seven per cent then, sixty-seven now. Four straight seasons of 101, 94, 94 and 100. In September the seat beside him is filled again.
- 30% of Grit’s points
- Wins in every format
- Thursday afternoon
Spence
The Last Call
Stood beside Z for the thirty-point break on the eleventh and both holes that followed it. Won his Thursday match 22.5 to 5.5, the second-heaviest result of the week.
On Thursday morning he scored 2.50 points a hole — the joint-highest session anybody managed in the whole tournament, on either team and in any format. Ten wins and five losses since 2020 is the joint-best record on the trip.
Sixty-seven per cent since 2020 is the joint-best figure on the trip, and nothing about last year changed that. He is a Bay Course player and it is not close: 2.28 a hole there against 1.46 on the Pines.
- Joint-best since 2020
- Bay Course
- Thursday morning
Boxcar
No Warning
Nobody had him near the top of the board and he finished fifth of eleven on points last year — above his own captain, above two men ranked in the top three.
He was one of the three men who won the championship 4v4 against Glory’s full four, including the back-to-back hole-outs on the fifth and sixth that swung forty-eight points inside twenty minutes.
Up fifteen points on his five-year rate, the fourth-biggest rise in the field. The scramble is his format and his best number arrived on the biggest afternoon of the week. Alongside Z he posted the best pairing figure of 2025.
- Pairs with Z
- Friday scramble
- Pines Course
SpikeC
First Spark
Spike won one match in 2025. It happened to be the championship 4v4 — three men against four, worth six times points, and the single biggest match this tournament has ever staged. If you are only going to win one, win that one.
He also halved with Z in a match so tight that changing any single hole, either the hole or the putts, would have changed the result.
A captain with something to prove and a real format edge. The scramble was worth substantially more to him than anything else he played, and he has already won on the biggest stage this trip offers, short-handed.
- Friday scramble
- Pines Course
- The big match
Skip
The Wild Card
The newest man on the tour is also one of the oldest names on it. Skip was at Widener with Boxcar, Spence and Foose, and played the Mississippi stop more than twenty years ago — then vanished. No record since. No film. Nobody knows what his swing looks like now.
Four Grit men know the man, though. Spence, Boxcar, Z and Spike went and got him. Vouching was the easy part. Now they stand next to him.
First tee since the Mississippi stop. Twenty years without being scouted is a real edge for about three holes; after that the card decides. Wednesday’s shamble is the soft landing — a free drive off the best ball, and a partner who has seen everything.
- First Cup
- Widener
- No film on him
Team Glory
Challengers · 412 The bigger the hole got, the more it cost them.Babar
Opening Statement
The best record of any man on either team last year, and the most tour points anybody has ever banked here. He leads the all-time list by two and a quarter — five years of golf, and the top of the table is closer than a single hole.
He beat a solo Z on Wednesday, then a solo Dave on Thursday with a three-hole carry on the eighth that settled it.
Up eighteen points on his five-year rate. He wins with whoever he is handed, and he is two for two alongside Tribe — the strongest pairing on Glory’s books, and the obvious way to open the week.
- Pairs with Tribe
- Wednesday
- Top of the all-time list
LarryC
The Hinge
Took Dave and Boxcar apart 20.5 to 8.5 on Wednesday morning, then lost to a solo Dave on the very next nine that same afternoon. This trip has a sense of humour.
He carried a bigger share of Glory’s points than any other man on the roster, beat a solo Dave on Thursday alongside Babar, and finished the week at fifty per cent against a five-year rate of thirty.
The steadiest player on the trip — year to year his output varies less than half as much as anyone else’s. The back nine of Thursday is his ground: 2.69 points a hole, the highest session figure any man has ever posted here.
- Thursday back nine
- Steadiest on tour
- Highest session ever
Keith
Unfinished Business
The last real shot of the 2025 Cup came off Keith’s club. Standing on the eighteenth of the championship match with eighty-four points on the hole, his approach set up Glory’s look to take every one of them.
Earlier in the week he and Foose blew the doors off Spike and Spence, 19.5 to 7.5, sealed by a three-hole carry on the seventh that turned a tight match into a rout.
Third-best man in the field on the greens last year, and level at fifty per cent across the five before it. The morning is his ground — he was better before lunch than after it in every format he played.
- Pairs with Foose
- Thursday morning
- The eighteenth
TribeC
The Squall
Tribe opened the 2025 Cup by beating a solo Z alongside Babar, and scored a clean 2.00 a hole doing it — a Wednesday figure matched by only one other man in the field.
He was also in the squad that landed the biggest hole of the entire tournament: forty-eight points on the eighth of the championship match, taking the hole and the putts at the same time.
Sixty per cent since 2020 is fourth-best on the trip, so last year sits below his own standard. The clearest course signal on either roster — 1.63 a hole on the Pines, and Wednesday opens on the Pines.
- Pairs with Babar
- Pines Course
- Wednesday opener
Foose
The Anvil
Foose started the Cup on the right end of a 19.5–7.5 with Keith, then spent the middle of the week finding out what a solo Dave looks like from the wrong end of it.
When it mattered he was still swinging: in the Duel, with the match already gone and nothing left to save, he and Larry answered on the fifteenth and again on the seventeenth, fifteen points apiece.
Fifty-three per cent across 2020–24 puts him in the upper half of the trip, so last October reads as the outlier rather than the rule. Put him back with Keith and out on the Pines, where both of his best numbers live.
- Pairs with Keith
- Wednesday
- Answers late
Mad Dog
The Reckoning
He missed the whole thing. His empty seat is why Dave played four matches alone, why Z opened the week on his own, and why the championship match was three against four. Grit won the Cup anyway. This year he lines up on the other side of it.
Five years of Grit know exactly what he does, which is a different problem from not knowing at all. Glory get the man Grit spent all of last October missing.
Nobody has had to play against him in this format, and this time it is Grit who find out first. They find out on Friday, which five years of evidence say is exactly where he does his best work.
- Switched sides
- Friday closer
- Never played a Cup
On sabbatical
Returns 2027 The man every other card on this page was measured against.UScotland
The Measuring Stick
For five years U was the number every other man on this page got measured against — the highest scoring rate anybody has sustained on this trip, and a seventy per cent record nobody in the field can touch.
Then last October it was not there. Two wins from six, and nothing at Seaview to explain it. His putting was fine, so whatever went missing went missing a long way from New Jersey.
Out looking for it. The old links, six centuries of ground to cover, and a caddie promoted to sherpa for the duration. Somewhere out there is a swing with his name on it. He comes home with it or he does not come home.
- On expedition · Scotland
- Best record since 2020
- Returns in 2027
Where the numbers come from. The 2025 figures were produced by replaying the tournament hole by hole from the scoring record; all seventeen matches reproduce their recorded final scores exactly. Share of team points splits each match evenly between the men who played that side and adds to one hundred per cent across a roster. Friday’s multipliers are removed throughout, so nobody is flattered by which match he happened to draw.
On the greens is 2025 only. One of the three points on every hole goes to whoever wins the putts, so an even share is 0.50, and the strip shows where a man landed against that line. There is no earlier version of this figure: before 2025 the scoring recorded match totals only, never the split between the hole and the putts. It also measures who won the putts rather than how many putts a man took — individual putt counts start this September.
2020–24 covers Wednesday and Thursday only. Friday pairings were never logged in those years. Each man played fifteen recorded matches across the five seasons, so the win rates are directly comparable.
A word on the form book. 2025 was one tournament, on a format this trip had never played before. One week does not overturn five years — which is exactly why both columns are here.