PGA Tour: Presidents Cup: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).As far as one knows at this stage, the Presidents Cup will be unaffected by the US Congress's hostage situation and resultant government shutdown - and that's good news for the 35,000 who will gather at Muirfield Village these next for days, about 20,000 a day, I'd imagine anyway, more than those who rolled up in 1987 expecting to see the Nicklaus-led(?) Americans duff up the hapless Europeans.
 
2).'Course, it didn't turn out quite as some of those spectators expected; the SS Europe got off to a terrible start but within nine holes had righted the ship and never looked back, Captain Jacklin at the helm and outmanoeuvring the Ancient Mariner Nicklaus at every stage, the Master tactician as skilled as the oracle Ben Ainslie would prove to be 26 years later.
 
3).But the Presidents Cup is a different kettle of fish, ruled over by Commissioner Finchem who makes the rules, selects the venues and team captains, and woebetide any International Team Captain who wants to tweak the rules in an effort to make the matches any more than an exhibition. Another reason why PGA Tour takeover of the European Tour would be a catastrophe.
 
4).What goes around comes around and we're back at Jack's Place for the second time this year (why does Ohio get so many Tour events?) and Muirfield Village will doubtless look an absolute picture. For spectating I can't think of a better course on the PGA Tour, distinctive and definitive holes starting early on the front nine and with as good a set of risk/reward Par-5's as you'll find anywhere. Nicklaus has added a new back tee on #18 and it will be interesting to see how this underrated finishing hole plays; about the same as when Europeans dominated the Americans there in 1987 I should think.
 
5).The TV coverage of last week's WTF Championship and "Dunhill" was marred by constant interruption advertising Team USA vs the World's Best. Er, not quite, but a reminder to one and all that this will be unarmed combat (in the case of the International Team, disarmed combat) and it's just a year now until Gleneagles.
 
6).None of this week's participants endured the indignity of playing in the aforementioned web.com Championship (tho' plenty of their predecessors on both sides did!), and they missed a fascinating, if not exactly nail-biting climax that the players seemed to understand better than the broadcasters. This was the de facto replacement for Tour Q-School and there were clear winners and losers. I'll mention one batch of losers first as they highlight a facet of these "Finals" that should be changed without delay.
Those who played a full season on the web.com Tour and, say, slogged their way south and north through 25 venues from Chile to Idaho and reached a top ten place on their money-list, found themselves relegated behind guys who just happened to play better this past month. Two poor saps were injured (mentally or physically), couldn't participate, and saw their priority ranking slump to the bottom of the lift-shaft.
That can't be right and surely has to change if these Finals are not to be known as the WTF Championships which conclude the What's The Point regular season.
 
7).Winners:
John Peterson: described in the press rather euphemistically this week as "confident" - a bit like describing Paul Gascoigne as thirsty.
The sometime antagonist of the USGA (hence his absence from the 2011 Walker Cup, etc), flunker of Q-School, hacker during the web.com regular season, hired David Toms's caddie, Scott Gneiser, for the month and turned a year full of wasted opportunities into four straight Top 5 finishes, validating an early career which included:
First Nationwide event as an amateur: 2nd.
First Major: T4 (at Olympic Club)
First Masters: Made cut.
What difference does a caddie make? Perhaps we'll find out starting next week at the Fry's.com as Gneiser has left Toms and joined Peterson; conventional wisdom would suggest, especially for Peterson, an old head to moderate youthful exuberance, but Azinger didn't call David Toms the most aggressive golfer he'd ever played with for nothing. Interesting mix and the results should be explosive.
 
8).Other winners included Tour vet's like Immelman, O'Hair, Durant, Cauley, Barnes, Matteson etc.
And the Legend of Will MacKenzie of whom commentator Craig Perks said on air: "The Tour is a better place with Willie Mac on it". Brilliant ball-striker, eccentric short game, lifetime outdoorsman (which means he spent much of his twenties sleeping in his car in the Montana wilderness), etc, etc.
 
9).While losers included the Aussie "C" Team (Pampling, O'Hern, N.Green, Goggin, Flanagan . . . . . ), Petrovic, sweet-swinging Vaughn Taylor, etc. Rob Karlsson came up two or three shots short and he's one of the biggest losers. Time for a speedy revision of his European Tour status I would think, tho' I see some of his career records have been expunged from the E.T. web-site stats. Fingers crossed for a Stenson-like return to world-class golf.
Alex Cejka and Richard Johnson have some very low priority status on Tour, Greg Owen will carry some "conditional" status (as will Karlsson) and Henrik Norlander must resign himself to a year's web.com action.
 
10).The biggest European winner is Russell Knox who described himself as feeling "Tour ready" in a post-round interview on Friday. The pasty-faced Invernesser (that sounds a bit rude, what are Inverness people called?) is one of the best ball-strikers, with his driving and iron play up among the leaders on any Tour, but needs to improve his short game to secure a regular place on Tour and make himself a force on leaderboards.
He gets his chance next week as the 2013/2014 PGA Tour season kicks off in California at the Fry's.com Open, and then off to Las Vegas where he played well last year.
 
Meanwhile, this week is reserved for the Tour's Exhibition Season.

Interesting that the Ryder Cuppers who lost their singles last year pretty much hosed their Pres Cup singles too:
Stricker: Lost
Bradley: Lost
Snedeker: Lost
Mickelson: Lost
Kuchar: Lost
Simpson: AS

Dufner and Zach Johnson may not get much ink, but they prove to be the US's stoutest match-players when the chips are down. Good for them.

Only thing to add to the Presidents Cup result, apart from congrat's to USA, is:
Europe beware: There's a crop of young Americans who are getting some experience at this "Cup" lark.
There's a nucleus of 15 or 16 Americans who we're going to be seeing more and more of.
For better or for worse.
Jury's out right now, but McGinley and his troops had better not be getting complacent.
Please!

A real yawner at the end of the day Sunday. I found this pretty amusing ...

http://digitalmag.globalgolfpost.com/20131007/20131007GAP#&pageSet=15&page=0

Interesting that Nick Price said he'd've favoured the blind batting orders the Ryder Cup uses rather than the, frankly contrived, calcualted match-ups so beloved of American Presidents Cup Captains.
And: Why would Woods ask Freddie to match him up against Richard Sterne, which apparently he did?

Not to be outdone, bleating Greg Norman wondering why he wasn't more involved. Based on what Greg? ... Your outstanding work at Royal Melbourne? http://msn.foxsports.com/golf/story/greg-norman-2013-presidents-cup-not-international-captain-rolex-omega-speculation-093013

Just the confidence booster we needed before invading Gleneagles next year.........

Watching the president cup made me think about how important the fact that European golfers are a tight knit lot and are always followed by about 10,000 stauch, superb fans when they invade the USA........

International team are a bunch of individuals from diffent parts of the World....and it's not the same for a fan who has a EUROPEAN identity..Hence the lack of support..

Probably don't hate the States like you lot do......either !!

Adrenalin rush can't be the same for the players.........

Probably why they get slaughtered so often.........

Merkins love the prez - shooting fish in a barrel. Like invading cavemen... (and barely winning!!!)

TRUSSMAN,
Wonderful win for the USA, well done!!!! (Use tongue-in-cheek smiley.)

Bet those seven or eight Aussie "Fanatics" are utterly bereft!

Read in the coverage of the Singapore GP that 8,000 of the crowd had flown out from London - not sure how true that is but your inference that there's no sense of rivalry for the Pres Cup is spot on.

But you also suggest a warning sign for Europe, the flashing yellow light which says "European golfers are a tight knit lot". I think we're in danger of losing that, especially with the English/Irish Floridian wannabes. Much less sense of hunger from the Harrington/Westwood elder statesmen all the way thru Donald, Casey, McDowell, Poulter, Rose, McIlroy. If we don't recapture that underdog, tight knit mentality, we could find a re-energised US Team taking us by surprise at Gleneagles - all the signs are there as they've mostly played like a bunch of tourists this year, not the competitive, motivated crew that left the British Isles behind.

Personally, i'd like to see (every 2 years) a proper World Cup, with all the top nations competing.
 
Let countries qualify based on the World rankings of their (say) Top 6 players. Play for 4 days and have (say) 15 countries competing - teams of 6.
 
On Thursday, let all 6 players stroke play with the Top 4 scores to count - at the end of the day, eliminate 7 teams.
 
On Friday, with the 8 remaining teams, play 4 quarter finals - 3 foursomes in the mornings and 6 singles in the afternoon.
 
On Saturday & Sunday play the same format with semis and a Final.
 
The winner of that event could call themselves the worlds best golfing nation.
 
If this means scrapping the Ryder Cup/Presidents Cup/Seve Trophy/Europe v Asia match, so be it.
 
It's about time We had a propor nation v nation event in golf........how good would a South Africa vs Australia Match, Ireland V England, Spain v USA etc etc

Would be dead against scrapping the Ryder Cup, unless of course O'Grady allowed the E.T. to be acquired by the PGA Tour. The RC works and doesn't need fixing.

But the rest are meaningless competitions, the World Cup completely and wilfully devalued by the PGA Tour. Would be very much in favour of a John Cregan-like World Cup in non-Ryder Cup years, but perhaps insisting on a 4-deep structure is a bit limiting on smaller countries with one or two fine top-level players.

I do,of course, agree that the RC is by far the best of the current team comps.

I get your point about having a team of 4 instead of 6, but with 4, it would limit the event. So be it if having a 6 strong team would take away the chances of countries like France, Wales - that's life & sport - not all of the 15 qualifiers should have a realistic chance of winning a world cup. Teams (of 6) like Australia, SA, Ireland (with Rory & GM !), England, on their day would be more than capable of taking on the US. Spain, Sweden, Korea, Japan would be competitive................

The current status quo where Ryder cup is king is very unfair on the great Aussies and South Africans - who, lets face it are not going to be overly excited about being part of an International Team.

For my own part, the whole "come on Europe" thing doesn't do it for me anymore. If im honest, while i always enjoy the RC, it never matters to me anymore who wins - not like in the 80's/90's when Europe were very much seen as the underdogs.

Ah ha! No Ryan Giggs / Ian Woosnam opportunity then! Fair enough.

Yours is a good idea though, I like it (tho in my book still not at the expense of the RC, if for no other reason than because of the anti-Europe fervour in the States). Sepp Blatter will have to adjudicate on "Ireland"!

kwinigolfer wrote:Sepp Blatter will have to adjudicate on "Ireland"!

Rory could end up with Qatar so!

Interesting idea ... I like it.

If there's a definitive anti-Europe fervor in these United States, it's news to me!

Sr,
Not talking about golf particularly, or even sport, just the way "Europe" is used as a swear word by politicians, especially those inspired by neo-cons, teapartiers etc.


Haven't heard much complaint about the wine, however. Or even the brand that is "Ireland".

Well, the majority voted in President Obama, the majority are for badly-needed health care reform ... I can only hope people don't think the tea-partiers speak for anything close to a majority.

From my armchair research, however, I can tell you an overwhelming majority of those I know would love to spend some of their holiday time in Europe. Me at the top of the list!

But I really like the World Cup idea as laid out here.

Cheers SR,

It's not going to happen though i'm afraid!

"majority voted in Pres Obama"?
Trying telling that to Senator Rafael Cruz. Should be done for treason, right up there with Cheney.

Kwini

It is quite common for some GP's to be "invaded" by fans from other countries when the host nation is not all that into F1. In Spa most people seem to be German or British, in Hungary you get a lot of Fin's, and at the recent Korean race a lot of the fans come from Japan. So I could very well believe the Singapore stat. Although Singapore is one of the most expensive tickets of the year.


As for the Florida europeans harming team spirit I doubt Lee or Poulter will make it onto the team based on current form. As much as we knock the seve trophy (and rightly so) it has showed that we have a strong group of lesser lights in europe.

I team made up of europeans who played in the seve trophy would certainly not have to worry about the current team USA.

Mac,
Fully understand that about F1. My comment was just in regard to Trussman's note and the contrast between European support vis-a-vis "International Team" support.

Take away the futility of Woods in the Ryder Cup and I'd say the Americans have the nucleus of a pretty good team. Whether they can morph from Pres Cup good to Ryder Cup winners is the big question mark. But "Europe" needs to improve.

If this guy turns up at gleneagles team europe have no chance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_50VH5oCOI

I just hope that in the event he does attend he can keep his paws of the local red heads....