‘You don’t get momentum with two putts’
Australians dressed up as Americans. Yeah, nah.
International warm-up room. Nothing like a bit of early-morning Akka Dakka to get the juices flowing.
Patrick Reed’s shovel taunt at 11. Keep digging, dude.
“Repulsed.” The Shark, Greg Norman, nails ”the Excavator”.
Subtle messaging from US security for fans to tone down their Reed sledging.
WAG Paulina Gretzky posing for selfies on 12.
The local insects continue to pester. Luckily for fans, Juli Ogilvy had a can of Aeroguard at the ready to share.
A rousing rendition of
for 31-year-old Rickie Fowler on the team bus, led by none other than Tiger Woods.
The GOAT benching himself this morning.
A LATE-afternoon US charge was enough for everyone wearing red, white and blue at Royal Melbourne to declare the Presidents Cup script had been flipped.
But the scoreboard still had it three points behind a confident International outfit, and Aussie star Marc Leishman put the visitors back in their box, declaring “you don’t get momentum with two putts”.
International captain Ernie Els also stuck to his data-driven game plan for today’s crucial session after recording the best foursomes result in years, enough for him to declare yesterday’s shared points “a win”.
That history of foursomes failure looked like being cast to the wind when yellow and black numbers dominated the leaderboard and the Internationals were up in all five matches at one point.
But first Patrick Cantlay and then Justin Thomas made 18th-hole birdies to win their respective matches for the US, before Rickie Fowler made a snaky 1.5m par putt for the first tied match of the event.
With another eight points on offer in today’s monster 36hole double-header, Els opted for another selection shake-up for the crucial morning session after the day-one blitz left them with a handy lead.
“This is the beast that sometimes bites you. You want to put a spear in it, but sometimes it fights back, and that is the nature of this cup,” Els said
“The big picture is what it is. I am just looking at my guys. I just want my guys to play as good as they can and get the best results they can.
“That is all I kept thinking and can hope for. This was probably good, what happened the last couple of holes, so that the guys can understand what can happen in the cup.
“Saying that, we are in the lead.”
Team USA captain Tiger Woods was his outfit’s best player again, but benched himself for the morning four-ball as “part of the game plan”.
Woods, who could play in this afternoon’s foursomes, saw yesterday’s late surge as a better indication of what his team, with 10 of 12 players ranked inside the world top 20, would deliver for their country. “At one point, we were down in four and even in one, and so it looked pretty bleak, but the guys turned it around,” Woods said.
“It was important for us to end the way we did, and it totally changed the last hour.”
But Aussie star Leishman, who delivered his first point yesterday, dismissed any suggestion his opponents now had the upper hand.
“They were tied — they made a couple of good putts on 18, definitely give them that, but I don’t think you get momentum with two putts,” Leishman said.
“We know it’s 18-holes matches, and you have to be right there at the end. They made a couple of putts at an important time, but if they feel that, that’s great. We probably don’t feel that way.
“There’s still a lot of points to play for.
“You know, we need to keep doing what we’re doing and keep improving because we know their jet-lag is going to start wearing off, and I’m sure they will start firing up.
“We need to be ready for it.”