International team motivated by failure

JERSEY CITY (New Jersey): Nick Price got the celebration going. He won the second of 12 singles matches when David Duval conceded his short par putt on the 17th hole at Royal Melbourne, the decisive point for the International team to win the Presidents Cup. That was 1998.

Price was the No. 6 player in the world. Tiger Woods had only one Major. Jordan Spieth was in kindergarten.

At the Payne Stewart Award ceremony in Atlanta, Price was introduced as a past recipient. He rose to be recognised, his grey hair brushed straight back, and the host couldn’t resist asking him with the Presidents Cup a week away, “Is this finally the year?”

Price smiled and returned to his seat. He gets his third chance as International captain to change the outcome of matches that have been one-sided for the better part of two decades. Nothing has changed except the venue and nearly a dozen fresh faces.

The Americans have won more tournaments.

They have better world rankings. They are playing before a home crowd.

They are big favourites. “We’re tired of losing. There’s no doubt about that,” Price said last month under grandstands that were being constructed around the first tee at Liberty National Golf Club from the Statue of Liberty.

“Adam Scott has been on seven teams in a row and he hasn’t won one yet,” Price said.

“That’s an awful lot of golf shots to come up empty-handed.”

The International team – 12 players representing eight countries from every continent but Europe – get yet another crack it when the 12th edition of the Presidents Cup begins next Thursday across the river from America’s most international city.

The Americans not only have the stronger pedigree, seven of their players were at Hazeltine a year ago to celebrate a rare Ryder Cup victory. They already are used to winning the Presidents Cup every year since that infamous tie in 2003 in South Africa. Now their cups are starting to overflow.

That led US captain Steve Stricker to utter words of caution.

“I think the challenge will be a little overconfidence,” Stricker said.

The matches get started on Thursday with five matches of foursomes, followed by five matches of fourballs on Friday, both formats in the morning and afternoon on Saturday, and the 12 singles matches on Sunday.

It takes 15-points to win, and that’s exactly what the Americans scratched out two years ago in a tense finish in South Korea.

That’s part of what gives the International team hope. After losing by at least three points five straight times, this is one they thought they had won. Chris Kirk was 15 feet away for birdie on the par-5 18th. Anirban Lahiri, the first player from India in these matches, was four feet away. If Kirk missed and Lahiri made, the International team would win.

Kirk made. Lahiri missed. The Americans won again.

But it was the mood in the team room that made Price want to return for a third time, his hopes higher than ever.

“The morale and the feeling and the emotion that went through that team room, it won’t take much to pick that up again,” Price said.

“Those who were there and experienced that, it will motivate them.”