Woods winning adds to Ryder Cup buzz
PARIS: Already the most intense competition in golf, the Ryder Cup doesn’t need help to boost the excitement.
Tiger Woods managed to take it to another level.
He looked like the Woods of old by leading the final 36 holes of the Tour Championship, not letting anyone near him until it was too late on Sunday, a vintage performance made all the more remarkable by four back surgeries and a future that looked bleak only a year ago.
Woods was a vice captain at the Presidents Cup a year ago this week and said he envisioned a scenario where he never returned to competition.
One PGA Tour event into his return, Jim Furyk selected him as a vice captain for the Ryder Cup.
And then he picked him for the team. And then Woods won for the first time in more than five years.
“It’s obviously a nice buzz for our team,’’ Furyk said, a few hours after the American charter plane landed in Paris on Monday.
Now that Woods is back on his game, the hope for Furyk and the US team is that he’s not back to Ryder Cup form.
For all that he has achieved — 80 victories on the PGA Tour, 14 majors and No.1 in the world for 683 weeks — he has a 13-17-3 record in Ryder Cup matches, and he has played on only one winning team since his first one in 1997.
The Americans have not won the Ryder Cup away from home since 1993, a drought Furyk has been hearing about since he was appointed captain in January 2017.
The Americans have confidence from winning big at Hazeltine two years ago — Woods was a vice captain that week — and from a team that boasts nine major champions.
That makes them favourites on paper. And that means little, as recent history would suggest. Even with the loss two years ago, Europe still have won eight out of the last 11 times dating to that 1993 American victory at the Belfry.
“I’m not sure you really need extra motivation in a Ryder Cup,’’ Furyk said.
“Obviously, I think there’s a thorn in their side, and it’s been that since 1993, and there’s some veteran players that have played on a number of these teams that have never won on foreign soil.
“It’s not anything I need to mention in the team room. They are well aware of it, and they are well aware of how difficult it is to win in Europe.’’
Europe captain Thomas Bjorn said: “We don’t fear anyone because we’ve played against them so many times before individually.
“But we respect our opponents and know what we are up against. What stands on the other side we know is one of the strongest American teams of all time.
“We do what we do as a European team, and then we go out and take that on the golf course, and that’s all 12 Americans. It’s not one individual.’’