No guarantee Tiger and Rory will square off
The matchup of golf ’s No. 1 player and its No. 1 drawing card has been a focal point of these Ryder Cup matches ever since Rory McIlroy won the 2011 U.S. Open.
But whether it happens will come down to the luck of the draw.
Because the captains can’t make the matches under the Ryder Cup format — only submit their lists according to educated guesses, and often guess wrong — McIlroy and Tiger Woods may not meet all week.
“It would be neat to sit up here and match them up. It would be pretty good theatre, and it would be fun,” American team captain Davis Love III said Wednesday. “But since we can’t do that ... well, I definitely don’t want to be the first one to go cross over into (the Europeans’ room) and start rigging pairings.
“It’s not in the captains’ agreement that we don’t do that, but I’m sure it’s against the spirit of it.”
In the Presidents Cup matches, the captains nominate their players one at a time, alternating turns, allowing the other team to respond with the desired opponent.
But Love, who has played in six Presidents Cups, doesn’t see the exponentially more popular Ryder Cup adopting that idea, good as it might be.
“We have a pretty good tradition with this, I think we should probably leave it alone,” said Love. “It’s been pretty successful. Would it be fun to maybe be able to match one, to do Tiger and Rory? Sure. But it’s pretty good the way it is.”
MARKED MAN: Under the theory that beating the No. 1-ranked McIlroy would feel like it was worth more than just a single point to the Americans, someone has used the term “marked man” to describe the 23-year-old Irishman.
“First I’ve heard of it,” said Phil Mickelson.
“This week, I’m not the No. 1 player in the world. I’m one person in a 12-man team, and that’s it,” said McIlroy. “I don’t think I have a bull’s-eye on my back. It’s a huge compliment that people are saying they want to beat me and whatever.” He shrugged. “Whoever wants to take me on, they can take me on.
“I just want to go out and get a point for the team and whether that’s going out first or fourth or in the middle, it doesn’t make a difference to me and it doesn’t make a difference who I play.”
Meaning Tiger or anyone else.
MOVINGOUT: McIlroy is selling his estate in Holywood, Northern Ireland, the one with the spectacular practice facility, and moving to the States, joining several other members of the European team who have already done so.
It’s nothing against his homeland, simply a matter of practicality, said McIlroy, whose four victories, including the PGA Championship, will certainly make him the PGA Tour’s player of the year.
“It doesn’t make financial sense,” he said. “I don’t spend enough time at home to warrant the running costs of a home like that and the practice facility.”
Lee Westwood, who also joined the PGA Tour full time in 2012, is selling his place in his hometown of Worksop, England.
“The main problem with living in Worksop is the only time I’m there, or the quality time I’m there, is in the winter, and I can’t carry on with my job,” he said. “I look back over the years, and I’m a notoriously slow starter (to the season) and I get the feeling that it is because I finish off in late November, and then put the clubs away for a long time and I come back cold.
“So there are climate benefits to Florida. And the fastest I can get my (practice) green at home is maybe 9, 10 on the Stimpmeter, and I come here and play Atlanta (last week’s Tour Championship) and they are running ... well, it felt like 15-16 at times. It’s too much of a change.”
POULTER-GEIST: Leaping on a careless word, which is what the British tabloids do best, reporters were all excited about a quote from Englishman Ian Poulter, who stepped in it while trying to describe the emotions the Ryder Cup inspires.
“I hate to say we don’t get on for three days, but there is that divide, and it’s not that we don’t like each other,”said Poulter. “We are all good friends, both sides of the pond. But there’s something about Ryder Cup which kind of intrigues me, how you can be great mates with somebody, but, boy, do you want to kill them in Ryder Cup.”
“I think ‘kill’ is a little strong,” said McIlroy. “I’d like to beat them.”
Love took it with a grain of salt.
“It’s not a war, it’s a party. It’s a golf match,” he said. “We want to pummel them, as Freddie (Couples) says. And Jose Maria (Olazabal) and I, we’ll go nose-to-nose at some point this week over something — driving a cart over a bridge, or they have one more cart than we do ... something. Things will get testy — chippy, as they say in hockey — because it’s intense. But we’ll be friends at the end of it.”
WESTWOOD HO: On Love’s setup of the Medinah No. 3 course for these matches: “I’ve played (in the U.S.) pretty much all year and I haven’t seen a golf course that’s had no rough, and none around the greens. This is not a golf course that either team is particularly used to, and I can’t see how it suits one team or the other to be perfectly honest. The last time I played a golf course with no rough around the greens and no rough down the side of the fairways was The Belfry in 2002, and we set that up for ourselves. So that’s a weird one to me, but you have to do what you feel is right, I think, as a team captain, for your team.”