Internationals’ test yet to come
“Last season we couldn’t win at home. This season we can’t win on the road. My failure as a coac h is I can’t think of any plac e else to play.” — Harry Neale , Vancouver, 1982. DUBLIN, Ohio — We bring you now to 2013, the Presidents Cup at Muirfield Village Golf Club, Act 1.
Nick Price, who lobbied the PGA Tour to switch the order of events because the International team of which he is this year’s captain has been so historically awful at the alternate-shot format, got his wish and the competition began with the fourball (better-ball) matches Thursday.
And at 12:38 p.m. MDT on Day 1, when play was suspended (probably not the last this week) due to lightning in the area, Team USA was ahead in five matches and tied in the other.
So as Harry Neale would have asked: What do we open with next time. Singles? Perhaps a different game altogether. Tennis, anyone?
Instead, the 82-minute break before play resumed 82 minutes later cooled off the Americans and gave the visitors a chance to regroup. And the worm began to turn. Slowly.
“They were rolling pretty good and it was more a case that they were making the putts and getting it to happen and we hadn’t started yet,” said Adam Scott, who came from two down on the 15th tee with partner Hideki Matsuyama to earn a halve with Bill Haas and Webb Simpson. “So it was a timely break, which might have slowed their momentum a little bit and let us creep back in at the end of the day.”
There was no stopping Tiger Woods and Matt Kuchar, who so steamrollered Angel Cabrera and rookie Marc Leishman 5 and 4 that their match — the fifth to start — was over first.
But within minutes, Canada’s Graham DeLaet and his Aussie partner, Jason Day, put the first International point on the board, thanks to Day’s 25-foot birdie at the last, as they rallied from three down after six holes to beat Hunter Mahan and Brandt Snedeker 1-up.
And in short order, South African mates Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel finished off a 2 and 1 win over the unbreakable Ryder Cup pairing of Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley, and Matsuyama hit his approach to the 18th stone dead for a conceded birdie, allowing him and Scott to salvage a half point from Bill Haas and Scott Simpson.
“There’s plenty of heart in this team,” said Scott, the Masters champion. “I don’t think spirits were low when we sat in the team room during the break. We were in ... ordinary shape for a while, but 3-1/2 to 2-1/2 isn’t a big deal. If we go out and win the session tomorrow, it’s neckand-neck again.”
Given their recent history of opening-day disasters, a mere one-point deficit practically feels like a win. Alternate-shot still looms Friday, of course, but ... baby steps.
Oosthuizen and Schwartzel ham-and-egged perfectly to rally from two down against Mickelson and Bradley, who never looked the same after play resumed.
“We were rolling there through seven holes, 5-under and playing well, and when they birdied 8 and 9 to get it back to even after the rain ... I ended up having a bad practice session before I went out, and I played terribly the back nine and left Keegan alone on a lot of holes,” said Mickelson. “I had a good rhythm early on and when we went back out, I was just a little bit tight and didn’t make very good swings.”
DeLaet, of Weyburn, Sask., produced the first birdie and the first lead of the matches on the very first hole, getting up and down out of a fairway bunker and holing a 12-footer, but that was the last time — until nearly five hours later — that an International team flag appeared on the electronic scoreboards scattered around Muirfield Village’s drop-dead beautiful vistas.
“The front nine was kind of like an exhibition from the U.S. team.
“They just made so many birdies. It was incredible golf they played,” said Price. “At the break, I just spoke to each one of them, to most of the guys and said, hey, the U.S. has had everything go their way the front nine, and just be patient, persevere. The back nine, there’s still plenty of holes to go, and what a great comeback they made.”
In addition to Woods and Kuchar, the Americans got wins from Steve Stricker and rookie Jordan Spieth, who eked out a 1-up win over Ernie Els and Brendon de Jonge, and the final pairing of Zach Johnson and Jason Dufner, who dispatched South African rookies Branden Grace and Richard Sterne 5 and 3.
Scott and Matsuyama looked to be in trouble, too, until Scott pitched in from the rough for an eagle on the par-5 15th to narrow the Haas-Simpson lead to one, and Matsuyama’s brilliant shot into 18 clawed back half a point.
“I was not scared,” said the Japanese rookie. “I knew Adam would hit after me, so I aimed at the pin and I knew that if I missed, I missed and he would hold me up. It was one of the best shots I’ve ever hit.”
The day — U.S. captain Fred Couples’ 54th birthday — was full of squirrelly happenings, none more so than the “pet” squirrel that fell out of a tree and took a liking to U.S. assistant captain Davis Love III after he started feeding it.
The rodent split time between his wrist and his lap as he drove around on a golf cart keeping track of the matches — even accompanied him into the U.S. team room during the break — but when the players and wives gathered behind the 18th green, Love handed it to Lindsey Vonn, who promptly put it on her boyfriend’s shoulder.
Tiger did not look pleased, but he and Kuchar had a blast while waxing Cabrera and Leishman, even dipping into old pop culture to resurrect an oddball hand slap from The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air each time they won a hole. Kuchar took the blame. “I’m not a big fan of bumping knuckles. Baseball highfives look like a lot of fun but a little too complicated, so we went old school with Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” he said.
The only weirder look than two grown men doing that after birdies was Oosthuizen and Schwartzel, victims of two of the worst haircuts ever inflicted on someone not entering the armed forces, wearing curly blond wigs onto the first tee, drawing a big laugh from the crowd.
“You all know about our haircuts,” said Oosthuizen.
No need to elaborate, Louis.
Now for the bad news. The Internationals’ performance in better-ball Thursday was actually worse than in any of the previous four Presidents Cups, all of which they lost handily.
They actually sawed off their first four-ball sessions, 3-3, in three of them, and won 4-1/2 to 1-1/2 at Royal Montreal in 2007.
That year, though, they lost the alternate shot matches 10-1/2 to 1/2.
The real test is yet to come.