A RIVALRY SIGNED IN INK
T H E P R E S I D E N T S C U P AUTOGRAPHS DRAWIRE Nicklaus angry after U. S. made to ‘ look like jerks’
LAKE MANASSAS, VA. •
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau first debuted this act in Grumpy Old Men, didn’t they?
And now, in the sequel to the sequel, here were the Presidents Cup captains, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, out on the driving range Tuesday afternoon within earshot of a Reuters photographer, gesturing and pointing at one another — a “heated discussion,” was how it was reported — over an apparent double-cross by Player’s International Team.
The nerve of those damned foreigners. They were actually out there signing autographs during their practice round, “ making us [ Team USA] look like jerks,” the story quoted Nicklaus as saying.
The captains, according to the report, had agreed in advance that their teams would not sign. The Americans, true to form, were all business. An edict like that would be music to their ears.
Those treacherous Internationals, meanwhile, were making nice to the crowds between every green and tee — doing, in short, precisely what the Europeans did last fall prior to the Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills: softening up the galleries in hopes that the Americans’ home-field advantage wouldn’t be quite so pronounced once the competition began.
And they were still doing it yesterday, on the eve of the opening matches, even after the dispute came to light.
“ No! You didn’t, did you?” a wide-eyed deputy captain, Ian Baker-Finch, said in mock horror to the six players who sat at a dais for the International team’s final news conference before the six alternate- shot ( foursomes) matches begin today with Tiger Woods and Fred Couples leading off against Adam Scott and Retief Goosen.
“We told them not to. We said no signing on the course,” said Baker-Finch, with one of those “ what are you going to do?” shrugs.
“ We were asked to wait until after [the round] to sign right by the putting green, which is what we’ve all tried to do,” said the Americans’ Phil Mickelson.
“I think something just didn’t get passed on [ to the International Team],” said Jim Furyk. “ We’ve got beat up a little about it, but no big deal. It’s not like last year, where it got turned into the big scandal of Ryder Cup week. There’s no scandal, no scandal,” he grinned.
In a week of mostly team matches, though, where home field has been so vital in previous Presidents Cups, it has definitely got under the Americans’ skins, as the Euros’ ploy did last year — and as Player and BakerFinch suspected it might here.
Anyway, said the genial Bakerthe no-autographs agreement “wasn’t a command. I think our guys are just that way. I know at Augusta, they always tell you not to sign on the course, but I always signed. How can you walk past a kid saying ‘ Please, Mr. Baker-Finch, can you sign this?’ We told them the request was not to sign on the golf course, but it’s just the nature of these guys to do it.”
Uh-huh.
Nicklaus, surely not so innocent as to believe gamesmanship couldn’t happen, tried to cover for the Internationals by surmising that Player “just misunderstood it. There was an area for signing, where we said, ‘ Let’s do it between the 18th green and the first tee, after the round.’ Gary said he didn’t realize that.
“ The thing is, you just don’t want to make the other team look bad,” said Nicklaus.
But if it was just a misunderstanding, why were the Internationals still at it yesterday?
“ Oh, were they?” he said, clearly disappointed. “ Well, that’s their choice. I mean, in the end, it’s always up to the players.”
There is so little animus between the teams in this international friendly populated almost exclusively by full- time PGA Tour players that even such a small needle seems somehow larger.
Five years later, for heaven’s sake, they are still milking the Vijay Singh- Tiger Woods run-in at the 2000 Presidents Cup, when Vijay’s caddie showed up on the range prior to their match wearing a hat with the words “ Tiger Who?” stitched on the back.
“I was wondering how long it was going to take for you to ask that question,” Singh said yesterday. “ You know, it was an issue in 2000, and it’s 2005 now. It’s five years away and it’s gone. Everybody has forgotten it but you guys.”
Woods, however, who has a memory like an elephant for slights real or imagined, hasn’t forgotten.
“I didn’t appreciate it,” Woods said the other day, quite willing to revive the incident. “I thought it wasn’t real respectful. I know he tried to do it in fun, but I didn’t take it that way. I went out and beat him 2- and-1, that was my response.”
It raises the tantalizing possibility of a Woods-Singh grudge match in Sunday’s singles.
The Woods-Ernie Els match two years ago in South Africa had great marquee appeal, but the two are good friends. Nicklaus isn’t averse to a little theatre, even if it involves hard feelings.
“I remember in ’98, Greg Norman had gone to [International captain] Peter Thomson and asked him specifically not to play him against Tiger. He’d been hurt earlier in the year, and so on, and just didn’t want to play him,” said Nicklaus.
“ But we got down to where there were two or three matches left on Sunday, and he put Norman out, and I came back with Tiger. And Norman came to me after and said, ‘ Jack, why would you do that to me?’ I said, ‘Greg, you’re not on my team.’ Peter Thomson had four or five chances to put Norman out earlier after I chose first, and didn’t do it.
“ Now, Tiger hasn’t said anything about Singh. Tiger asked for Norman, I gave him Norman. He asked for Ernie Els, and I gave him Ernie Els. If he asks for Singh, I’ll do my best to make that happen.”
Woods said golf doesn’t need added controversy of the type Singh’s caddie injected.
“ We’re out there competing, and he’s trying to beat my brains in and I’m trying to beat his in. That’s what makes competition fun. You don’t really need that [ taunting], and that’s not our sport.”
No, but it’s added five years’ worth of juice to the rivalry. And before this Presidents Cup is over — especially if the Americans stage another rout, as they have the three previous times the event has been held at RTJ — that juice might be sorely needed on Sunday.
CanWest News Service