Woods leads from front as US win Presidents Cup
United States captain Tiger Woods led from the front as the Americans dominated the Sunday singles to overhaul the Internationals at Royal Melbourne 16-14 and claim an eighth successive Presidents Cup.
Woods clinched a record 27th win in the event with a 3&2 victory over Abraham Ancer to fire up his team and then beamed from the sidelines as they landed crushing early blows before sealing the Cup with a match to spare.
“We did it together.we came here as a team.my team mates and my boys all played well, the captains did an amazing job,” a thrilled Woods said after the Americans sewed up their 11th win in the 13th Cup.
“It’s been one of the more amazing challenges but ... all the guys, they believed in one another and relied on one another.” Matt Kuchar rolled in the winning putt from just over five feet on the 17th as he halved his match with Louis Oosthuizen.
Rickie Fowler halved the final match with Marc Leishman in front of a deflated gallery as the United States won eight of the 12 points on offer in a stinging Sunday reverse for the Internationals, who had led 10-8 overnight.
No team had won after trailing into the final day but the class and depth of the Americans prevailed when it mattered most.
“We were right there to the end ... Just a couple of matches didn’t quite go our way,” rued Internationals captain Ernie Els.
“We’re getting closer.we’ve just got to keep it up.” It has now been 21 years since the Internationals claimed their sole win, that victory coming at Royal Melbourne in 1998.
Woods’s win over Ancer brought his record at the biennial event to 27 victories, 15 losses and one halved match in his ninth appearance as a player, eclipsing compatriot Phil Mickelson’s 26-16-13 tally.
At 43 the youngest captain in the event’s 25-year history and only the second playing skipper, Woods finished with an unblemished 3-0-0 record for the week.
Dustin Johnson crushed Chinese debutant Li Haotong 4&3 before Patrick Reed, under pressure after losing all three of his previous matches, pushed his team in front with a 4&2 win over Taiwan’s C.T. Pan.