What’s at stake — and not — in this Presidents Cup
The biggest knock on the Presidents Cup — one among many, by the way — is, well, that it isn’t the Ryder Cup.
The other American team competition is the creation of the PGA Tour, a clear answer to what, by the time the Presidents Cup was created in 1994, had become a raging biennial success for the PGA of America and the European Tour. The PGA Tour hastily put together the inaugural edition, pitting the Americans — again — against a vague enemy in the Internationals, a comic book-sounding confederate of all the countries in the world outside of the U.S. and Europe.
It has never seemed there was much for the International team to rally around other than that they’re on the same team every two years — that is, until Nick Price became the captain of the squad ahead of the 2013 matches. You see, perhaps more than any other International competitor, Nick Price has embraced what a competitive Presidents Cup could mean for golf around the world, in the places where the game is new and growing, not growing stale.
The competitive part, however, has been the second biggest knock on Presidents Cup, primarily because it hasn’t been. The United States has won eight of 10 matches played. They’ve lost once, at Royal Melbourne in 1998 when a cranky American squad didn’t want to make the trek to Australia to play two weeks before Christmas. The two sides tied in 2003 after a sudden-death playoff — actually written into the rules at the time — between host country South Africa’s Ernie Els and Tiger Woods couldn’t settle the matter. Other than that, the U.S. has routinely hosed the Internationals, to the tune of three- and four-point wins that make the matches sound even more competitive than they’ve been.
The Presidents Cup is the event the Americans use to feel good about themselves every other year. The Ryder Cup is the one where, with one exception in the last 16 years, they get humbled.
“We feel like the favorites,” Spieth said Tuesday. “We’re walking around with cockiness in our step, and often that can bite you if you’re not careful, but we’re aware of that. But the point is, we’re out there smiling because we believe whatever matchup we want to put together, we believe we can beat the other team.”
Price wants to squash that American swagger. The Internationals need a win, and he knows it. That’s why he lobbied PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who single-handedly decides the Presidents Cup rules, for some changes that he thinks will help his team. Finchem granted some, primarily reducing the number of matches from 34 to 30. Price hopes that by having the option to sit two players in each of the first four sessions that he can “put the best team forward” against the Americans, who routinely show up much more bunched up in the Official World Golf Ranking than their foes. The worst-ranked American on this team is captain’s pick Bill Haas, the captain’s son, who is 29th in the world. That’s better than seven of the Internationals. So, not only in practice but also on paper, the Americans have a better team. The Americans have now routinely showed up to plenty of Ryder Cups as paper tigers, getting smoked by a more determined, more game European side. Price is hoping for a similar effect in this series.
But what if Price’s changes don’t yield an International win? What if his charges get waxed by the same counts as when there were more points on offer? The Zimbabwe native was reluctant to speculate what it might mean.
“I will tell you guys, this is a really important Presidents Cup,” Price said. “I’m not going to say, ‘What if?’ But this better be closely contested. I’ll let you guys figure out the repercussions.”
Price, a three-time major winner himself, knows the pro’s pride. His guys, veterans or rookies, don’t want to show up every two years and get crushed. They don’t have the opposite-year stomping the Americans enjoy; they’re the ones getting stomped. At a certain point, and maybe we’re already there, the series loses any kind of meaning if it becomes so one-sided — particularly if intervening to change the rules has little net effect.
However, Price is being melodramatic. The Presidents Cup isn’t going away if the Internationals lose this week. The PGA Tour has already announced Liberty National in New Jersey will host the 2017 matches. An announcement is forthcoming on a 2019 venue, and Japan would make sense as it would be inside a year away from hosting the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, where golf will be an event. Even if there were a collective International mutiny, deciding they wouldn’t play, the PGA Tour could find a team of scab sacrifical lambs for the U.S.
This week is important to Price because the Presidents Cup is important to him. But if the Internationals can’t make this thing close on Sunday, it may start the psychological scarring on a second generation of Presidents Cup players — the kind of multi-generational damage that can only be fixed by a truly insurgent, defiant player. So, who would be willing to rise up for the Internationals in the way that Seve Ballesteros did when continental Europe was finally allowed to join the Ryder Cup party? Finding that guy is way more important than finding a way to shave points — and the Internationals have a much bigger net to cast.
So, yeah, the world is basically waiting for the Presidents Cup to become the Ryder Cup. That doesn’t mean it has to be contested the same way, rather that it has to be competitive and both teams have to look beforehand like the outcome is somewhat in doubt.
And, in that regard, the Presidents Cup is a lot like the early Ryder Cup. In the first 10 Ryder Cups, the Americans won the first eight. History shows it has a way of balancing out. The U.S. has lost seven of the last nine.
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
