If the Presidents Cup is even alive after the thrashing that’s taking place this week at Liberty National, it’s on life support at best.
The U.S. Team, which has won nine of the 11 Presidents Cups since the event’s inception in 1994, takes a preposterous 14 ½ to 3 ½ lead over the International team into Sunday’s singles matches.
The Americans need one point of the 12 that are available in singles to clinch the Cup on Sunday. And the fact is, they could have — really, should have — clinched the Cup on Saturday afternoon.
Had it not been for an unlikely late 1-up win by Anirban Lahiri and Si Woo Kim over Thursday’s U.S. darlings Charley Hoffman and Kevin Chappell in the final match on the golf course Saturday afternoon, those 12 singles matches on Sunday would actually be exhibition matches with zero consequence.
Amazing.
A look at the scoreboard suggests the best players in the world have been here for three days playing against the Liberty National members’ B Flight.
This is what has become of this Presidents Cup, which has spun so wildly out of control in its one-sidedness, you have to wonder about the future of this competition.
Most who know about golf knew coming into this week that the U.S. was a massive favorite. The Americans brought three of the four major-championship winners from this year to the dance. They’re deeper than they’ve ever been.
But the Internationals have Jason Day and Adam Scott, both major championship winners and former No. 1s in the world. They brought Marc Leishman, who was one of the hottest players in good form entering the week. Louis Oosthuizen is a veteran of these events and a former major winner.
If this International team could not put up a fight then what are we to expect in 2019 in Melbourne, Australia, for the 13th edition of this thing?
Perhaps we were all snowed over by how tight the 2015 Presidents Cup was in South Korea, the U.S. barely winning, 15 ½ to 14 ½. That turned out to be a massive tease to everyone — most notable, the Internationals, who have been stunned this week.
Who’s going to watch the singles on Sunday? Who’s going to pay any attention to this event in 2019?
The U.S. dominance of this event is killing it.
“The competition, I’m sure, will go on,’’ U.S. captain Steve Stricker said Saturday. “I don’t think anything like that’s going to change. It’s still a great competition. The Ryder Cup at one point was that way [first with U.S. domination and later with the Europeans on a run], and look what it is today.’’
Stricker’s message to his players since days before the competition began was about not being complacent. When complacency is the theme of the captain’s message before the event begins, you know something’s wrong with the competition, because it’s not even a competition.
“It’s easy to get complacent with the way things are right now, and it’s easy to come out [Sunday] lazy,’’ Spieth said. “If it gets closed out early, it gets closed out early and maybe that’s not so good for the tournament, but it is what it is.’’
What it is becoming is a non-event. Unless the Internationals can find a way to put up a fight, this event is in danger of spiraling into further irrelevance than it already is.
The best thing that can happen on Sunday is for the International players to mount a 1999 Ryder Cup Brookline run like the U.S. had against Europe. The Internationals are not going to hoist the Cup on Sunday, but they sure can save some face and help save this competition from having the plug pulled from the respirator.
Spieth was asked if this event is broken because of the strong and deep youth the Americans bring to the table.
“I don’t think so,’’ he said. “[The International players] are very young, too. The game is better, younger, and there’s more depth. I think home soil’s played a big role this week. The pick-me-ups, the turnaround matches, the flipping has had a lot to do with feeding off the crowds. When you go to away crowds, it’s that much harder to do it.
“Where are we, Royal Melbourne in two years? As we know, the Aussies show up here in men’s clothes, women’s clothes and everything in between; they are going to be nuts there and they are going to really try and make a difference in that event.’’
They had better or there will be no event at all before we know it.