They’re Zoned for Presidential

Here’s a recipe for success. Take the best U.S. players from the PGA Tour and plunge them into a match play competition against a team of international stars. Hold the tournament every other year and alternate sites inside and outside the U.S.

We’re talking Ryder Cup, right? Actually, it’s the Presidents Cup, which will be played for this sixth time, Sept. 16-18, at Lake Manassas, Va., where the PGA Tour takes on the world’s top players from everywhere except Europe.

If the players were from Europe, this event would be the Ryder Cup, which it decidedly is not.

Remember that the Ryder Cup has been around since 1927. Yet there are some casual fans tuning into golf every now and then who still aren’t really sure but think maybe the Ryder Cup has something to do with renting a truck.

And this is where the problems start cropping up with the Presidents Cup. Even though the first Presidents Cup was in 1994, it’s still trying to edge its way into the mainstream of sporting events, find its own niche beyond the hard-core golf fans and, well, make a difference.

It’s true the first five Presidents Cups raised $10.05 million for charities worldwide and that’s undeniably laudable, but every pro golf tournament raises money for charity, so the only logical way to judge the merits of any event is whether the competition is any good.

The last time the Presidents Cup was played, the competition was good but the result not so good. The scene was the Links Course at Fancourt Hotel and Country Club in George, South Africa, in 2003. After getting waxed, 6-0, in Saturday’s best ball matches, the PGA Tour pros came back on the last day to make up three points in the singles matches and tie the international team, 17-17.

This had never happened before, and the rules called for a sudden-death playoff between players who already had been chosen by the team captains. The captains, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, had picked Tiger Woods and Ernie Els.

So far so good. But Woods and Els were still tied after three playoff holes, when it got too dark to play. So they just stopped.

That’s also where the rules stopped, because there was no provision for what should happen next.

Nicklaus and Player decided, on the spot, to call it a draw and share the Presidents Cup for the next two years. They got a lot of mileage out of their sportsmanship, which is nice, but the only reason they settled on that outcome was because they had no other choice.

What were they going to do, stand back to back, walk 10 paces and fire golf balls at each other?

This time, the Presidents Cup rules are clear. If it’s a tie on Sunday, then it’s a tie. There won’t be any playoff, but there will be co-champions.

By contrast, in the Ryder Cup, if there’s a tie, the team that is in possession of the cup from the last time gets to keep it. At least somebody wins and somebody loses, and that always makes it easier to keep score.

There’s more contrast. As mainstream as the Ryder Cup is right now, it was largely overlooked until the U.S. started losing, which is probably the reverse of what the Presidents Cup needs if it is to stand out even more. A little U.S. domination would go a long way toward raising the interest level.

It could be that the Presidents Cup is growing up and only needs time to mature, which is understandable if you believe that history is neither instant nor manufactured. Having Nicklaus as captain of the U.S. team is a bonus for a lot of reasons, but especially this one: Who’s not going to want to play on his team?

Including this year, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III are the only players who have been on all six Presidents Cup teams, and Tiger Woods has been on the last four, since 1998, the first one for which he was eligible. Of the three players, Love has the best record, by far, at 14-6-3. Woods is only 8-7, but Mickelson is 6-12-5 and has never won a singles match.

Whatever the degree of prestige that the players receive for playing in the Presidents Cup, it’s still a big commitment for stars such as Woods, Mickelson, Love and the rest, such as Fred Couples, Jim Furyk and David Toms.

And it also means the top U.S. pros will compete in a high-stakes international match play event every year. One year it’s the Presidents Cup; the next year it’s the Ryder Cup. They never get a break, although the competition does. Maybe that’s why the Europeans are so fresh at the Ryder Cup.

But even though the U.S. pros aren’t universally gleeful about their match play schedules, they aren’t grumbling in public, so if you’re looking for the Presidents Cup to make some history, that’s a hefty-looking chunk of it right there.