Boyzoid's Blog & Stuff

My wife and I had the pleasure of attending the last round of The President’s Cup yesterday.  The President’s Cup is a team golf competition, held every 2 years, that pits the United States against a team of golfers from all over the world, except Europe. (For you European readers, don’t fret, in opposite years of the President’s Cup is the Ryder Cup, which is the US vs. Europe). Each team consists of 12 golfers. 10 are chosen by a points system, and each team is allowed 2 ‘captain’s picks’, where the captains of each team chose the last 2 players.

The ‘matches’ are held over 4 days, and include team play for 3 days, and singles matches on Sunday.  All matches are match play format, as opposed to stroke play. I love match play events (both watching and playing) as strategy and psychology come into play more than in stroke play events.

We were fortunate enough to get a good spot on the first hole.  We got to see all 24 players tee off.  The 12th hole was directly behind where we were standing, so after the last group teed off on the first hole, we pretty much just turned around to watch players come up the 12th hole.  We saw incredible shots by Justin Leonard, David Toms, Trevor Immelman and Retief Goosen.  As a matter of fact, of the first 4 golfers to play the 12th hole, 3 had eagles.

After Tiger had played the 12th hole, we moved to the 16th hole, hoping to see some matches finish on that hole. (In match play, if you are up 3 holes, and there are only 2 holes left to play, the match is over, and you win).  There, we got to see Tiger again (he lost the hole to Retief.  We also saw Fred Couples, who lost the hole to Vijay Singh (but eventually won the match).  We saw Mike Wier beat Scott Verplank and Jim Fuyrk defeat Adam Scott.

Unfortuantely, due to the fact that you can only be in one place on the course, you miss a lot of golf.  Although, hearing the roar of the crowd, and then waiting for the scoreboard to change to see the result was titilizing.  We missed Fred Couples 20 foot birdie putt on 18 to win his match, and we also missed Chris DiMarco’s 15 foot putt to win not only his match, but the tournament for the U.S.

It was a great day, and we hope to go again in 4 years when to tournament returns to the US (every other time the matches are held, they are held in the United States).  In 2007 the matches will be held in Montreal, Canada, and should be returning to Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Manassas, VA in 2009.