“Do we really care if the Internationals win?” it was written. “And if we don’t, is it not almost like … what’s the point?”
The insinuation was: how could we, the people, get ourselves emotionally invested in a team of golfers that represents a claque of countries outside the USA and Europe?
How can we viscerally, vocally support a team of Canadians, Australians, Koreans, and other representatives of far-flung continents, land masses and disparate nation states?
Particularly one which loses all the time?
The answer, of course, was, by watching really cool golf in a really cool format, played by really cool golfers.
Well, maybe not ‘cool’. Golfers aren’t cool. They’re square-eyed sportos, in the main, flat-bellies dedicated to a discipline like monks to a gong.
But their golf was world class.
And, for the weekend at least, at Royal Montreal, it was revenge of the golf-nerds. The International team were rock stars. Lauded. Supported. They were our guys, our Bad News Bears, taking on the might of the Evil Empire.
The Cup peaked, for mine, when Si Woo Kim chipped in from hill-side on Saturday, and he and Tom Kim tore around the green, a pair of stocky, tubby, third grade club rugby hookers, going off in the pub on Mad Monday. Si Woo made some odd ‘go to sleep’ gesture. Didn’t matter what it meant – the locals went off and we all went tearing around the pub with them.
it was stadium noise stuff. Charged. Visceral. It was very cool.
“You are not going to sleep”, Si Woo Kim (perhaps) gestures after his chip-in on 16 at Royal Montreal on Saturday. PHOTO: Getty Images.
The Canadian players – Corey Connors, Taylor Pendrith, Mackenzie Hughes – if not anonymous among international golf fans then hardly needle-raisers, raised the needle. They were inspired picks by Mild Mike Weir.
They just didn’t win enough games. Same with the Aussies. The Koreans. Just how it rolled.
The Americans played their part, of course. The world’s best players were there in their Sunday best, their ‘Tiger Red’, and largely brought the good stuff. They are so very, very good.
The Internationals got about in the black of the Man In Black, Gary Player, but with small if gawdy flashes of gold, like trimmings on a couch at Tony Montana’s place in Scarface. If you will.
Adam Scott and the Internationals had their moments in the Presidents Cup. Just not enough of them. PHOTO: Getty Images.
The colours told the story. For there on the leaderboard – chunks of red duelled with ‘gold’ or what colour charts call ‘Fuel Yellow’. And the Americans kept stacking red bricks.
And, in the end, of course, the great denouement, which went the way everyone thought it would. Pat Cantlay’s birdie putt on Saturday afternoon had put a sword in those very Kim twins and a four-point going into Sunday. And throughout day four, the singles, the American machine just rolled on and on. Implacable. Stone killers. Too good.
And the local fans exclaimed as one in the French of Quebec: buggeur.
Problem for International supporters is that the American team – even without Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Talor Gooch, Patrick Reed and U.S Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, among others – has lots better players.
Keegan Bradley (centre) celebrates winning the Presidents Cup with wife Jillian Stacey and team-mate Tony Finau. PHOTO: Getty Images.
The International team, like the American one, cannot call on LIV Golf players because the Presidents Cup is run by PGA Tour Enterprises, which is an LLC, whatever that is, something about money. And money and self-interest rules the world most days of the week, and cares not what’s best for golf. In fact, money thinks it is what’s best for golf. If the elites are getting paid, that’s what’s best, right? Everyone’s happy?
You think Cantlay’s playing the Presidents Cup if he’s not getting a snip from company funds?
Anyway. Enough of the greed-heads. The Presidents Cup was cracking good golf, world class, and a pretty fine contest, even if it was done with five games to play. We rode our team, our guys, as underdogs. Maybe that’s enough of a narrative to keep things rolling.
Royal Montreal was setup tough, shades of U.S Open – so many chips were out of thick rough, which was cool if you like that sort of thing. There seemed an element of chance.
But it was a generic-enough PGA Tour venue.
Be good to see it at NSW or Cape Wickham in the wind, or one of those tree-less tracks in the sand hills of Nebraska. Open, linksy. See the ball roll onto high-stimp, ‘touch’ greens. Make ‘em glass. Test their hands and nerves on ice. Make Keegan Bradley squeal.
Make that the point.
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