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It’s only a slight exaggeration to suggest that the Presidents Cup faces an existential crisis when its 13th edition gets underway Thursday in Australia, since the previous 12 playings have been about as competitive as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.
There have been 10 U.S. wins, one tie, and one victory for the Internationals, their lone highlight now so distant that Stuart Appleby is the only member of that winning team still not eligible for the senior circuit. The International squad is awfully close to being golf’s equivalent of the ’76 Tampa Bay Bucs, which went 0-14 then lost the first 12 games of the next season too.
Several factors promise a more entertaining Cup this time: the majestic Royal Melbourne as a venue, Tiger Woods as a playing captain, and the likelihood that voluble Aussie fans will remind Patrick Reed of the game’s rudimentary rules. Even with that, will another U.S. victory sound a death knell for an event whose results are as lop-sided as the Christians-Lions battles in ancient Rome?
Not so fast, says Frank Nobilo, who played on three International teams and twice served as assistant captain. He points to how uncompetitive the Ryder Cup was for decades before the tide turned in the 1980s. “Look what it has grown into today,” Nobilo says.
“I think the Presidents Cup is going through a tender stage purely because of the lack of strength at the top of the ’80’s and ’90s,” he adds, pointing to an era when world No. 1’s didn’t hail from America or Europe, like Greg Norman, Nick Price, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh. “Those times will come again and it will be less fleeting when it happens.”
Nobilo also notes the value of the Presidents Cup isn’t measured simply in points won and lost, that it has a positive trickle-down effect to junior programs akin to Olympic golf and the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship.
Defeat for Team USA may constitute a win for the Presidents Cup itself, much as how yachting’s America’s Cup grew in stature only after 1983, when the U.S. lost for the first time in 132 years. But is an International victory sufficient? Does even a more competitive Presidents Cup have an identity other than being not the Ryder Cup? It may be time to rethink the event, regardless of whether Woods or Els leads his troops to victory in Melbourne.
My two cents: make the Presidents Cup co-ed, adding the best women to the squads. It would give the event a unique flavor while elevating women’s golf. The LPGA Tour is a global circuit, but too many of its finest players are ineligible for the Solheim Cup, being neither American nor European. Let’s see an alternate shot format where Jin Young Ko plays off Adam Scott’s drives, and Tiger plays off Lexi Thompson’s.
A co-ed Presidents Cup would pair men and women in a genuine competitive setting, not a hit-and-giggle like the long defunct Wendy’s 3-Tour Challenge. It would also make real the prospect of superstar golfers playing for a female captain. Golf could use some optics like that.
It’s been 40 years since the Ryder Cup was resuscitated when the old downtrodden Great Britain & Ireland team morphed into a triumphant European squad, but the Ryder Cup also had the advantage of its dull decades coming long before the dawn-to-dusk TV coverage of every swing. The Presidents Cup enjoys no such luxury and won’t survive many more years of mundanity. It may be time to consider that its saviors may not be guys like Woods and Els, but women like Nelly Korda and Sung Hyun Park.
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