The Limerick Summary: 2017 Presidents Cup

Winner: USA, 19-11

Around the wider world of golf: Brooke Henderson won the McKayson New Zealand Women's Open on the LPGA; Azahara Munoz won the Andalucia Costa del Sol Open de España Femenino on the LET; Paul Dunne won his first ET event at the British Masters; Satoshi Kodaira won the TOP Cup Tokai Classic on the Japan Golf Tour; and Gavin Green won his first Asian Tour title at the Mercuries Taiwan Masters. Events on both the Symetra Tour and the Web.com Tour have been delayed and will finish sometime today.



I may decide to do a post on this Presidents Cup later in the week -- I think there are some things to be learned from it -- but today I'll limit myself to a couple of observations.

First, this is the first team competition I can remember where one of the teams was both on form AND healthy. I think this has as much to do with the US Team's juggernaut performance as anything. It's easy to forget that the International Team has been plagued by problems this season, everything from Jason Day dealing with his mother's cancer to Si Woo Kim's back problems to Hideki Matsuyama's broken driver, which I think may have been partially responsible for his remark about his timing being off. (Try to adjust for one club, it will affect all the others. Trust me on this.)

And second, the International Team's performance in singles makes me believe the ultimate problem they face at this point is their lack of team play experience. The weekly Mickelson money games have clearly had an effect on the US Team's ability to get out of their own way and just play good golf. We saw a lot fewer strategic mistakes from them this time around, while the International team made numerous plays during the team sessions that they didn't make during the singles. In other words, the Internationals are basically where the US was a decade ago. They'll figure that out soon enough.

Therefore, while the US Team gets the Limerick Summary this week, the Internationals get some "rhyme time" as well. After all, their play on Sunday was a step above their normal singles performance and a clear indication that they're making progress.

Though by Sunday there wasn’t much doubt
That the US would win in a rout,
Nick Price’s fine team
Found one last head of steam
Just to prove they were down but not out.

The photo came from this page at presidentscup.com.

Some Thoughts on the Presidents Cup

I feel that I need to do a post on the Presidents Cup but I admit I'm at a bit of a loss. The Presidents Cup is important to golf as a whole, yet storylines don't jump out at me the way they often do at other events.



The matches will begin on what is normally the 5th hole, which makes sense to me because most matches will end around the 18th hole (14th with the new routing). Match play is about getting the most exciting play, not about playing every hole. Not really a story, is it?

Team USA has already decided they won't be doing any protests like the NFL has been doing. Again, that makes sense to me. I realize the choice is probably driven as much by public opinion and perceived economic impact as anything, but the current protests are having a mixed effect. The fact is that most people don't want to deal with the real issues that caused the protests in the first place, so the public debate has become one about "respect" rather than the racial profiling and brutal treatment that prompted the whole thing. The existing protests are at least keeping people talking; it will take something else to focus the debate on the real issues -- things which are unlikely to happen at the Presidents Cup. So this isn't really a story either.

But ten of the 24 players are rookies, and only two of them are Captain's Choices. That's something that could potentially be a story. The Ryder Cup considers large numbers of rookies undesirable, so this event is where we get our best chance to see future team players. (A note: The Euros have other team events that they use to "break in" their new guys.)

With six rookies on the US team and four on the internationals, I actually believe this helps the Internationals. The US players may be rookies, but they're more used to playing together. (The Mickelson team practice rounds are legendary!) The Internationals will have two "vets" for each rookie, which should give them more potential pairings for getting production right out of the gate. Don't be surprised if the Internationals get off to a fast start this time.

Finally, I think the language issue is going to be much less important to the Internationals. I believe all of their players except Matsuyama and Kim speak English, and Matsuyama has been here before so that should be less of an issue for him this time. (And if I'm not mistaken, Matsuyama can understand some English, even if he's uncomfortable speaking it.) In addition, this is Price's third time as Captain. If I'm right, that all means the team dynamic should be much better for them this time around.

So who's going to win? As an American, of course I'm rooting for the US team. But I think this Cup is far less predictable that the others have been. I think the teams are much more evenly matched than the stats predict, and I won't be surprised if the Internationals pull an upset. I guess we'll know soon enough.

How to Lose the Same Hole Twice in One Match

In case you missed it, this is one of the craziest rule infractions I've ever heard... and apparently even the rules officials got it wrong!



Here's the deal: The US team of Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson are playing fourballs against the International team of Adam Scott and Jason Day. The teams are all square on the 7th tee. Then Phil tees off with a different type of Callaway ball, apparently to get more distance off the tee. It appears that this is legal in most of the matches.

But according to the Captain's Agreement, this is a rules infraction in fourballs only that will result in an "adjustment" of the score at the end of the hole. Phil was apparently told -- incorrectly -- that he was DQ'ed from the hole so he picked up his ball and Zach finished out on his own.

Now it gets interesting.

Zach lost the hole so Scott and Day go 1up. THEN the score gets adjusted... and Scott and Day are now 2-up. And once they tee off on the 8th, Phil can no longer go back and finish out the hole.

As a result, Phil and Zach lost the same hole twice. And US Captain Jay Haas told GC that they were trying to find out exactly what Phil was told and whether that affects the ruling in some way, so rules official Mark Russell entered the fray. The matches continued, of course, but the momentum had changed as the International team appeared to flip another losing session into a winning one. I don't know that this one match was responsible for all of that, but I suspect it will get the credit. We humans like to have simple explanations for things, after all.

And just to make things more interesting, even the live scoreboard at presidentscup.com didn't get the score correct. They never showed the 2up score.

While I was writing that, Phil and Zach won the 9th hole and went to only 1down. The live scoreboard then showed that match all square... still incorrect.

After the meeting with Mark Russell, Jay Haas received an apology. It seems the ruling committee did indeed tell Phil he had been DQ'ed. which was an error. However -- and we shouldn't really surprised by this, since this is how it works in most sports when the officials make a bad call -- Russell said there was nothing they could do about now. (Will something be done later? That remains to be seen, but I seriously doubt it.)

In the meantime, Phil and Zach got the match back to all square... and the live scoreboard was STILL wrong! And the momentum seemed to be changing again, although the International team still led the session overall.

It's crazy rules like this that make golf incomprehensible to most people, even if they play the game. How did such a weird thing get into the Captain's Agreement in the first place? It seems to me that, since you can't make adjustments to clubs during play, you shouldn't be able to change the type of ball you use either. Rules should make the game simpler, not harder to understand.

The irony of it all is that this could be the very thing that finally turns the Presidents Cup into a competitive match. Remember what happened after 'GimmeGate' at the Solheim Cup a couple of weeks back! The question becomes... who will finally gain that competitive edge?

But given that Phil just holed out from a fairway bunker for eagle at 12 to put him and Zach back in front, I'm not so sure it will be the International team.

Btw, as I finished up this post, the live scoreboard at presidentscup.com STILL hadn't got it right.

The Post in Which I Play Presidents Cup Captain

Of course, later today both American captain Fred Couples and International captain Nick Price will name their two captain's choices... but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun with it before then. Therefore I am going to choose for both captains (I was born under the sign of Gemini, so I should be able to justify holding both positions at once) and see how well I do.

Let's start with the American team. Captain Couples has chosen Jay Haas and Davis Love III as his assistants. The 10 players who qualified on points are:

1. Tiger Woods
2. Brandt Snedeker
3. Phil Mickelson
4. Matt Kucher
5. Jason Dufner
6. Keegan Bradley
7. Steve Stricker
8. Bill Haas
9. Hunter Mahan
10. Zach Johnson

When Steve Stricker played his way into the Top10 at Deutsche Bank, he made life much simpler for Freddie. And Freddie in turn has made my job much easier as he has already narrowed the field. According to GC, Freddie has already reduced his list to 4 players (listed in no particular order here):

• Webb Simpson
• Jim Furyk
• Dustin Johnson
• Jordan Spieth

But it sounds to me like he's already made his picks. Webb Simpson got knocked out of the Top10 by Stricks and Zach, but Freddie said he doesn't see how you can skip a guy who was on the list for two solid years and got knocked off at the last moment. That sounds to me as if he's already decided on Webb.

But Freddie would have to be brain-dead to leave Spieth off the team. If Henrik Stenson is the hottest player on the planet, Jordan Spieth is the hottest American player. He has already done things no other rookie in history has accomplished. How do you leave HIM off?

Furthermore, the other two players on Freddie's short list come up short -- at least in my opinion. DJ simply doesn't play all that well in team play -- he was 1-3-1 in 2011 and, other than his win at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions to start the year, has only 4 Top10s. And Furyk isn't much better, having no wins and 6 Top10s this year. Furyk did go 5-0-0 in the last Presidents Cup but, given the amount of experience already on the team, I feel he'd be a bit of a gamble. As investment funds are wont to say, "past performance is no guarantee of future performance."

If I'm Freddie, I take Webb Simpson and Jordan Spieth... and try not to smile too much.

Now we move to the International team. Captain Price has chosen Shigeki Maruyama, Mark McNulty, and Tony Johnstone as his assistants. The 10 players who qualified on points for them are:

1. Adam Scott
2. Jason Day
3. Charl Schwartzel
4. Ernie Els
5. Louis Oosthuizen
6. Hideki Matsuyama
7. Branden Grace
8. Graham DeLaet
9. Richard Sterne
10. Angel Cabrera

For Nick the picks aren't nearly as easy. Unlike Freddie, who has "rookies" who can claim Ryder Cup experience, Nick's rookies are just that, and most of the players who stand 11-22 on the points list are rookies as well:

• 11. Thongchai Jaidee
• 12. Marc Leishman
• 13. Tim Clark
• 14. Brendon de Jonge
• 15. George Coetzee
• 16. Brett Rumford
• 17. Kiradech Aphibarnrat
• 18. Geoff Ogilvy
• 19. Marcus Fraser
• 20. Hiroyuki Fujita
• 21. John Senden
• 22. K.J. Choi

But beyond that, Nick has two other problems that he must consider as well. First, the Presidents Cup goes to Asia in 2015, and Nick has only one Asian player on his team at this point. Picking Maruyama as an assistant helps, but if he wants to build excitement for the next event he probably needs to pick another Asian.

And then there's the obvious problem that his experienced players simply haven't gotten the job done in the past. The International team needs a win, pure and simple, and it's hard to believe the vets will step up and get the job done THIS time. (That's a greater problem than the Asian one, I think; win this Cup and the Asian players will probably be plenty anxious to get on the team.)

However -- and Tripp Isenhour rightly pointed this out on Golf Central -- K.J. Choi is a past winner at Muirfield Village and had a 3-2-0 record last time. Likewise, although Tim Clark didn't play last time due to injury, his record at the Presidents Cup is really good.

For his own part, Nick says he has narrowed his choices to 5 or 6 players and has singled out Marc Leishman and Brendon de Jonge as players that he's looking at... and looking hard.

Let me add Brett Rumford, who's 7th in the Race for Dubai, and Thongchai Jaidee, who's 18th. Since they play primarily on the ET, they wouldn't rank as high despite their good play. And Jaidee is still #11 on the points list!

So what should Nick do? I think you "split the difference," so to speak. Forget the veterans -- you need new blood. I'd take Thongchai Jaidee and Marc Leishman as my International captain's picks. That way I get 2 rookies who are playing well (#11 and #12 on the points list) and also add a second Asian player to the team.

We'll see how well I've done at 2pm ET today.

And in case you don't know, the official page for the Presidents Cup is right here at this link. Feel free to check it anytime you want -- I give you permission. I AM the team captains, after all.