Thursday, August 24, 2000
Unfortunately for PGA, nobody
gives a hoot about Presidents Cup
By Randall Mell
Sun-Sentinel, South Florida
The PGA Tour has a problem.
Nobody gives a hoot about the Presidents
Cup.
The biennial team competition pits the United
States against the Internationals on Oct. 19-22 at Robert Trent
Jones Golf Club in Lake Manassas, Va. There are big names. Tiger
Woods, David Duval and Davis Love III will lead the Americans.
Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Nick Price and Vijay Singh will lead an
international team from countries outside Europe.
Though there's plenty of star power, there's
no buzz about this event. The Ryder Cup has become a blood feud,
and it dwarfs the Presidents Cup. There's no better evidence than
what happened at the PGA Championship this weekend.
The PGA Tour puts on the Presidents Cup
in non-Ryder Cup years, and the PGA of America conducts the Ryder
Cup.
Though this marks the last weekend that
players can qualify for the Presidents Cup team on points, nobody
seems to be thinking about it.
Worse yet, nobody's talking about it. In
fact, there's still more talk about the Ryder Cup fallout from
last year's American victory at Brookline, Mass., the controversy
that emanated from the U.S. celebration on the 17th green and
the furor over the book that got European captain Mark James ousted
as vice captain of next year's team.
Though each Presidents Cup team captain's
picks were announced Monday, nobody were speculating who they'll
be.
Hey, can you even name the Presidents Cup
captains? That would be Ken Venturi for the United States and
Peter Thomson for the Internationals.
Last week U.S. Ryder Cup captain Curtis
Strange was peppered with questions about the 2001 Ryder Cup in
England. PGA of America Chief Executive Officer Jim Awtrey was
grilled on what the organization is doing to curb unruly partisan
conduct of fans.
The Presidents Cup? Hardly a question. Though
the United States was beaten for the first time two years ago,
there's no sense that the Yanks are coming to restore American
pride. That was accomplished with the U.S. comeback against the
Europeans at Brookline Country Club last fall.
The Presidents Cup, being played for just
the fourth time, lacks the history built up at the Ryder Cup.
Any good team competition makes the blood boil, and it just isn't
there.
While the International team cares, there's
a sense the Americans don't.
How does the PGA Tour change that? That's
a question that grows even more critical the day Tiger Woods and
other top Americans decide not to play. The Americans seemed to
lack motivation when they got whipped by the Internationals two
years ago. They were murmuring about the travel to Australia and
how international team competition every year is too much.
If they don't care, why should fans?
A solution might already be in the offering.
Get the Europeans involved. Let the Internationals play the Ryder
Cup winner. When Europeans beat the Americans, pit them against
the Internationals.
Maybe American pride will be stirred when
the Americans sit out as spectators.
James' book, “Into the Bear Pit,”
figures only to fuel European outrage over treatment of its team
during last year's Ryder Cup. His wife, after all, wrote that
American wives were openly rooting for their husbands to kick
Eurobutt.
Still, Strange, the U.S. captain, says he's
working with European captain Sam Torrance to set a civil tone.
“Do I expect them to retaliate?”
Strange said. “No, absolutely not.
“I think etiquette on the golf course,
and it feeds down from the captains, will go down to the players
and to the fans. So it starts with us.”
Tigermania will take its toll, Woods suspects.
“There are a lot of people trying to
see me, and I try to have fun and joke around with the gallery
and sign autographs,” Woods said.
“But it's tough. It's tough when people
are yelling and screaming at each other, so you have to try to
block it out. You would like to say you can, but when someone
is 2 feet away from you and screaming in your ear. ... Now I know
why Arnold (Palmer) goes, `eh?'”
(c) 2000, Sun-Sentinel, South
Florida.
Visit the Sun-Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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