Can it really be two whole years since Gary Player, in the gloaming at The Links, rolled back the years and wanted to box with Jack Nicklaus over the result of the Presidents Cup? Ernie Els and Tiger Woods had halved three holes of a play-off and at that point drama turned to farce.
The two captains wanted to agree to a half, but when Nicklaus reminded Player that the United States would retain the trophy in that scenario, the mood changed sharply. There were some potentially ugly scenes before sense prevailed, the half was accepted and the trophy was shared.
This week, battle is rejoined at the Robert Trent Jones course in Virginia, the venue for all three of the previous encounters held on American soil. The US team has beaten the Internationals (a team of 12 drawn from nations outside Europe) every time there, and has only lost one of the five previous encounters, at Royal Melbourne in 1998.
The onus is on the teams and the organisers to pick up the baton thrown down at Fancourt in 2003. The melodramatic end to the four-day contest at The Links finally put the Presidents Cup, largely derided beforehand as a poor man’s Ryder Cup, on the map.
The playoff between Els and Woods should never really have been necessary. Davis Love, one up on Robert Allenby, made an almighty mess of the 15th, handing the hole to the Australian. With all the other matches decided the pressure came firmly down on these two over the final three holes.
Allenby hooked his second shot at the par-five 16th into thick rough and was forced to concede the hole. One up with two to play, Love hit his tee shot to 10 feet on the 17th but missed the birdie putt, meaning that Allenby needed to win the last hole to halve both his match and the overall contest.
The Australian was through the back of the green at the par five in two, Love just short. The American astonished the crowd by hacking his chip a few metres, from where it fell back to his feet. Allenby’s chip was to three feet and he didn’t need to hole it as Love conceded.
With the contest tied at 17 points apiece, the captains sent out their two champions to decide it. But one of many crass examples of administrative oversight from the USPGA meant that when Els and Woods played the 18th for the first time the sun was already packing up for the day.
They halved the hole twice and then teed off for a third time in twilight. Upon reaching the undulating green it was too dark to read a putt, but the two best players in the world at that stage were playing on raw emotion by then, so it hardly mattered. Woods holed a curling 10-footer and, amid unbearable tension, Els followed him in for the half.
This time around Els is not available, out until December with a knee injury, which means the Internationals’ chances are diminished. In match play Els is the master, as intimidating an opponent as Seve Ballesteros was in his mighty prime.
The Internationals are also missing the Korean, KJ Choi, who was a tower of strength at The Links, while in the intervening two years Woods has rediscovered his game and Phil Mickelson has won two major championships. It adds up to a home win yet again, one that is hardly likely to ignite the fires in the manner of two years ago.