Battling the young lions
International team driven to reverse fortune
Posted: Tuesday December 29, 1998 07:33 PM
| |
After taking the Million Dollar Challenge title on Sunday, Price is ready for another prize Eric Perel/Allsport |
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- For Greg Norman, Nick Price and the rest of the International team stung by yet another loss to the United States, the Presidents Cup could not arrive soon enough.
Not long after Fred Couples holed his cup-clinching birdie putt for the United States two years ago that set off a wild celebration on the 17th green of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, the International team filed quietly into its cabin.
What began as a wrapup speech from captain Peter Thomson quickly turned into something more substantial.
"It was sort of an outpouring of emotion," Thomson said. "Something was proved, that this was a team with some power. I think they wanted to play the next week and reverse the result."
One by one, the players rose from their chairs and poured out their hearts -- disappointment in losing, anger at what they perceived to be insensitive treatment by television cameras that showed the wife of Vijay Singh sobbing after her husband missed his putt, resolve to not let it happen again.
"If you could have been in the cabin after we lost ... I don't think any of us really realized how important it was," Price said. "Any of us who were sitting in that cabin that evening understand the importance of this event to us."
The cabin turned out to be much more than a big "kiss and cry" area. From that spontaneous show of support, the International team vowed to change two things -- the Presidents Cup would have to leave America, and the outcome would have to change.
One half of that equation will be achieved when the third Presidents Cup begins Friday (4 p.m. ET Thursday).
The matches will be played at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, a treacherous track with heavily contoured greens that will get only harder and faster as the week goes on. The forecast calls for blustery winds and temperatures pushing 100 with the start of summer in Australia.
"Come Friday afternoon, this is a totally different golf course. Come Saturday afternoon, it could be a totally different golf course from Friday afternoon," said Norman, who estimates he has played about 150 rounds at Royal Melbourne.
The second half of that equation -- an International victory -- will take some doing.
"They shouldn't be too much trouble," Greg Turner quipped. "They've only got about 10 of the top 20 players in the world, haven't they?"
The United States fields what some consider to be one of their strongest national teams ever -- top-heavy with young lions such as Tiger Woods, David Duval and Justin Leonard, complemented by the experience of Mark O'Meara, Fred Couples and Davis Love III.
And for the first time, captain Jack Nicklaus won't have to worry about a Presidents Cup rookie because there is none.
"I've seen enough," said Thomson, when asked if he had scouted the opposition. "It sickens me, so I don't want to see any more."
Still, while the International team has come up short the first two years, it proved in 1996 that it is quickly closing the gap. And it may not be long before the United States runs into the same kind of trouble it has been experiencing lately in the Ryder Cup.
"As time goes on, the International team is going to get very strong," Price said. "The pendulum is going to swing both ways, as it always does. The Americans have won this event two years running, and it may go our way this year and it may stay with us for a little while."
Unlike the Ryder Cup, it is not one country (U.S.) against one continent (Europe), but rather the United States against a conglomerate of flags from Fiji to Japan, from New Zealand to Australia, from Zimbabwe to South Africa and across the ocean to Paraguay.
Two days before the matches, five International players sat at a table and carried on like kids cutting up in class -- Stuart Appleby (Australia), Nobilo (New Zealand), Singh (Fiji), Carlos Franco (Paraguay) and Joe Ozaki (Japan).
"I think one thing we have in common is we come from all over the place," Nobilo said. "Our respective tours aren't the biggest in the world, so we have all had to cut our teeth somewhere else. I think we know how hard it is for people to work, and how much effort goes into trying to play in someone else's back yard."
The backyard this week is Royal Melbourne, which really can't be considered a true home course advantage for the International team since it has only four Aussies -- Norman, Steve Elkington, Craig Parry and Appleby, who played most of his junior golf in the Melbourne area.
Its advantage is being out of the United States, pulled together from around the world and bound by memories of a meeting in a Virginia cabin.
"Those are the things that last forever in a players' mind," Norman said.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
| 
