Presidents Cup Notebook
Janzen's Cup hunches prove correct
Posted: Wednesday December 09, 1998 06:39 PM
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Lee Janzen: "Every other time I missed the team, I knew that was it. But I thought for some reason there might be something." AP |
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- American golfer Lee Janzen left the Tour Championship in Atlanta with two strong hunches that turned out to be correct.
He was 13th in the Presidents Cup standings for the second straight time,
and figured that wouldn't be enough to earn him a spot on the team. He was right -- captain Jack Nicklaus took Fred Couples and John Huston.
"My wife and I had some strange feeling, even after the Tour Championship, that the team wasn't finally set," Janzen said. "Every other time I missed the team, I knew that was it. But I thought for some reason there might be something."
Janzen was selected as an alternate when Hal Sutton withdrew after his father-in-law died of a heart attack.
"The way I got in wasn't great," Janzen said.
Still, the timing could not have been better. Janzen had just putted out on the 18th green in Taiwan when a tournament official handed him a note to call PGA Tour officials. His flight home to Florida was due to depart in less than two hours.
"If they hadn't got ahold of me then, I probably would have been in San Francisco before I found out," he said.
Instead, he made the nine-hour flight to Australia.
Clothes swapping
When Janzen arrived at his hotel room in Melbourne, Sutton's uniforms for the week were waiting on the bed.
The shirts were about the same size, but the pants didn't fit -- Sutton weighs about 12 kilograms (25 pounds) more than Janzen. He soon learned that David Duval was having problems with his tight-fitting pants, and ...
"David's pants fit me better than they fit him, and Hal's pants fit him better than they fit me," Janzen said. "So we just swapped. For the last year and a half, I would like to have been in David's shoes."
Duval has won seven times and more money than anyone in that stretch.
Cup bashing
Don't count former British Open champion Bob Charles among the fans of the Presidents Cup.
Charles returned home Wednesday to play the New Zealand Open and promptly
criticized the amount of attention the Presidents Cup was getting. The two captain's choices for the International team, Frank Nobilo and Greg Turner, are from New Zealand.
Charles predicted the three-year-old event would eventually fade away.
"The Presidents Cup is a non-event as far as I'm concerned," Charles said. He compared it to the Davis Cup in tennis, which used to get the top players around the world but now struggles to get any of the top 30.
"It will be the Americans who start losing interest in it first," Charles predicted, adding that he still enjoys watching the Ryder Cup.
South Africa next?
Once it was decided that the Presidents Cup had to leave the United States, most International team players and captain Peter Thomson agreed that the only logical choice was Australia.
The Presidents Cup will return to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia in 2000 before going overseas again. Next time, Nick Price would like to see it go to South Africa.
"I don't think we could put the pressure on [PGA Tour commissioner Tim] Finchem," Price said, "but I think he understands our feeling on it, and that we sort of believe in the back of our minds than in the year 2002, it will go [to South Africa]."
Price said he's been amazed at the reception the Presidents Cup has received in Australia, and said the event can only be a huge boost to the Australasian tour.
"Those of us from southern Africa want it to do the same for us," he said. "I don't think Australia or South Africa has seen a field of this quality gathered at one time. It would be a huge thing for South African golf."
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