2022 Presidents Cup

johnmd20

mad dog
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Dec 30, 2003
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JT and Si Woo in a spicy match. JT pissed because he wasn't given a putt. Then he hit a big putt and went crazy and Si Woo answered and also went crazy. JT looked back with daggers.

Daggers!
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
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Apr 21, 2009
8,075
S.E. Pennsylvania
JT and Si Woo in a spicy match. JT pissed because he wasn't given a putt. Then he hit a big putt and went crazy and Si Woo answered and also went crazy. JT looked back with daggers.

Daggers!
JT was a jerk when that putt wasn’t given 5 holes ago or whatever. I hate that crap - someone makes you putt out, no need to give ammunition by yapping about it. If it’s such a gimmie, no need to worry about missing it.
 

Dave Stapleton

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JT was a jerk when that putt wasn’t given 5 holes ago or whatever. I hate that crap - someone makes you putt out, no need to give ammunition by yapping about it. If it’s such a gimmie, no need to worry about missing it.
Lets be clear. JT is a jerk but he’s our jerk. Let’s not pretend
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
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Apr 21, 2009
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Lets be clear. JT is a jerk but he’s our jerk. Let’s not pretend
Agreed - he’s got a Tiger-like chip on his shoulder and not quite the ammo to back it up like Tiger. But he is our jerk and he’s fun on these teams. I just think the gimmie bullshit is annoying whenever it happens. And JT has been shit since that happened and has lost the lead.

Until that last shot on 17.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
24,376
Agreed - he’s got a Tiger-like chip on his shoulder and not quite the ammo to back it up like Tiger. But he is our jerk and he’s fun on these teams. I just think the gimmie bullshit is annoying whenever it happens. And JT has been shit since that happened and has lost the lead.

Until that last shot on 17.
That's why there's this kind of gamesmanship in match play. Sometimes you give them those, sometimes you don't, but the idea is that you mess with the other guy's head. Seems to have worked against JT.

But cool moment for Schauffele to clinch the Cup like that.
 

cshea

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Nov 15, 2006
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Hats off to Immelman and the Internationals. They were dealt a shit hand and more than held their own. Scrappy little group, and they've got a burgeoning star in Tom Kim. I think the next one is in Montreal so I bet Weir gets the captaincy, but I'd keep Immelman on speed dial.

I think the Americans are set up for dominance in both Cups going forward. The depth is insane. They lost DJ, Brooks, Bryson from the Whistling Straigts RC team and didn't even bat an eye. In fact, it's likely that Brooks and Bryson wouldn't have even qualified given their form at the time they jumped. Swap out Kiz for Zalatoris and then there's a battle for 12th man between English, Berger, Horschel or someone else who gets hot over the next year.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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Yeah, Zinger kept saying it yesterday and it's true. American golf is a powerhouse right now. So many great players, and so many of them are young. You never know how their careers will go, but the US has a ton of young, dynamic talent.

It would be cool if once in a while they did some sort of three-team event: US vs. Europe vs. International. No clue how that format could go, but there's a way to play match play of sorts between three competitors. No clue how you'd do the foursome matches. But that might be kind of fun, once in a while anyway.
 

cshea

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Just make it the US vs. the world. Honestly, the US still probably beats this team of the top 12 non-American players by OWGR:

Rory McIlroy
Jon Rahm
Matt Fitzpatrick
Victor Hovland
Hideki Matsuyama
Sungjae Im
Shane Lowry
Tom Kim
Corey Connors
Tyrell Hatton
Tommy Fleetwood
Adam Scott

We'll see how it goes next year in Rome. The US still needs to prove it on foreign soil but they've never been better.
 
Just make it the US vs. the world.
The reason the Ryder Cup matters is that both team stand for something. It's the American national team, representing the PGA Tour, and the political entity that is the European Union (albeit post-Brexit), representing the European Tour. Those tours stood for something in opposition to each other, and although they are drawing much closer together, that legacy of opposition is important. The reason the President's Cup has never mattered is that "International" or "Rest of World" teams can only exist within the context of an exhibition which almost by definition cannot mean anything. How does and did the International team's players have anything in common with each other? Koreans, Japanese, Australians, Canadians, South Americans, South Africans...it's a joke, in the context of playing against an actual national team. If you want the President's Cup to matter, make the teams smaller, not bigger: have a Commonwealth team, and an Asian team, and maybe an Americas team. Heck, include GB&I in the Commonwealth team along with Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc. and have a separate Continental European team (which could also include South America if we want to give everyone an outlet). So we now have four teams - USA, Commonwealth, Asia and Continental Europe - and you could hold semifinals on Thursday/Friday and the Final + 3rd place on Saturday and Sunday, with fourballs + foursomes on the first day and then singles on the second day of each match. More golf for everyone, a guarantee that each match will be closer going into the singles, and some teams which actually sorta kinda mean something, while also including the European golfers in a way that doesn't mirror the Ryder Cup setup.

I didn't intend to watch any of the Presidents Cup, really; I watched a few shots on Friday evening but really wasn't into it at all, for all of the reasons stated above. As it happens I've been watching a replay of yesterday's singles matches for much of the day today, and the singles format is so watchable that it's hard not to enjoy no matter who is playing. But the lack of authenticity in the "Rest of the World" team - i.e., you guys are the leftovers - remains a massive stumbling block for me.
 

kenneycb

Hates Goose Island Beer; Loves Backdoor Play
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The reason the Ryder Cup matters is because they've been doing it since 1927 and there's some level of parity. The Presidents Cup is younger and wholly dominated by the US.
 

cshea

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I didn't intend to watch any of the Presidents Cup, really; I watched a few shots on Friday evening but really wasn't into it at all, for all of the reasons stated above. As it happens I've been watching a replay of yesterday's singles matches for much of the day today, and the singles format is so watchable that it's hard not to enjoy no matter who is playing. But the lack of authenticity in the "Rest of the World" team - i.e., you guys are the leftovers - remains a massive stumbling block for me.
Maybe this is more an NBC thing than anything else but I find singles to be the least watchable. They follow 1-2 matches and then everything else is shots, mostly just putts to win/halve, on tape delay.

NBC still screws it up by alt shot is far and away the best format for TV purposes.
 
NBC still screws it up by alt shot is far and away the best format for TV purposes.
The problem with foursomes (and fourballs, to a slightly lesser extent) as played in the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup is that there are only four matches on the course at once - there's not enough golf being played for NBC *not* to screw it up. It's a great format, but it leaves a lot of dead air to be filled. (Now, if you had eight matches on the course at once...)
 
The reason the Ryder Cup matters is because they've been doing it since 1927 and there's some level of parity. The Presidents Cup is younger and wholly dominated by the US.
In fairness, the Ryder Cup - when it was USA vs. GB&I - was dominated by the USA just as much as the Presidents Cup is now. But I don't think that's necessarily a data point against my idea, insofar as it took the Europe vs. USA Ryder Cup to blossom for the format to matter to anyone, and now the format is accepted as a good one under the right circumstances. I just think that players need to feel like they're playing for something greater than themselves for it to matter. Young Australian golfers don't grow up dreaming of playing in the Presidents Cup for the International team, do they? And that's despite the fact that young Australians in most other sports very strongly *do* view representing their country internationally as the pinnacle of their sporting existence, in a way that many Americans - whose loyalties are almost entirely team-based rather than internationally focused - probably can't fully appreciate.

(I don't think it's entirely coincidental that the best players still in or yet to reach the prime of their career who have defected to LIV almost entirely come from countries that form part of the International team: even though many of them would still have qualified for this year's team, that hardly mattered at all to them, not least because they don't really feel as though they fully fit into a system whereby the best two tours are in the USA and Europe, and those tours are a fundamental part of qualification for the two teams in the Ryder Cup. Whereas if there were somehow a structure whereby they could actually represent their country - or something much closer to it - in a Ryder Cup-style event, maybe that would create some sort of an incentive to not depart. I'm now imagining a system whereby the Presidents Cup was actually contested every other year between the USA and players from exactly one other country, be it Australia or South Africa or Japan or Korea or whomever won some sort of qualifying competition. That might not be enough to make the Presidents Cup competitive, but if the Ryder Cup has shown us anything over the years, it's that unheralded golfers can surpass themselves in team competition when they feel like they're playing for something bigger than themselves.)
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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That might not be enough to make the Presidents Cup competitive, but if the Ryder Cup has shown us anything over the years, it's that unheralded golfers can surpass themselves in team competition when they feel like they're playing for something bigger than themselves.)
Yes that and the fact that in any given round, a guy ranked 250th in the world absolutely could beat the #1 player in the world. Any given weekend too. That's golf. The #1 guy will win much more often than he won't, but that doesn't mean he'll win all the time. In a competition like this, yeah, an "inferior" team definitely can win. That's what makes it fun...you just never know.
 
And FWIW, I tried watching some of the Laver Cup this weekend - the Ryder Cup-inspired men's tennis event - and it left me just as flat as the Presidents Cup historically has. "Europe" vs. "Rest of World" is an exhibition, not anything which is ever going to matter. (Except insofar as Roger Federer was playing his last match this time, and even that didn't get me to tune in specifically to watch him.) Whereas I've always been perfectly happy watching the Davis Cup, and I do at least vaguely - and sometimes intensely - care who wins it every year.