Though the trophy was won by the USA for the 10th time in a row, iced by Keegan Bradley 1-up over Si Woo Kim with five matches still to play, there was still plenty to love about the Presidents Cup.
The writer arched an eyebrow, stroked his goat-beard and rested the butt end of a pencil in the groove between his upper lip and lower nose, the area he learned today is called a ‘philtrum’, and wrote off the Presidents Cup.
“Do we really care if the Internationals win?” it was written. “And if we don’t, is it not almost like … what’s the point?”
The insinuation was: how could we, the people, get ourselves emotionally invested in a team of golfers that represents a claque of countries outside the USA and Europe?
How can we viscerally, vocally support a team of Canadians, Australians, Koreans, and other representatives of far-flung continents, land masses and disparate nation states?
Particularly one which loses all the time?
The answer, of course, was, by watching really cool golf in a really cool format, played by really cool golfers.
Well, maybe not ‘cool’. Golfers aren’t cool. They’re square-eye sportos, in the main, flat-bellies dedicated to a discipline like monks to a gong.
But their golf was great
And, for the weekend at least, at Royal Montreal, it was revenge of the golf-nerds. The International team were rock stars. Lauded. Supported. They were our guys, our Bad News Bears, up against the Evil Empire.
The Cup peaked, for mine, when Si Woo Kim chipped in from hill-side on the Saturday. How about that. He and Tom Kim tearing around the green, a pair of stocky, tubby, third grade club rugby hookers, going silly in the pub on Mad Monday.
Si Woo made some odd ‘go to sleep’ gesture. Didn’t matter what it meant, we all tore around the green / pub with him, the Canucks in the crowd punching the sky, excited like Gretsky had scored a goal in the Stanley Cup .
Maybe not that excited. But still pretty excited, man. It was stadium noise stuff. Very cool. Charged, Visceral.
The Canadian players – Corey Connors, Taylor Pendrith, Mackenzie Hughes – if not anonymous among international golf fans then hardly needle-raisers, raised the needle. They were inspired picks by Mild Mike Weir.
They just didn’t win enough games. Same with the Aussies. The Koreans. Was what it was.
The Americans played their part, of course. The world’s best players were there in their Sunday best, their ‘Tiger Red’, and largely brought the good stuff. They are so very, very good.
The Internationals got about in the black of the Man In Black, Gary Player, but with small if gawdy flashes of gold, like trimmings on a couch at Tony Montana’s place in Scarface. If you will.
The colours told the story. For there on the leaderboard – chunks of red duelled with ‘gold’ or what colour charts call ‘Fuel Yellow’, it says so on the internet.
Regardless, the Americans kept stacking red bricks.
And, in the end, of course, the great denouement, which went the way everyone thought it would. Pat Cantlay’s birdie putt on Saturday afternoon had put a sword in those very Kim twins and a four-point going into Sunday.
And throughout day four, the singles, the American machine just rolled on and on. Implacable. Stone killers. Too good.
And the local fans exclaimed as one in the French of Quebec: buggeur.
Problem for International supporters is that the American team – even without Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Talor Gooch, Patrick Reed and U.S Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, among others – has lots better players.
The International team, like the American one, cannot call on LIV Golf players because the Presidents Cup is run by PGA Tour Enterprises, which is an LLC, whatever that is, something about money.
And money and self-interest rules the world most days of the week, and cares not what’s best for golf. In fact, money thinks it is what’s best for golf. If the elites are getting paid, that’s what’s best, right? Everyone’s happy?
You think Cantlay’s playing the Presidents Cup if he’s not getting a snip from company funds?
Anyway. Enough of the greed-heads. The Presidents Cup was cracking good golf, world class, and a pretty fine contest, even if it was done with five games to play. We rode our team, our guys, as underdogs. Maybe that’s enough of a narrative to keep things rolling.
Royal Montreal was setup tough, shades of U.S Open – so many chips were out of thick rough, which was cool if you like that sort of thing. There seemed an element of chance.
But it was a generic-enough PGA Tour venue.
Be good to see it at NSW or Cape Wickham in the wind, or one of those tree-less tracks in the sand hills of Nebraska. Open, linksy. See the ball roll onto high-stimp, ‘touch’ greens. Make ‘em glass. Test their hands and nerves on ice. Make Keegan Bradley squeal.