No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 902 - Presidents Cup Deep Dive

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Ahead of the 2024 Presidents Cup next week, Soly and KVV take us on another Deep Dive pod as we go back to the origins of the event and relive the first two renditions of the competition in 1994 and 1996. We also profile the epic 2003 tie in South Africa and the equally epic beatdown delivered by the Americans at Liberty National in 2017. If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining The Nest: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at nolayingup.com/join Support Our Partners: Rhoback OneBars fanduel.com/nlu  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different? better than most. Expect anything different.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another deep dive episode of the no laying a podcast. Sala here here with my guy KVV. I'm especially excited for today. Kevin, how are you? Sorry, I am fabulous. I cannot wait to tell you about the Gary player antics that I have discovered. This is right in our wheelhouse presidents cup. I never really thought of myself as a huge fan of the president's cup, but I kind of remember a lot more of these moments than I realized. I've said this a lot recently. I'll probably say it again next week. I feel like presence cup. We, we shit on it for most of the year when it comes around. It's like, that's kind of fun. It's kind of fun. There's some moments. There's some, you know, this episode is going to be a deep dive into four different presidents cups.

I'm going to start us with the very first one 1994. I'm going to turn it over to Kevin. He's going to do 1996 and then 2003. And then I'm going to anchor us with 2017. I'll be honest up front. I thought 2017 was going to be a little bit more fun to dive back into than it actually was. And we can talk a little bit about that. I wish I had done 98 with the internationals one at Roe Melbourne, but you know, we've got to save some stuff from two years from now we can't we can't kill them all at once. But if you never listened to one of these we what we do is we dive back into the archives read old

newspaper articles, dig up highlights that we can try to tell a little story from these old historical events that were long before podcasting was a thing long before a lot of us were even working in golf long before a lot of us even reached adulthood because in 1994 I was eight years old at the first playing of the president's cup and don't have a lot of memories of it. I was 15. I was just discovering girls and football and not so much doing well with either one but you know it came into my own. We'll give a shout out to our friends at Roebuck. I am absolutely amped for a lot of their fall offerings. They got a hybrid jacket.

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do. Broadly speaking here before we dive back into this kind of what did you what did you learn about the President's Cup and all this and anything that kind of changed your viewing of this event, we're going to dive into all this but just kind of want to kick us off that I guess one of the things that I learned was like that there was this brief idea that they would just have the President's Cup at RTJ like all the time forever. That was going to you know, they even talked

about like, well, you know, they have the the Masters at Augusta every week every year. So maybe we can just have the President's Cup every year at RTJ. And there's some singers that sort of come from that. That's, that's not something that I think I realized. Having seen now President's Cups, you know, it's certainly one in Royal Melbourne, this is really kind of cool, one of the more recent ones, and just seeing them thinking about the idea

of that it moves around all the time, not exactly the initial pitch on this. Well, let's just dive right into it, right? For the very first one, 1994, and I think digging back into this first one, I feel like I understand why we are where we are today, why the event is the way it is, and it was conceived shockingly to me. This was again, very surprising. Did a lot of research on this one. I have a guest that is going to be coming on here

shortly with some audio bits that, you know, tells a little bit of story about how this came to formation. But this idea was conceived in December of 1993. It was approved by the board in March of 94 and announced in April of 94. So conceived in December and birthed nine months later in September. You're damn right. I worked that one in there. But literally, this thing came to fruition extremely quickly. The timeline is very rushed on this. And understanding why was very interesting. I didn't know any of this backstory. So I spoke with Mike Bodney, who was with the PGA tour,

was involved in this event for many, many, many years. And you're gonna hear his voice here shortly, but he explained to me about how, what was kind of going on at this time. So Silly Season in golf is very different then than it is now. There was all these Silly Season team events, many of which I'm hearing about for the very first time.

There was the Dunhill Cup at St. Andrews, which is not the Dunhill links. It was a four man team event, I believe. knew absolutely nothing about that, but sounds like a pretty awesome event. There was an Australasian and Japan tour event. There was also the Nissan Cup, which was a bunch of different kind of countries and tours involved in all that. I don't I don't. I just learned about this today. So I don't have all the research on this, but it was just a scheduling nightmare in the silly season. And the idea was just like, we're going to formalize one big

international team event through the PGA tour. It ended up working out pretty well for, on the tight timeline, because CBS had lost their, the rights to the NFL in 1994 for fall football. So they were looking for programming. So it was not hard to find a, I don't remember when CBS got the NFL back, but I think CBS did the first, at least the first three presidents cups, 94, 96 and 98 at Royal Melbourne. They did as well. There was a big outrage when Fox got the, right? Because Fox was not available, if you can believe this, in every American home. And so there was this idea that like, well, how can I not be

allowed to watch, you know, national broadcast football games was Fox was trying to kind of become a real network. And so it was a changing of it's kind of the invention in some ways of cable news is starting at this point. So but this was the big one, the Cleveland based international management group, of course, better known as IMG had talked about and I believe had announced already. I'm still kind of working through a lot of this. Announced putting on a similar competition and the PGA Tour wanted to run the event, wanted to have their own event, wanted to have control of the event.

IMG's proposal was, in most of my reading of this, thought it was going to be the US against golfers from the Southern Hemisphere. And get this, it was going to be the U.S. against golfers from the Southern hemisphere and get this it was going to be called the Hemispheres Cup. But I mean it's kind of sick. I later learned it was going to be the winner of the Ryder Cup was going to play the players from the Southern hemisphere. Like that was their event and IMG went ahead and announced this in December of 93 but did not have a date or a site. And it was gonna have like the TGL. It was gonna have a purse of $2 million in it, which is a very different model than what the the President's Cup ends up

getting founded on. But this comes from the Edmonton Journal, mindful that IMG was getting serious, the PGA tour decided to move at warp speed. Late last fall, tour officials began scouting the Washington area for sites while the staff began formulating a plan that could launch the event this season or in 96. So this is also like the TGL. I was not expecting all these TGL parallels. A January 94 article in the Palm Beach Post,

I believe from Tim Roafort, said that the tour wanted to host this at Congressional in DC, which I think would have made more sense from the presidential theme of the event. But anyways, very funny article I found from the BC Open tournament chairman, Alex Alexander. He was quick to respond to the possibility of a Ryder like golf tournament being held as early as this fall in DC. And speaking on relations with the PGA, Torrey said, why do I read about these things in newspapers when as sponsors, I would have thought we would have been

informed first, they apologize. So many, many things are repeated. Parallels to modern times. You would not believe how many stuff I found as well on like players. Jack Nichols had to pay a fine or a bunch of players had to play fines for playing in like hitting giggles in the off season for all these like charity stuff like all the same Dean Beeman had to fly straight to a tournament and hand out fines specifically to a

bunch of different players that were playing all this stuff that was not approved and all this is just very much all this. But Alexander, so he's the term director of the event the week before the BC Open or week before a week after, I forget what it was, but like basically had to find out in the newspaper that there was going to be a team event that might disrupt scheduling for his event and kind of throw a wrench in his little silly season event. Does this mean we're modern newspapers, that people who listen to podcasts now and find out of it. So one reason why I'm somewhat disappointed by what I could dig up in 2017, watching the death of newspapers between 1994 and 2017 was staggering.

Like, it's just, there was a totally different, this time period really makes me nostalgic for reading newspaper, which I did all the time as a kid. Like it just was, it was good stuff. It was good. There's just reams and reams of like, anytime you, we look up one of these events, you go to the local paper, like in the newspaper archives that had that, and they would just blow it out,

like four or five writers there, notebooks, like two, three pages every day. It was definitely a bonanza of content back then for finding out no little nuggets. Which I think online like media content has gotten a lot better since 2017. It's all this like bleacher report like, you know, SB nation like quick hit stuff that like isn't is all the viral meet social media stuff that there's no real story to in any way. Anyways, all that to say, it just was it was drama.

It was drama in the race to this. I asked Mike Bodney, who you're gonna hear from here shortly, he did not remember it as being this competition up against IMG in this race to it, but there are many articles that point to it saying like, this was a race to get this one out the door and get it started. But I never had thought of it in terms of like all these weird international events already happening and just saying like, well, why don't we just create one big one? Norman wanted it. VJ wanted it. Steve Elkins and all the international players wanted to play in their own version. I guess I've kind of always viewed it as like just because they've lost so many of them that it just seems like they're sacrificial lambs to get served up for the jingoistic

Americans to be able to cheer on their there and celebrate very hard like they did 2017. But there was a lot of international support for this back in the day. It kind of, it's interesting to think about like the fork in the road, right? Like what if the rider cup winner had ended up taking on like the internationals every year? Like that would be, I mean, you, you don't win the rider cup and then like, how long would the U S have gone with like a never winning a president's cup if they didn't get the chance for 10 years when they kept getting dunked off in the rider cups every year.

That's the hemisphere's cup, not the president's cup. Don't get it confused. Excuse me. Excuse me. Had the hemisphere's cup. They coveted, uh, Freddie couples could have been one of the great hemisphere cup players. I think we should start our own hemisphere's cup, uh, whatever we inevitably go to South America. Anyways, Alex, again, this tournament director Alex, Alex Alexander said, it's absolutely not going to happen for 1994, but will happen someday. And it didn't, of course, happen in 1994. I found one article that intimated that it was potentially IMG who was poking the, if you remember at this time,

the FTC is doing a years long probe into the unfair method, potential unfair method of competition that the PGA tour was acting under. And again, one newspaper kind of theorized that it might be IMG one of the ones kind of feeding info to the FTC or kind of instigating that. Because, you know, Norman was an IMG client and all kinds of just murky stuff there. Again, stuff that is still ruling the day 30 years later. Nothing really changes in golf, sorry. Tim Fincham would say, it's a little hard to build enthusiasm at the start.

So it may take a little while to establish tradition, but the venue, the caliber of players, and the competition could bring it all together. Again, all the proceeds from this President's Cup, this is still how it operates today, are all pooled together and split. I think it's different now, but for the original one, it was all the proceeds are all pulled together and split, or I think it's different now, but for the original one,

it was all the proceeds were pulled together and split amongst 24 different charities evenly amongst each player that played and it got to choose a charity. And now I think it's just a fixed amount that goes to that because I'm sure the PGA Tour saw it as a way to make money. So, all right, so let's build this thing. Here is Mike Bodney,

who is gonna talk to us a little bit about, who's involved with launching this event and what it was like's build this thing. Here is Mike Bodney, who is gonna talk to us a little bit about, who's involved with launching this event and what it was like to launch this event. Yeah, as far as putting it together, it's kind of a blur to be honest with you, Chris. Everything just had to happen so quickly. We're finding people that run a show, people and trying to put together an opening ceremony.

And it was an interesting... The competition part of the thing really was the simplest. We did have to put a format together. We did have to get all of the organizations, the Asia Pacific, Australasian, Japanese, South African, all of those organizations had to be a part of this thing. And there was a declaration that was signed that all those organizations signed it, that they were all supportive of the President's Cup. It was formally done.

It was pretty cool. I mean, it was pretty cool to get all those people in there. And it was really the start of the International Federation of PGA Tours. That was kind of the nexus for that. So there were a lot of things that came out of this, and it came out quickly. So again, a lot of stuff that probably isn't that pertinent to fans. I still don't really know what the International Federation of PGA Tours is, but this was the culmination of that. And it kind of speaks to the organization that was required of getting basically all of the major world golf federations on board and kind of unified and working towards

kind of how the golf world started to kind of come together a little bit more in the coming coming months and years on that front. So here's a little bit more from Mike. I have always worked off of if you can get to 95% with most events of 95% good most events, you've been at it's very successful. You know, I mean, you're going to have 5% that's just going to blow up on you and you just deal with it at the time. But yeah, we got there. We got it there. And you know, the closing ceremony, everything, everything was done. It was so haphazard from, that's really a tough word, but so much was done on the fly, Chris.

It was just crazy. Trying to get all of that together and all the little nits and nats and all the people that were involved that didn't have any idea what was going on because we had done this in six months. It was hard to get that many people in the loop to know what was happening. It had to be kind of a closed group to get it finished. If you get too many people involved in the thing, you'd never gotten it off the ground. It just would have never happened. Which again, speaks to, I mean, coming off the Solheim Cup kind

of commute disaster and all this it speaks to like, again, I can't emphasize enough how rushed of a timeline is to put a tournament together starting in April announcing it in April and you're going to host it in September, like there's no venue yet as in as of March and you got to get it off the ground in September, but it went off pretty much without a hitch and shout out for as much of a hard time as we give the PGA tour a lot of fronts their operations department has been long and

like in control of a lot of this stuff. But there was, you know, there were a couple things that went wrong and Mike did give us one example of one of those. But we got the the golden Knights to do a parachute jump on the 18th green and one of the guys came in and skidded across the green with his boots. And there was a big black mark through the green. All right. Well, I mean, that's just, that's, that's, you asked me, that's the first thing that came to mind. It was like, oh my God,

you know, what do we have here? You know, so, you know, it's stuff like that. It's a, you can't, there's, there's nothing you can do to plan for that. Uh, so anyways, there, he did detail a story later on at a later RTJ one that there, there ended up being a kind of parking slash traffic disaster, not dissimilar to the Solheim one at one of them, not the first one, it doesn't sound like, but it was like a hundred degree day, a bunch of people ended up at some lot waiting on shuttles, waiting in horrible long lines. So maybe we cut the LPGA just a little bit of slack

in terms of getting out to this venue. But yeah, so it's a tight, quick turnaround. So Greg Norman, one of the leaders, one of the go-getters on this international side has to pull out of the 1994 President's Cup very late in the process and was replaced by Bradley Hughes. It's a gastrointestinal issue and his doctors requested he has no physical activity for three weeks. He's got abdominal

cramping, intermittent watery diarrhea leading to dehydration, weight loss and weakness. So as much as it seems a little fishy. A little diarrhea, mate. I'm just pooping my brains out. As much as it seemed fishy, it sounds like Norman was extremely sick at this time period and very much wanted to be there. But Bradley Hughes flew on short notice from Tokyo to Washington on Tuesday managed to attend the white house dinner throne for the players that night.

On Wednesday he said a newspaper said it was not hard to identify Hughes on the practice tee. He was the only one without his own personalized golf bag. He got one later on, but his caddy was just toting a regular bag to start the week. Gerald Ford is the honorary chairman of the event. Oh, that's lovely. And a lot of stuff is written about in November of 93, Paul Aizinger is diagnosed with lymphoma in his right shoulder. He returned to the tour in August of 94 and is serving as co-captain of the US team. And a lot of the US team is rallying around him and kind of, you know,

a lot of people are talking about what it means to have A's in there and for have him to be healthy, which is an interesting time capsule into that time. Other quotes, Nick Price said, this event is being televised in 61 countries and 60 of them are pulling for us, which is an interesting way of looking at it. I don't know how many people are glued to their television sets and this fired up for it, but interesting way of looking at it. Everyone wants us to beat the brains of the Americans. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I would think that there would be some resentment from some of the

people towards South African players, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they were buds. The price is from Zimbabwe. So that's right. Right. I always screw that up. I always think that he's South African. So I think it's fair to say that there was, you know, the players that were involved in this seemed excited about it. They were they were gung ho about it, especially the international players, but there was some lukewarm, you know, messaging across other parts of the golf world. Seve, of course, not a fan. He said,

I think this is bad, very bad. There's only one Ryder Cup. I'm going to abandon the accent there. There's only one Ryder Cup. I appreciate it though. Thank you. I think it's all business and money. The Ryder Cup, it's all the business and money the Ryder Cup has made over the past few years. And they think they can produce a second Ryder Cup. I don't like imitations. I believe not very long after that there was a SEVY Cup. That's for another day. But part of SEVY's disdain stems from President's Cup being the invention of former Commissioner Dean Beeman

who had a lengthy feud with him. He said was hastily organized after IMG announced the plans of a similar event. Three players on the international decline to play Ernie Els. He was committed to the Dunhill British Masters, Tommy Nakajima and Jumbo Ozaki because of a conflicting tournament on the Japanese tour. So that speaks a little bit to the rushed nature of it of already commitments being made by some of the players to other tour, uh, tour events and, uh, they could not back out of those. So Lanny Watkins, not that amped up. He's gonna be the captain of the 95 Ryder Cup team. The following year, he said,

a lot of us have a hard time getting excited about the President's Cup because we're playing against guys we play against every day. Against the Europeans, it's a different tour, different countries. They don't live here. You have some national pride.

How do you get excited about playing someone from another hemisphere who lives over here anyway? Their kids go to school here, they pay taxes. They're just like I am, except they can't vote. They have all the other privileges. It's the American players against the foreign players who play our tour. Sick. I have some good quotes from a Friday couples about this later. Okay, golf world called the president's cup a made for Greg Norman event intended as a supplement for those nonan stars who can't play in the Ryder Cup. Fuzzy Zeller also said it's a made for TV event. That's all it is.

How many more do we need? One column just noted that CBS's intro will say a tradition since April. Okay, that's good. I like that. Volunteers forked. What do you think the volunteer fee was in 1994 for the khaki pants and a white president's cup golf shirt? They have to pay 75 bucks to be-

115 bucks. 115 bucks in 1994 to volunteer. Yes. Oh my God. One of the things that kind of fascinates me is like an alternate universe where people did not decide to essentially just give the PGA Tour free labor for like 50 years. I mean, imagine like if back going back in time, people were like, wait a minute, what? Why? Volunteered for you to put on this business? Like, I guess I have a different perspective on that,

just coming from Dublin, knowing like my parents volunteer and they love it. People look forward to it. It's seen as a privilege really of getting to walk inside the ropes or kind of have access to things and just get to spend your week out there. That's the alternative perspective. For sure. I mean, I get it for sure. If it's your community, you feel like you want to have the pride for it and stuff.

It is funny to me that like a billion dollar corporation kind of sold people on this idea of like, no, no, like this is a benefit to you to pay for these khakis and to come out and work for it these days. I tell you weed out the people that aren't going to show up though. That's, that's how I see it as well. That's true. CBS is airing it. They don't come on the air till 2 PM. I don't think I, I maybe ESPN was airing it in the morning. I couldn't quite figure out exactly how you watch this thing, but international team made up of Nick Price, Steve Elkington, David Frost, Craig Perry, Vijay Singh, Fulton Allam, Robert Allenby, Bradley Hughes, Mark McNulty, Frank Nobolo, Peter Sr. and Sukhaza Watanabe.

Hale Irwin is the, so David Graham is the captain of the international side, which we are going to get to in 1996. I promise I won't step on any of that. Thank you. Thank you. Hale Erwin is the captain of the US team. He bypassed Tom Kite on the team because Kite did not have any interest in playing against the international side of non-Europeans. That is according to the Hartford Current. US team is Hale Erwin playing captain, age 49. Jeff Maggert, Tom Layman, I forgot that. Yeah, Tom layman, Corey Pavin, John Houston, Lauren Roberts, Jim Gallagher

Jr. Scott Hoke, Davis love the third, Fred couples, Jay Haas is a captain's pick and Phil Mickelson as a captain's pick 24 years of age. So again, Mike Bodney was pointing out that the players wanted to wanted this to be set up where everybody played every day. There wasn't like a huge strategy on who you were hiding and who you were sitting. So there are gonna be 10 four ball matches and 10 foursome matches.

And unlike the Ryder Cup, captains will be going one by one to set the match up. So that has been the thing since the jump of a little bit more drama and how you set the match up. So everyone's got to play at least one once each day. Ties on Friday and Saturday will go down as has, but singles matches will be played to completion. More on that in a second. And if the entire competition ends in a tie, one player from each team will go head to head in a winner takes all sudden death playoff. The captains will choose those names on Sunday morning and

put them in an envelope. Foreshadowing for me, so. Yes, hail Irwin's idea for the competition. Finch would say some people said you don't want there to be more points out there you want less points because it creates the chance of a close match. Don't really know where he was going with four on that quote because yes, that's exactly what you would want in theory. And no, we've not had very many close presidents cups.

So maybe a little bit of a miss there for Fincham there would be tweaks to the format in later years to make less matches to give the Europe international is a better chance. But we are of course going to Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, the Daily Press in Virginia, the headline president's cup course, perfect fit for a unique event. Sub headline, Augusta national up North version drawing praise.

Yes, that's exactly what I thought when I was just there at RGJ. This just reminds me of Augusta national. Augusta national up North version. Yeah, we're going to get to some of that. Another quote when a parallel was drawn between what has been going on in Augusta since 1934 and the initial President's Cup from the standpoint of elegance, John Morris, vice president of PJ communication said, I know that's what the leadership aspires to achieve an event

called the President's Cup is such a natural and so appropriate for the Washington area. Robert Trent Jones referred to it as the greatest golf course terrain I've ever seen. Robert Trent Jones, this is a wow. The course that he designed. Yeah, of all the places he's been in design, that's the greatest golf course terrain he's ever seen. I could listen having just been there. The idea that like this place is anywhere near DC is like kind of hilarious to me Like this is like Wilmington, Delaware is closer to my house than Baltimore than the Manassas Virginia is to DC like it's it is a hike down there the idea that like it's the president's cup should be like if the

Exactly what you said if this is a congressional. Yeah, sure. Like that's literally like in the DC suburbs. This is nowhere near that Right. I think that is kind of like, you know, if maybe if they had two more years If this is a congressional, yeah, sure. That's literally like in the DC suburbs. This is nowhere near that. Right. I think that is kind of like, maybe if they had two more years, maybe they would have been able to get a congressional in 1996. But they end up liking this venue. I think there's a great turnout for it. And obviously, they go back to it four times.

I mean, the first four US President's Cups are held at Robert Trent Jones. So there must have been something to like about it. But the course was just three years old. The fairways were a bit too firm. But the course was just three years old. The fairways were a bit too firm. They were narrow. The rough was thick.

The greens were a bit tricked up. Hale Irwin called the six hole the Dolly Parton hole in reference to the large hump in the middle of the green that pushed every approach shot towards the fridge. Hale Irwin could have been a sports writer in the nineties just making these, you know, allusions to the ladies boobs. Well, it's only one boob. Like it's one. I don't really know if this, if this analogy works, but, uh, hail went for it. So that's our captain. I think

Dolly would appreciate that. Dolly's got a good sense of humor. She would have laughed at it. The Friday matches kickoff the U S sets the tone for the events history by sweeping all five morning matches. It also won the first two matches of the afternoon to go up seven to zero. The international salvage two wins and a tie out of the remaining matches. And day one ends, the U S is up seven and a half to two and a half Jay Hawes and Scott Hoke made birdie on 14 of the 28 holes they play. They won six and five and four ball four and three and four sums. Jim got this quote was in every newspaper I could find. Jim Gallagher said birdies were flying around so fast.

I felt like I was in a duck blind. Hey, yeah. Saturday, Nick Price and Steve Alkington have their match in the morning, but then Price fell ill and could not play in the afternoon. The internationals, they battled back on Saturday as they have been done in some recent years as well. Corey Pavin and Lauren Roberts came back from three down with six to play to win their match. And the U.S. took a 12 to eight lead going into Sunday singles. At one point, the internationals led four of the five afternoon matches and had to finish that way. It would have been 10 to 10 going into singles. So the internationals really battled back on Saturday. David Graham, not happy about the

players having to play 36 holes in a day saying, I seriously question whether 36 holes is fair to any of the players. I'm surprised it hasn't happened to more of the players referring to some of the fatigue setting in and Nick Price being unable to go 36 holes on that Saturday. Soft. Come on. You can tell me, does 96 go to the four day setup yet or when do they move things to a full-way setup? No, it's still in the three day setup. Okay, we'll have to dig in to figure out what the first year was on that one. So we get to Sunday 12-8 US, there's a surprise waiting for the players on the first tee on Sunday singles. Can you guess what it is? Is it one of the presidents of the United States? You would think so.

That's kind of where I was leading you to and that question. It's Greg Norman. He has arrived. I can only assume it was by parachute. He joked with Phil that he was there to play him instead of Fulton Allen. I think they also joked about how they were going to destroy professional golf together, but from golf week. And this is undoubtedly stepping on what you have coming next here on the final day of the competition. Norman flew into lens support and arrived on the first team. David Graham said, what the hell are you doing here?

When Norman asked if he could be miked up for the CBS broadcast, Graham laid into him. Not if I have anything to do with it. Graham said, you're not going to take anything away from these players who did all the dinners, all the practice rounds, all the meetings you want to come writing in here and go on national television and tell everybody how great you are. That's not going to happen. Was that in what you had going for 96? Oh yeah. We'll get into a lot of it, but these two guys, both from Australia, both two time major winners Fucking hated each other. I mean less maybe hatred from Norman Zen towards Graham, but Graham fucking hates Norman I mean, absolutely. I don't think that's even like hyperbole. He hates his guts. All right. I can't wait to get to that

So here's an interesting twist and what I mentioned about on Sunday singles your plan until the match is finished There is no having so you go to a sudden death playoff. They go to the 13th hole. So if once you've finished your match, you go back out to the 13th hole, and I'm not positive exactly how this worked if there were still matches out there like how you weave them in, I think we've guys through I'm pretty sure that's how it happened. So like now that you can now they got rid of that you can have matches there. But I remember at Murfiel Village that you just went to

the first hole like that's where you once you finished you went over to the first hole and kept playing. So the US draws within a point of clenching the cup. But then four straight matches went to sudden death and they had to send my god, they had to send them out to 13. One writer said the U S was having as much trouble closing out the match as president Clinton had getting the crime bill passed. So like a lot of the press, there's a lot going on. A lot of the press is watching on TV and the media center because of the

difficulty of covering the 12 matches and CBS breaks into a special report on the crisis in Haiti as the tournament was nearing its climax operation to uphold democracy was underway, which who knows? Everything is cyclical, right? We're talking about Asians now. We're talking about immigrants. It's just, I don't know what to tell you. So that's, that's, that's fast. I am fascinated by the pace of play concerns that might happen. If we just started like looping guys back from the 13th hole in the middle of it. And I don't pray for the TV networks at this, trying to figure out what the, what, you know, in 1994, try to figure out what the winning point is going to be. Do you think they might've lost track of the action? I have a feeling matches going backwards.

I have a feeling. So the report did end in time for Fred couples hits a dramatic shot on 18. He's the hero. It's a fairway bunker shot to the back left pin there on the 18th hole. It rolls into within a foot to clench it. Nick Price had a chip to tie that would have kept things going, but he couldn't chip it in. And it's exciting. Like there's a buzz on the ground.

Players are amped on that 18th green. Ken Manchur says for the first year, they're gonna have a terrible time trying to top this drama. And that is legitimately the only highlight that is on YouTube from this event. There are like two shots in like a less than one minute video from the PGA Tour. So even trying to find highlights from 2017,

I would say, PGA Tour, let's get some people diving into some archival footage. Make a little film about some of this stuff. If you want to elevate this event, let's get some history up on some YouTube pages on this even just like you know for historians Sake right how why can't where all these team matches not available like in full on YouTube? It cannot be too Difficult with the broadcast rights of it Like what just go to the people and be like, you, like we think this would be a good sort of like every I don't know like nfl highlight that you want to find you can basically find in some way one another like nba highlights are readily available

It's just funny that the game that so reveres history is just so unwilling to kind of like give, you know the proper Spot for people like us to nerd out on it 100. Maybe maybe it's too niche of a market Maybe that's true. They've made that determination. But so the four matches that were in sudden, so the U.S. has clenched the cup. The four matches that are in sudden death get pulled off the course and in halves. What? I will say it is a theme of the president's cup that you could kind of make the rules up as you go. There are no things that are like set in stone as we will get to in 2003.

Mikkelsen and Nabilo had already played four holes and then their match just gets called as a half. Couple said it was fun watching the leaderboard, like the singles in the rider cup. It was not quite as nerve wracking. I was actually having a great time getting beat because the rest of the guys looked like they were winning. Then it got really interesting. Again, if they tied, they were going to have to go back to 13 and there was like no fans back there at this point, I guess they had trouble getting like the, you know, people around that part of property, I guess, I don't know. But David's love went four Oh and one for the U S couples went three and Oh,

he was limited in the afternoons because of back problems. Actually, Nick Price, number one player in the world went Oh two and two for the week. He was the only player on the international team to not win a match. VJ went three, one and one in the very first president's cup. So some of the aftermath, the captains had agreed not to reveal who they put in the envelope as the playoff man. And to this day, I don't believe anybody knows who, who was in that, in that envelope. And we've only, we'll get, we'll get to some of that. I will almost separate it. It's it's funny that that that funny that that was such a secretive thing

because that also comes up in 96. It was like Arnold Palmer saying, I will never reveal who I put in the envelope, I guess. That's kind of a cool wrinkle though, I think of the mystery of it all. But it's speculated at the time that the next iteration would be back at RTJ as well as the 98 version. You're going to get to 96 here. Did of course return there, but 98 would be held at Royal Melbourne. Just speaks a little bit to

the early uncertainty of this event. The reviews are relatively solid despite it coming together quickly. Logistics really worked. The fans showed up. They bought merch. CBS got a dramatic finish. David Graham would describe it as unbelievable. Any one person who had any negative thoughts who wrote anything negative, eat my grits. We proved everybody wrong. You know, it sounds like the pacing of the tournament is gonna be up for review with the 36th Friday

and 36th Saturday. When asked if Irwin would be in favor of returning to RTJ in 96, he said, I hope the Robert Trent Jones folks will be in favor of some changes in the golf course, which I do believe happened. Again, I don't know if that's in any of your research as well, but at some point it did. I don't know if it happened between 96 and 98 though. I don't think so. I think it's pretty similar to what it was in 94. It doesn't come up in a lot of my research, so I'm pretty sure that we're just letting it still. The players seem to like the course. I don't think a lot of players were like

super wise to old-school architecture at this point. So they're like yeah you know great tests like good firm, you know good greens, good fairways, nothing really to to pitch about. 94 was a little shakier though. I just think it was you know again maybe they did make some of the changes but Stuart Matthews for the Ventura County newspaper said sure maybe the President's Cup lack the dramatic moments so coveted by our television huddle masses, but by comparison, it's better than watching the Marines toss around Haiti's militia on CNN. So all in all, it was a pretty

good idea this President's Cup. God, please future writers steer clear of like, analogies that invoke military conflicts. I don't even need to, to like bring our guy Cody in here to warn you about this. Like not good. Like that shit is nothing to do with fucking sports. And maybe I've written some shit about that in the past, but I've hopefully I've like come to graphs and mature. Like that is not relevant to this stuff. Three years after the war at the war by the shore,

Corey paved where in military fatigues, all that good stuff. So it's just a, random note, I'm almost done here. I promise. As of September, I found this in some of those old newspapers. There are two players on the PGA tour with over a million in earnings, Nick Price and Greg Norman. How many do you think there were on the senior tour? Oh, wow. Um, I mean, this was like the, the salad days of the senior senior tour was massive. They had two as well. Like the earnings look extremely similar and LPGA tour was not as far behind as it is now. Laura Davies was leading the LPGA tour of the 629,000. Nick Price, I think was like 1.2 or 1.3 million. Like it was it was not the same difference as it is now.

Laura Davies told would have been good enough for 12th on the PGA Tour. Wow. And then officially the the week of the President's Cup Major League Baseball officially canceled their season on September 14 1994 again two days before the start of the event. Good job baseball definitely didn't kick like fucking 10 years in steroids to recover from that. Yeah everything's fine. Golf's gonna be fine on the back end of this as well. So All right, before I throw it over to you, I'm ready to I am but listen, you can line up your first win when you bet this week on FanDuel America's number one sportsbook you'll get started

with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. This week is an off week of the PGA Tour but they got odds up for the BMW PGA. Rory is plus 550, odds subject to change. Of course, I got the US at minus 250, the internationals plus 270 to win the President's Cup next week. I love following that live to keep an eye on that live. It's really fun to go through the course of events, just kind of seeing what the oddsmakers think of what has happened so far in the event. Also, check

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bonus betchers expire seven days after receipt restriction supply see terms at supportsbook.fandool.com all right kev take us to 1996 i'm very excited for this 1996 the year i graduated from high school we are going where saw you already alluded to it back to robert trent jones yes for the second straight time, it will be held on American soil. We still don't quite know exactly when the Cup is gonna go international at this point, but everyone is sort of feeling like,

hey, you know, there's some budding momentum of this event. This is still kind of the era where we're having to explain to the American public what the President's Cup is. One of these sort of pitches that they've kind of asked the people who pushing it, like the Gary McCords and the cost is Peter cost is our the names of this are bigger than in the Ryder Cup Gary McCord is quoted by

the Roanoke Times as saying the international squad has the real show ponies it's much more of a marquee team than the one the US plays in the Ryder Cup seems like heresy but there this is the line they're going to push. Fred Kuppel, however, kind of describes the President's Cup in his acerbic way as the US versus Florida, because most of those guys live here already. The captain of the President's Cup for the Americans won Arnold Palmer. Arnie is sort of, you know, he's playing less senior golf at this time, but he really wants to kind of take his hand at this. He says in his autobiography, being selected to serve as captain in 1996 was a thrill that almost stands by itself. He said this in his book, The Golfers Life. And who is the captain of the international team? Well, that's a bit of a story that we alluded to already. David Graham is asked to return as the captain of the internationals. He didn't really think that he was interested in doing it.

He sort of asked Hale Erwin if Hale was going to come back and captain again and Hale said no, they had no interest. But when Arnie gets chosen as the US captain, Graham immediately says that he wants to do it again. Graham is a two-time major winner having won the PGA championship at Oakland Hills and the US Open at Marion. So he's got a good resume. He's one of the great Australian players of that era. Graham actually wrote a sort of a book about his time.

This, I wasn't able to kind of track down the book of it, but I did find some reviews of it, which sort of get to the gist of what happened. Graham is, you probably saw in some of your research, very much like a workaholic, loves to sort of nail all the details, tirelessly kind of getting like the uniforms and the transportation and everything right. Also terrible, terrible at communicating with other human beings. Does not essentially, Graham's philosophy was, I want the guys to show up on the first tee, having not had to think about every anything at all. And everything will be have been taken care of of for them.

He did not tell the players that this was his philosophy. He just sort of assumed that they might know. So the international team gets increasingly pissed because they feel entirely in the dark. And you alluded to some of this, but there's a bit more detail in this. He manages to piss off the three biggest international players who are gonna be on this team. Number Number one, sort of alluded to is Norman. Norman had showed up at

the 1994 president's cup. Of course, Graham sort of said to him, you know, this is not Greg Norman's tournament. It's a 12 man. It's not your team. You are not going to be miked up for the booth here. And apparently the certain several people, the one of the quote they didn't quite have solid is that he said to Norman, this isn't going to be the fucking Greg Norman show. I saved that for you. He threw an F-bomb in there. But it wasn't the only person that he sort of pissed off. He also pissed off Steve Elkington, apparently, by refusing Elkington's request to let him

leave. He and his wife leave a pre-tournament reception at the White House. Elkington's wife was pregnant at the time, started to kind of feel like a little bit sick. The Elkington's didn't want to be rude and just bail out of there. So they asked Graham if the entire team would would leave and Graham said, hell no. He said, Graham later, they tell this to Adam Schupack 25 years later, he said to elk fine, I'll get you guys a car. Elk said, well, we all have to go. And he said, there is no

way the whole team is going anywhere. End of story. So Elks pissed off the Elkington's later claim that Graham was overheard calling Mrs. Elkington a bitch. Oh, that's not good. That's not good. Yeah, that's Graham. Graham denies this says that's bullshit. But the Elkington's sort of claimed that for years. Jaime Diaz wrote a really good piece in Sports Illustrated kind of unpacking some of this controversy. Graham also managed to piss off Ernie Els when Els decided to play in that Dunhill thing in 94. But he said to the press, I hope Ernie Els will regret not playing in the President's Cup for the

rest of his life. He then wrote El's a letter asking him to reconsider, which El said he did not appreciate sort of trying to be bullied by David Graham. So years later, like he in detailed in this Hamidias article, a lot of the international players kind of were growing resentment. They were pissed. Craig Perry, who was an Australian sort of a friend of Graham's, told Jaime Diaz, David got off on the wrong foot with the wrong players. The nuts and bolts of it is he's not a good people person. If something doesn't go his way, he attacks.

So at the 1996 British Open, the players meet and everyone throughout history kind of believes that Greg Norman is the ring leader of all this, that Greg is pissed about being sort of insulted, uh, not letting him do the CBS, uh, in the booth thing. And that he's going to basically like rally people to oust, uh, Graham as the captain and sort of rubbing salt in the wound is that they want as

a replacement. Peter Thompson, the great Australian player who won five open championships. This is Graham's longtime nemesis too. So he's like, uh, eventually he'll be very pissed about this. The players debate it, meet it over. Norman tries to kind of take a step back pretend like this is not his idea, but ultimately like nine of the players in that room decide that they're not going to sort of vote him a couple of abstain because they feel like they don't

have enough ability to make a decision. They weren't on the previous Cubs team, but they're basically like we're done with Graham. He's we're gonna sort of route out some. We just have to figure out how to tell him. Uh, and word they don't tell him like straight up there because they're worried about like the reaction of it. And I believe, uh, you know, Mike Bodney is kind of asking them at this point to just pump the brakes like, please, please, please do not do anything just yet. Let's wait till Fincham gets word of this and comes around. And by the time they talk to Fincham, like Fincham is like, what the fuck? What are you guys seriously going to do this?

And they they basically offered to boycott the President's Cup if they don't go well, Fincham doesn't go along with this. They do not want Graham there. So I believe, Sally, that you have a quote from Mike Bodney about just the sort of the pain and mess that this caused for everyone involved. It was Michael Campbell that abstained in the meeting for the record, but here is Mike Bodney talking about the mutiny. How do I want to approach this? There was a meeting at the British Open. The international team had a meeting and at that time they decided that they were unhappy with the captain that they had.

It was probably, of all the years that I spent doing this event, it was probably the lowest point that I had to deal with. It was a terrible, it was awful. It was really, really awful from so many perspectives. It was knee-jerk. It was, you know, I'm not going to get into the personalities or anything. I just, I don't want to do that. I feel uncomfortable doing that.

But it was really a shame that there was this kind of feeling and desire to want to change the captains or the captain. I mean, they were adamant. The players were pretty adamant. They sat there. There were a few guys in the room that were a little more boisterous than others, Chris. They kind of held the day and ended up being that they came up with a guy's name, Peter Thompson, who they wanted him to replace the existing captain, who was David Graham.

It was a terrible time, a terrible, terrible time. It was really, really not fun at all. So this is from Jaime Diaz in Sports Illustrated. From his home in Dallas, Graham, who knew the players' meeting had been scheduled but had no idea that his fate would be top of the agenda, was returning a call from his friend Craig Perry several days earlier. Hello, Craig, said Graham, his voice upbeat. How did the meeting go? Perry swallowed hard. My first thought was I've got to tell him Perry said, I'm not going to lie about it or keep it from him. David Perry heard himself say, the players

would like a new captain. With those words, any hope of gracefully salvaging what turned into the one of the most embarrassing and regrettable incidents in recent history of golf was gone. The following evening, when he resigned during a phone conversation with Fincham, Graham became the first captain of national or international golf team to be fired by a vote of his players. Graham basically says, like as he as he says, he's gonna go

away. But he's basically like, I'm also gonna sue you fuckers. Like I am. Yes, like he is not going away quietly. When the tournament starts, he's at like a senior tour event. And so some of the people kind of go up to him and are like, Hey, you know, what do you think? And he's basically like, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure out like how to sue you. He says, you, I don't know where I'll have standing. I don't know where exactly like this will go. But I am, I'm furious about this. And and he held a grudge for years and years and years like he never sort of like forgave Norman at all about this he said years

later talking to Adam Schupeck when I first heard that I had been ousted from the 1996 cup I cried get toward the end of your reputation and your credibility you take it personally I cried absolutely and so did my wife when asked if he could ever forgive the collaborators, Graham replied, I won't forgive the wound is healed. But the scar is still there. Wow. He's always kind of said, essentially believe that Norman was at the heart of it. And although you never Yeah, come on. But it wouldn't watch that audio clip of Mike buddies like I

won't get into the personalities. I took everything in my power not to yell, great Norman. It's great Norman. I told the Washington Post years later that he got a phone call from Norman after the British Open with Norman claiming he did not lead the mutiny. But Graham since has come to believe, of course, that Norman played a key role. I think Greg is the instigator, but I can't prove it, Graham said. If he is, then his phone call makes him a liar. I know one thing. I'll never sign another shirt or hat with a shark logo. I mean, I don't know exactly why David Graham would be asking to be signed Greg Norman

shirts, but, uh, so like a lot of talk, like it's going to be a black eye for golf. Like it's, uh, you know, everybody's saying like, Oh my God, like this is just an absolute mess. The final act of basically like what was called like the house read this paragraph again from Diaz. The final act was an official announcement of Graham's resignation. According to Perry, several players wanted to release a statement that Graham had decided that his

commitments to the senior tour and golf course architecture had made it impossible for him to continue. But tour officials were against that strategy. The word was out and Graham might not play along. If we had said that David is resigning because of the senior tour and the real story had gotten out, it would have been the worst possible nightmare, said one tour official. So we just decided to bite the bullet. As a result, it was probably the most factual and honest press release in the history of the sport. Basically, the press release basically said the players have decided going forward that they like their chances better with a new captain. and honest press release in the history of the sport. Basically, the press release basically said, the players have decided going forward

that they like their chances better with a new captain. Which I was going to say, it's amazing that they didn't choose the other way considering how PGA Tour comms runs at times. For sure. Graham, however, later said that he regretted not being given the opportunity to go out more gracefully. I wish I had been paid the courtesy of saying it was my choice. If Tim could have talked to the players, talked the players out of what they did, I would have considered continuing, though I was certainly

canceled the captain's dinner. I can't understand where it all went wrong. If at any point the entire team had gotten up and said, we hate David Graham, I would have said, okay, you guys, sorry, I'm out of here. I mean, David Graham didn't become an asshole eight weeks before the president's cup. Those players had 10 months, a year and 10 months to figure out that David Graham is an asshole. Truly an all time fucking great quote right there. Again, like during the president's cup, it's still going on. He's still talking to the media. There's no question to me, he says at the senior tournament that Greg was the instigator. How do I know? There's no question to me. He says at the senior tournament that Greg was the instigator How do I know David Frost told me that VJ Singh told me that a few guys had a personal vendetta I was also told that Norman wanted to get rid of me from the first day. I was nominated He wanted to wait until closer to the event to humiliate me the whole team owes me an apology They called caused me and the president's crop a great deal of embarrassment

Graham later moved to Montana where he kind of got away from golf. He said he'd never gotten apology for the way he was treated. It would be worthless to apologize on anyone's part. When asked about Norman's role and CEO and live golf, Graham said, I think he's laughing all the way to the bank. I think he's loving all the attention. He's clearly an egomaniac and he has been like that forever. He's clearly an egomaniac and he has been like that forever. Sick.

Yeah. So Peter Thompson, Australian legend takes over. Basically Thompson says he's going to issue like a blanket. We are not commenting on David Graham. So a couple of times throughout the tournament, in the lead up to the tournament, the media tries to kind of get Norman and others to unpack and they fall back. Can I read one other quote from that article? Just cause I see this sitting here and this wouldn't register with me. This was Brian Allen. It was the executive director of the

Australasian tour was in the meeting at the open said, we all made arguments that it would hurt the event that it'd be the black guy for golf and that it would make the players look like traders. At one point, Mike Bodney asked, has anyone given any thought to how David Graham is going to react to this? And when the response was silence, Alan said, I've known the bloke for 25 years. He is not going to take this gracefully. I can assure you, he's going to shit on you from great height. That's an incredible quote. It is truly. I thought on my notes too, when I sort of rushed past David Graham as an asshole. I had that on my notes too when I sort of rushed past it and I did the David Graham as an asshole.

So anyway, moving on. It's Arnold Palmer versus Peter Thompson. Two of the game's greats. The Eden Baker Finch is named a non-playing assistant captain. The American team is made up of Phil Mickelson, Marco Mira, Tom Lehman, Mark Brooks, Davis Love, Corey Pavin, Scott Hoke, Steve Stricker, Fred Couples, Justin Leonard, and Oral Palmer with his two captains picks selects David Duvall, 24 years old at that point, and Kenny Perry.

On the international side, Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Jumbo Ozaki, we will get to in a second, Nick Price, Steve Elkington, VJ, Frank Nobolo, Mark McNulty, Craig Perry, David Frost, and the two captain's picks for the internationals are Robert Allenby and Peter Sr. So like not on this team is one Tiger Woods not quite having acquired enough points here. He's only played in basically five PGA Tour events at this point. All he is at quickly rising up the rankings. And currently, you know what is going on during the President's Cup is that he is at quickly rising up the rankings. And currently, you know what is going on during the President's Cup is that he is competing in the Quad City Classic.

Where, yes, that will come up later. So in the sort of lead up discussion of the Cup, well, you know, there's some talk about, well, should we just keep this at Robert Trent Jones all the time? Greg Norman is adamant that he wants the President's Cup to eventually go on the road. He said, we would love to move it anywhere outside the United States,

whether it goes to Australia or South America or Japan, we really don't care. We'll all go there. We feel strongly about that. We've got to give those countries people a view of this event. W for Norman there. Like that's odd. That's it. I think you can make the case of the President's Cup should only be played internationally but that's a rare dub for for mr norman uh to which fred couples responded maybe they could move it to orlando that would be their home country he's obsessed with this thing is he mad that they live in the u.s i don't understand this bit

i do like fred gobbles just constantly like zinging the shit out of the international for living over here in the United States. Just like, you guys are like the from the country of Orlando. One of the big stories leading into the international squad is is that they have jumbo Ozaki jumbo of course, who a long time favorite of ours, the original WGR manipulator. So we've cracked a lot of jokes about jumbo over the years, but I kind of loved reading about him. I would honestly, we might have to do a whole pod about Jumbo. The Roanoke Times did a little mini profile of him during the event.

Apparently, the internationals were insistent that he play this time around because obviously he wasn't a member of the previous team, having a previous commitment. You know, I guess I've seen this before, but it sort of just struck me. He won 85 times on the Japan PGA Tour. I did not know this either, but he was a professional baseball player before he turned to play pro golf, which is sick. Norman said that in the lead up to this that he is more popular in Japan than Michael Jordan is in America.

Yes, we have the Steve Elkingtons and Nick Prices and Ernie Els is in myself, but Jumbo has been dominating that region. We needed J jumbo to play. It wasn't just me who wanted him. All 11 players brought him up. Another reason they wanted him is because he had international experience, which a lot of that was like in a team event. A lot of these guys did not. He played in the 1971 ABC cup for Japan. Uh, because we were talking about all these kind of like silly season, wacky things. Now, 1971. Yes. It doesn't jumbo at this point is 49 years old. So he has lived in a fascinating life. All the way back in 1971, he was competing in team events. This is like you wanting Keegan back on the teams for it because he was on a good team

like 25 years ago. Damn it, Sully. How dare you. And Ozaki says through an interpreter, at the PGA championship, when I met Mr. Norman, he really welcomed me and I felt his warmth of appreciation to play this event. Because of Mr. Norman, I decided to play. Norman. Yes, I think Norman has like a kind of a little crush on jumbo because he's describing him in these quotes like he's like a Norse god like a comic book figure. jumbo is probably as long as Tiger Woods, Norman said he's as long as VJ and Ernie. He's got a lot more years in him than those guys. So that tells

you what his fitness is all about. From a playability standpoint, he's just sheer power. He has the ability to overpower par fives with his length. And obviously he's got the short game to go with it. I'll give you an example. He's won five of the last nine tournaments he's played in in Japan. I don't care where you play you have to play some good golf to do that People have this idea that Japanese players are small in stature and not as strong as guys from the Western world But I'll tell you what two hundred and ten million people are about to find out What these guys from Japan are really all about they can play golf He is going to be the last to hit in every match,

no matter who he's playing, because he's so far out ahead of everyone else. I didn't know this was aired on caffeine TV. You got to just like love that like hyperbole has basically been Greg Norman's middle name forever. Like we've got billions of people watching us. 210 million people. Thought this was the first time we hear this, but you had sort of gotten this research that the President's Cup will not cannot end in a tie. The captains each spit a name in their envelope and the players will face off in a Southern Death match to decide the cup. Arnold Palmer asked about who we would put in the envelope. He said I

would like to hope and I do hope that no one will ever know who it is that who is in that envelope, but me, because I am never going to tell anyone else. So, prior to the competition starting, there's a minor bit of controversy when Peter Thompson, who also had his name misspelled wrong. That's a fair one. Yeah, that's a fair one. I think I have misspelled Peter Thompson's name wrong several times, so I can't really among any-

No P, it's not spelled with a P, which is, that's asking for a slip up. He says in one of the pretermist press conference where his name is misspelled that Greg Norman and Robert Allenby, I think they're invincible, frankly. Robert Allenby? Yeah. Shout out to Mark Wahlberg and invincibles everywhere. I think Allenby thought he was invincible with that one night in Hawaii as well. Apparently Arnold Palmer read this statement to the players in the team room calling it

a challenge to their manhood, which is very sick. It's very Arnold Palmer. They're challenging your manhood. So Thompson sends out Norman Allenby first and Fred couples and Davis love asked to be sent out first because they know they want a piece of Norman. Oh yeah, let's go. And our boys, couples in love, they put them down, they beat them two and one. And love says afterwards, I think Peter Thompson kind of laid down the gauntlet with that challenge.

In fact, on the first day, it was the whole American squad who looked basically invincible. Mikkelsen and Pavin defeated Vijay and Jumbo. Apparently Jumbo was not quite the Norse god that I described him as. Marco Mira and David Duvall defeat Elkington and our handsome New Zealand, Italian pirate Frank Nobolo. Stricker and Lehman defeat Nick Price and Peter Sr. The afternoon is nearly as bad. Elk and Vijay were the only winners for the internationals defeating Lehman defeat Nick Price and Peter Sr. The afternoon is nearly as bad. Elk and Vijay were the only winners

for the internationals, defeating Lehman and Stricker. Couples in love also beat Norman and Allenby again. Nick Price is so pissed about his putting, he snaps his putter over his knee on Friday and is forced for the rest of the tournament to use Allenby's backup putter. Nobolo chalks that up to the internationals' unfamiliarity with match play and their teammates, which actually kind of did

make sense to me. I thought about it. It's like these guys have never really played any of these match play stuff. Like they didn't have any kind of Ryder Cup, Kurtz Cup, Walker Cup stuff to do. And so they were sort of unfamiliar about it. I will say this is basically the international squad essentially stages a second mutiny. Gather around the 18th green and dictate to Thompson what they want to change for the next day they basically want to rearrange all the pairings to their liking. Navola said we don't know whether we should put guys from the same country together or put long head long hitters together we just

needed to figure it out Peter was sitting there listening to like 60 different scenarios Nick Price said the guy this guy wanted to play with that guy and that guy wanted to play with that guy and that guy wanted to play the other guy eventually said, Okay, okay, I've got your idea. And off he went to rearrange the pairings. Whoa. This is the rare bloodless coup that is effective though. The international surge back on day two and they win seven out of 10 matches. Only Marco Mira and Scott Hoke pull out of victory

enforcems that afternoon. Otherwise, the matches would have been tied going into singles. Peter Thompson says, everyone must admit this event has finally come alive. The first day rocked our people. They were shocked by the pace of play with a lot of birdies and really hot stuff. But when faced up to that, they faced up to that Friday, they came out with better attitude and a few implements. They were the much more effective side today. I think the thing that we really did well Nick Price said is we paired the right people together. So we got ourselves a competition. They're

only a point apart. Also though that Saturday news comes across the television the wires that Tiger Woods is leading the Quad Cities and an exodus happens Exodus happens in the press room reporters from the New York times, the Dallas morning news, the Orlando Sentinel sports illustrated among others, leave the event to go and cover what they believe will be tiger's first professional victory. Whoa. Yeah. Uh, but of course what happened, Sully, the gripper, Ed Fiori walks down, tiger, he ends up finishing fifth. Uh, I will not get his first PG Tour victory until Las Vegas later in the year. But anyway, so back to the singles matches.

All right, so the internationals need to win seven of 12 matches. The US needs only a split. It goes about how you would expect for much of the day with Craig Perry defeats Mark Brooks easily. Craig Perry, pretty good player back today. Devald defeats Peter Sr. Mark O'Meara caps off a 5-0 week by beating Nick Price, one up. Huge win, definitely an upset in some ways kind of helps to side the cup here. David

Frost just absolutely slaughters Kenny Perry 7-6. Stricker and Hoke and Love rattle off three wins, but then the internationals rip off four straight wins. Elkington, Ells, Nobolo and Norman all win their matches. And it becomes clear it's all coming down to the final match. Fred couples versus VJ sing when Norman closes out, Corey Pavin couples and VJ are the only match left on the course. And the score is notched at 15 and a half. Remember no ties here. We have to go extra holes if we have to. So it's kind of a really cool scene because when there's no other matches, like everybody is like following this one match.

Freddie is actually up to at this point. He's played pretty well. VJ is the much, you know, sort of more decorated player. Fred's had like back problems here and there. He hasn't been, you know, quite the player he was back in the early nineties when he won the masters. VJ flags it on 16 hits it to like four feet, cuts the margin to one. They both had good drives on a decent approaches on 17, but Freddie is like 30 feet away and VJ has like a 50 VJ has to win the hole to, you know, basically he can't let Freddie win the whole to otherwise the match

is over. And everyone is around 17 green kind of watching this unfold. Freddie drips in a 30 foot putt and just goes wild like running around the green. Surprise the internationals don't talk about this still years later like Brookline because he's like hugging people. VJ still has a putt like a 15 footer to extend the match. He's clearly kind of rattled. Although you cannot see footage of this because all the highlights on YouTube cut off before he just putt. We never get to see VJ's putt actually, but several newspaper accounts describe him and SportsListJ describes him as sort of rattled.

He misses it. And the United States has won the President's Cup for the second straight year. The next year, the President's Cup will go on to Melbourne. Norman gets his wish and it goes international. But it is seen as like a very, quite an electric event happening on a football Sunday. Everybody is like, you know that the President's Cup has truly come

alive, even though you know yours was closer. The final score didn't really feel like it, but this was like any match could have flipped it. And so we have ourselves an actual rivalry here. That is budding. I love it, which yeah, I mean we're not. I wish I wish I would have done 98 which we go right into the only time the internationals won would be the very next one. And we go two home wins, one very close, into another home win, which changes the cup over.

It's like, got to a great start in terms of, and we're going to get to 2003, I think, here, which an era when the Presidents' Cup was quite close and interesting. So now we come to the meat of my favorite, uh, presence couple of all. To give you just a quick break on this one nugget I found about 1998 was, uh, that jumbo Zaki qualified for it was age 51. Uh, but decide he finished fourth in the national team rankings, but decided not

to play at least in part because his brother was 11th in the rankings and then made the team because his brother was 11th in the rankings and then made the team automatically. His brother, Naomi, Chi, Joe Ozaki was 11th in the rankings. And when jumbo decided not to play, Naomi, Chi made the team at Royal Melbourne. I actually have a picture of Naomi Chi here. If you give me a second, I think I might be able to upload it. It is like a truly awesome picture of him holding the trophy on his head. Because as you know, the internationals did win that one year. All right. So I believe I actually have a picture of this here. I was doing some research thinking about doing 98. And this is when the internationals won for the first time, you will see the younger Ozaki is an awesome picker. Yes,

probably one of the best presidents cup pictures of all time. He's wearing the president's cup trophy on his head. Made the team because his brother didn't want to be on the team. That's fantastic. We should keep bring that rule back like you just you can pick a younger brother. Good free chase chase. Go hang on. Hang on the Hoyt guards. Yeah. So that's a that's a good summary of the initial start to the President's Cup, but I think we're going to get to the real meat of what I love here, which is the 2003 President's Cup, probably

my all-time favorite. I'm very excited for this. So the 2003 President's Cup was scheduled to be held in 2002. Because the Ryder Cup was pushed back a year because of September 11th. This was pushed back a year as well. It is held at the Fan Court Hotel and Country Club in George, Western Cape, South Africa. Can you guess who might've designed the course there in South Africa, Zali? Zali Iskra I would guess God played a hand in this. I should not be stepping on your

territory here. Trey Lockerbie No, you're welcome to do it. There's no bad Gary Blair impressions. It is of course Gary Blair. And of course, the captain of the international squad this year is Gary Blair. In some of the lead up to the President's Cup this year, it's seen as a very big event for South Africa. South Africa is really not that far removed

from electing Nelson Mandela as their first ever president and the sort of horrors of apartheid. And so in some of the buildup here, we have Ernie yells and Tiger Woods get to meet with Nelson Mandela, which Tiger Woods were a pretty sweet shirt there. You know, it's kind of Nelson Mandela jokes about golf with them.

You know, Gary Player always said that Nelson Mandela was a golfer. I don't know that I actually believe that, but nice picture of sort of unity here considering some of the complications of the country. This is back in the day when the Gary player, this, the course is described, Sully as the fairways have so many humps and mounds. They seem better suited for a motocross bike race or perhaps freestyle skiing with moguls if the Southern Cape ever got any snow. To which, you know, he's a little still young at this point, but we have the motocross racer

here. You could have probably done well with him. Or of course we have someone who's good at skiing here was Phil Mickelson. Yes. I knew Phil was a big skier. I had to Google Phil Mickelson and Yes. I knew Phil was a big skier. I had to Google Phil Mickelson and skiing. And luckily, that picture. I was like, is that Freddie Schuster?

Who is that kid? That is Phil. Remember, Phil famously broke his leg and missed like half of a season. I think it was 94 he broke his leg. Yeah. Or 93. Yeah, whatever.

So this is a very important Presidents Cup to Ernie Els, in part because he's sort of welcoming everyone to South Africa and wants to sort of show them that, you know, it's not this backwards nation. It's a nation that, you know, has a lot to sort of be proud of. He says, we're still nation building and this is a big deal for a country to unite and show the world that we can host big events. Gary Player, of course, is just a treasure chest of good quotes. What? Yeah, for this. Gary says, I really believe in time that we will produce our own black

tiger woods. It would be fantastic because I have to tell you, we have got some wonderful athletes in South Africa that are starting to play golf. Jack actually gets sick during the early part of the tournament, which he chalked up to bad barbecue. If you want to imagine Nicholas up all night pooping early at the President's Cup. Why do I have a feeling Gary was involved in that as well? All we need to do is give Jack some roasted crocodiles. See how he likes it. Jeff Slooman, who's never played a Ryder Cup or a President's Cup is in charge of the opening pairings because Jack can't make it. Gary says again later, the

young kids in the villages of Sowatale and other villages in South Africa, most of them have got a TV set or somehow, when they can see that the number one and number two players in the world are both black, it is an awfully big dream. It is a dream that can be fulfilled. American players did not love having to travel to Australia for the President's Cup on the road in 1998. Many of them said that they did not have enough time to do their Christmas shopping and they

had to shop online instead. This is according to Doug Ferguson of the AP. They do arrive, they're trying to have a better attitude about it. They also are sort of joking about they didn't feel like they were treated particularly well in Royal Melbourne the previous year, where they lost they got, you know, house house 20 to 11 and a half. Davis Love and Jim Furek recalled the previous cup saying that John Howard, the

Prime Minister of Australia handed out gold medals to the winners. And then he said, handed out gold medals to the winners. And then he said, now the silver medals for the losers love said, that's the way he said it. It really sunk in that we got killed. Derek said we all went, did we just hear that? Right? I'm sure the gentleman didn't mean anything by that. But the timing wasn't great. I was like, okay, yeah, great. Thanks. Ernie Ernie, uh, offers the invites all the internationals to his beach house on after the Friday matches to drink a little bit of beer and, uh, just to hang out on the beach,

which is a pretty sick. Uh, and there's they're still doing 36 36 at this point. Is that right? Jesus. But that in the tank after 36 holes of golf, but you know what? Bernie's just, he kind of gets the idea that, oh, excuse me, they have, you know, they are doing 36, 36 there, excuse me. They're in 18, 36, 18, 18. So they have switched the format at this point. But after Friday's matches is when he invites them to do it, which is after they played 36. You know,

it's this is going to be a very close presence cup. The really, the fun stuff kind of comes at the end here. But the first day, like the internationals get out to an early three and a half, two and a half lead. Nick Price and Mike Weir defeat David Tombs and Phil Mickelson, Tiff Goosen and Vijay Singh defeat Chris DiMarco, Chris Kelly or Jerry Kelly, sorry. Davis Love and Kenny Perry, Kenny Perry coming off that course beat down to the last one. Defeat Peter Larnard and Tim Clark, Ernie Els and Adam Scott. Adam Scott's going to play a big role in a lot of this stuff. Defeat, you know, Leonard and Furek. Anyway, they come out three and a half to two and a half. There's, and it's looking, you know, like,

hey, we're good. We actually got ourselves a match here. In the morning, four ball, the next day, the internationals, again, they, they hang in there, hey, we're good. We're actually got ourselves a match here. And the morning four ball the next day, the internationals again, they they hang in there, they don't win all just pause to say they so the format here now it looks like it still has that even though it's over four days, everybody plays every day. So that first day was six foursims matches, which is kind of eventually that goes away as well once kind of the depth of the international started to get exposed a little

bit. But that's interesting how many matches that were not being played. Yep. So through Friday, the Americans actually grab a little bit of lead. They dominate the afternoon foursomes. They win four out of five points. Everybody except for DeMarco and Mickelson wins their matches. So they're leading going into Saturday, nine and a half to six and a half. But then it completely flips. And one of the like most ridiculous like sweeps of all time, the internationals go six and oh, sorry. They just win every single match. You know, after Ernie's beer drinking exhibition on Friday night, they will come out with six in a row. Exactly. So we've got ourselves a 12 and a half to nine and a half international lead going into the last day, right? And the

internationals are feeling like, okay, like we've just won a president's cup. We're absolutely going to close this out. This is on our home turf, feeling really good. And what unfolds is kind of a fascinating thing in that it, so Jim Furyk defe defeats, uh, Mike Weir to start. Kelly defeats Clark. Perry defeats Price. He flips back, you know, Choi defeats Leonard. Howell defeats Scott. Haas over Larry.

Goosen defeats Mickelson. It's going to swinging back and forth and it comes down to essentially Tiger beats Ernie L is like four and three and what is seen as like the big sort of showdown. So Davis Love and Robert Allenby are basically on the, the course for the final match. Love knows exactly where it stands. He knows like all he basically has to do is hold on to this one up lead that he's got. He's in the middle of the fairway on 18.

He needs only a half to win and then retain the cup. He's like, I'm sorry, they're tight. He's like, I know exactly where we stood. Love said, Jack walks out there and talks to me and he tells me something on the green. And it's like, don't go there. Don't go there. Just hit it here. And I got really lost in the results. I made a bad swing. All I needed to do was hit it over the green and I hit it short of the green. So love makes like a pretty like shitty, shitty, shitty like chip. He's he's got a kind of an uphill lie. Always basically got to

do is pitch it anywhere past the pin and he just dead chunks it. It goes almost nowhere. Here is the lie that he's got and just basically pitch it up by the pin. It's a kind of a tricky shot but it goes here. I mean, it probably goes 10 feet. I mean, it's like the Sun Moon Bay shot in that President's Cup's cup, where it's just feel, you kind of feel like crush for him. So he makes bogey from middle of the fairway. And love said in those team matches, everybody feels like they let the team down. Somebody could have got a half a point somewhere else and kept us out

of that situation. But I was the guy that blew it that time. And I'll remember it forever. If you say what moment will stick with you in the 12 cups you played that moment of not winning my singles match will stick in my head forever. Gary was saying, I was hoping we'd win obviously, but I had this feeling that it was going to be a tie. So of course now that matches are all tied up, what do we have here in the thing is that we have we have here in the thing is that we have envelopes. We are whipping out the great envelopes, right? So Jack holds up his envelope. He says, oh, it says Tiger Woods. And Gary, of course, says Monsens, Ernie Els. Els Raider says, you know, golf can sort of write the best storyline. And at that time, we were probably the two best players

in the world. Uh, and tiger, he was quoted in a PJ documentary that he says, you know, Ernie and I did really want to buck heads. Uh, I just sort of gotten the better of him and I'm sure he sort of wanted some revenge. So we have a sudden death playoff for all the whole shebang. Right. Amazing. Uh, and I mean like every, when he was talking about the couples, VJ sing match, everybody's there. I mean, the truly everyone is following these matches. It is intense. Everybody knows like, Hey, one slip up and you are sort of screwed. So Ernie rips a drive right down the fairway. Tiger hits a pretty good drive. That's in the first cut. Ernie it's a par five. So they're, they're going to play 18 again, and then they're

going to flip around. They're going to play one and two. So Ernie has 273 in for his second shot, hits it wide right of the green into the crowd. All right. Tiger has a two iron into the green, like probably 250, gives it a vicious twirl. It comes up way short and then kicks left into the crowd. So these guys are kind of like, oh, fuck like shit. shit, like we're there, they're feel like they're seemingly shocked. It's like where are these shots are going? I mean, they're, they're thinking like, I was thinking I hit much better. Ernie Oak Ernie hits a like pretty shitty chip. Like, it's, it's here, sorry. And it goes maybe, I

would say, you know, 30 feet, like it's, it's not particularly good. Tiger has, I would say a pretty good chip. Ernie probably has 60 feet for birdie. Okay. And he gets it to about three feet. So he's got a decent chance to, you know, to make his shot, but Tiger's got, you know, a decent look at to win the president's cup here. He gets a decent chip and he leaves it short. This is where the ball ends up. It is 25 footer probably to win it and left it short. Yeah, 6 inches short of the hole. You could see like his puts his head in his hands. He's pained over this. So

we're going on to the to the first hole, the second hole in the playoff. Both of these guys. It's a par four. Both these guys hit irons off the T Ernie's in the fairway. Tiger actually misses the fairway, but he's fine kind of in the second cut. Ernie misses the green, hits it over, leaves him a brutal chip. Tiger has a shot, but he hits it about 35 feet. No real shot at birdie, but Ernie's got a really tough up and down sort of. Again, L's chip not great. Tries to bump it into the face. It sort of trickles out and takes a bad hop and it's probably 10 feet short of the hole. Like this is the chip he's got here. It doesn't even almost doesn't get up this slope here.

It's this is what he's got left. So he's got that on, you know, and this is you can see Tiger's ball mark here. Like he's got a pretty, you know, pretty short, it's probably two or three feet, but Ernie has to make this or else the presence cup is over and he's gonna feel like Oh, man, like I just I blew it long. Well Ernie fucking pours it in I mean just like never not a doubt the whole crowd is going bonkers So now like Tigers got fucking, you know a short putt here too. Like if he misses this it's over Like I said two or three feet. This is four to five. This is not this It's got a little bit of left to right break in it.

Like this is not this is not an easy putt. Well, tiger fucking pours it into. So we're on to the third hole. I mean, this is like, holy shit, this is fucking intense. Ernie. This is a par three now. Sorry. Last one was a part four, but this is a part three. Ernie has the T and he hits a long iron and it goes like way long, like just way kind of right of the green. And this is a massive, massive green. So, you know, he's got himself, it's like probably, I guess it kind of catches just the edge of the green, but he's probably got like 80 feet and tiger has a shot that comes up.

I'm not kidding. Two clubs short, like way down and it's on the front of the green, but it's way up a ridge. It's like way difficult. Uh, and Tiger does not particularly like he's Tigers away. He does not particularly read the break all that well. And it ends up like probably 15 feet left of the pin. This is what he ends up with here where he's essentially got to make this. I think he barely see the hole in the bottom thing too, or else is, you know, else has to to putt for

Fritz Ernie gets his up to probably Five feet I would say which do we need to say that it is darker than the cameras are making it look at this point Yes So at this point the cameras that the the darkness has really started to settle in It is really hard to sort of see like the grain of the green certainly like Again is the the cameras are making it look a lot better than it is, but the players are starting to get a little bit annoyed. Well, uh, tiger fucking pours in his putt, which is honestly,

maybe one of the, I would say most underrated pots that he ever made. He basically says this is, this was one of the biggest pots that I ever made was such a huge day. And I didn't want to let my guys down. Gary said when he saw where Ernie was and where tiger was for their second, uh, for their third shots, uh, he said, I said to my team, we've won, we've won because I know Ernie is going to make that uphill putt and tiger's pot is impossible. Uh, just a fucking vicious, uh, fist pump here.

As you can see, like I love that kind of downward fist bump that tiger used to do sometimes back in the day. The Nick Price says the fact that they both knocked those two puts in in the dark to this day is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life. So what happens? I like, we're getting dark here. We don't really know what to think. Like, are we, are we going back to another hole? Uh, there's sort of a congestion. The, the teams are kind of gathering

like right around off the green. Jack and Gary are getting into sort of a, I would say not friendly conversation, kind of an intense conversation. And you can tell that the US team, particularly led by Tiger, does not really want to keep going. Like all the people are sort of saying, you know, I don't know,

you just can't see somebody hands on the phone to Gary and Gary is talking to Tim Fincham and you can hear the audio of it in the thing. He says, Tim, Tim, this is Gary. These guys cannot see the grain on the greens at this moment and the light is just terrible. All of our players, Tiger, Ernie, Jack and I feel it should be a tie. I mean, we don't want to go to the next hole with the light so bad. You have to see what you're doing. We are all happy with it. Now I'm going to let Jack tell you. So Jack gets on the phone with Fincham and he says, you know, Tim, this has been a great event

Africa for the President's Cup. Everybody walks away a winner. And Ernie and it kind of jokes in this in the scrum here, can we take half the cup? And Tiger kind of erupts in his like nerdy nervous laughter. Tiger and Kristen Marco kind of looming over Gary's shoulder at this point. And Jack says, the only issue that Gary needs to understand is that the United States is the defending champion. So we'll retain the cup. I mean, that's just what it is. That's what Tim has just said. And Gary's like, Whoa, I think he talks to the L's for

a second. He says, Ernie says that he'd rather lose than be a tie. And Robert Allenby shouts out, let's get some lights here and keep going. So Gary says, well, we can come back tomorrow morning. And Jack then says, if we come back tomorrow morning, we should come back with 12 players. It's a team event, not an individual event. And Gary says, I like that, but I'm not sure we can do that. And then he says, wait a minute, wait a minute. And in the midst of all this, like, Mark Rolfing

is like, trying to kind of like help negotiate like what should be done here. Rolfing later says, it was very confusing for me because I was between doing live interviews for television and also trying to broker some sort of agreement about what could occur. And so you can't I can't hear exactly who it is. I think it might be Adam Scott, who says Gary, we need to play. And one of the referee kind of comes over and says, you know, if the captains agree to have a tied match, then those opinions represent the

players, blah, blah. And Gary's like, What is that? What is that? We need to play. Who said that? Who said that? And Adam Scott, you can hear him, he comes in the frame and he says, blah, blah, blah. And Gary's like, what is that? What is that? We need to play? Who said that? Who said that? And Adam Scott, you can hear him as he comes to the frame and he says, Gary, you told us at the start of the week that no matter what, we were here till Monday night to the last point is one. And then Gary sort of spins around and says, all right,

all guys are saying they will play. The idea that like, this was so nice, like, you know, like a friendly thing that they all agreed on is bullshit, because they were fucking like fighting, they were ready to like, throw down. And this is all on audio that you can watch. You can watch the you can actually watch the end of this broadcast, like the camera is like right up in there. So all of this sort of

so watching laying out. So Gary's like, what's the deal with coming back tomorrow? Jack, come on. And Jack's like, I want to go talk to my team. You, well, you know, we'll go. Whatever. I got talked to Barbara. Remember it's like Thanksgiving. Like the, so one of the big things that you can't, there's no confirmation of this, but it's hinted at by columnists afterwards.

The fact is that the American players did not want to stay an extra day there because then they would be like kind of late getting home for like Thanksgiving weekend or whatever. So anyway, all the American players gathered together and sort of have a discussion. For some reason, Steve Williams is involving himself. Steve Williams unclear whether he's a mole for the international at this point. That's a great photo. So great. And like, I mean, this is like, this is not the voice, the face of like, is there any else?

If you're listening on the podcast, Ernie yells, is like staring like death stares down here to be like, yo, I, we are not like walking away from this afterwards without some sort of like resolution. And so finally, like Jack comes back and he says, our guys feel in the spirit of the game, rather that the U S retaining the cup that we share the cup and Gary says, oh, I think that's marvelous. That's a very different thing. And Tiger says, you know, why don't you go to your team now and explain it to them and Jack says, that's the way our

guys feel about it or whatever. And at this point, Davis love is still like, well, you know, Tiger like, why don't we just come back and play tomorrow? But Tiger does not want any fucking thing to do with like coming back. That'd be a tough thing to sleep on. I mean, it's one thing to just roll off the course, but yeah, we're going to go play for all the marbles again and like getting TV fired up and all that would have probably been a wrinkle as well. And yeah.

Uh, so of course all of this is on tape delay. None of this actually was being shown live in the U S because it was on that. Right. Yes. Uh. Which will come up in some of the after effects of like, what a sort of shame it is that we didn't get to actually see some of this unfold. Later Adam Scott, in sort of a kind of mini documentary they made about this as they made the right call. Even if it was a little painful at the time, it was a great thing for history. These

two Titans of the game making putts in the dark. Jack said, Gary and I are pretty competitive. We've been competing for a long time. But here we are both raising each other's arms. We both wanted to be the one raising the other's arm. Because of what it meant for the spirit of the week, we decided that would be best to raise it was even better for us to each raise the other arm. So like, you know, kind of like they sell it now is like, you know, it was a great thing that

they always were like interested in that. Gary says it's remarkable for what a golf tournament can do for a country and for a human being. You couldn't have had a script that was any better. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It just a truly like a fun kind of thing. Overworld's Tiger said I think it was the perfect decision to have two guys decide the fate of the whole cup with extra holes like that. I don't think any of the sides felt comfortable with that. Here we were as a team,

and we'd like to decide it as a team. Gary said, it was like a miracle. In 51 odd years as a professional, it was one of the great thrills of my life. This did not get quite greeted with the same, I guess, like joy that the players got it with sports Illustrated said interest. This is like from their kind of like, early part of the book where they kind of make jokes about it. Interest in

the President's Cup died on Sunday after a four day struggle. The match play event that pits the U S against the, uh, a team of non European internationals was born in the imagination of PJ tour commissioner, Tim Fincham and reared in the Mar in its marketing department in its 10th and most recent occurrence. The U S one for the eighth time, including five in a row in 2003, the tie was a high point. Enough said, the competition is survived by its forebearers, the water rocker cup, and the writer cup and it's loopy sister, the Solheim cup.

It will not be missed by any U us born player that has experienced it. So there's kind of shitting all over it. USA today ran up like a whole column, basically saying like the tie is a joke, uh, kissing your sister thing. Like nobody that doesn't do anything for the credibility of it all. I don't know. It's kind of a little bit of a bummer. Like this is a Jack and Gary sort of Gary sort of fighting here in this last thing. This is them kind of intensely talking about. I mean, it's a really fun kind of rewatch just in part just to watch Tiger and Ernie because you can feel the intensity of everything sort of hanging in the balance. And, you know, it's the up and downs that Ernie made are pretty filthy.

And the fuck the putt that Tiger made on the second hole, third hole of the playoff. But the number two, all of the course was was kind of incredible. It breaks like it's kind of a double breaker, like a subtle, it kind of goes like up a hill and then breaks back to the left once it gets up the hill. It's it's pretty freaking cool. Gosh, I can't wait to go watch that. Imagine that happening today, like the live negotiations and what the hell's going to happen with this, like with social media. They would have been going absolute ape shit over this.

Well, the fact that they end that they literally just made up the rules kind of as like, you know what? Like we don't think this is right. So we're just going to completely change the rules. And when was the All-Star game tie? Oh God, yeah. Cause I, let's see what year that was 2002. So that had been the year before that where everyone got so mad

about the all-star game tie. So God, I can't believe that was on tape to like, cause I would think like you, the time, I guess the time difference was South Africa is, I mean, it's only six hours. Like I guess you'd be ending it. So like it'd be like the British open, I guess, But man, that was fantastic. I wish 2017 is the opposite end of the spectrum. I think if you'll let me bring this home. I do have one story that I just looked up from that 2003. I remember Charles Howell telling this story on the pod and I found an old article about this, but he went. So it was Tiger, Elin Nordegren, and Charles Howe and his wife, they went boating at the like prior to the President's Cup in 03. In that November, they went on vacation

down there. And these and Charles, this is from I believe that Alan Shipnuck story said, Charles, we chum the water for seven or eight hours, but there's not a shark to be seen Tigers bored out of his mind. He's wearing a wet suit to dive into a cage in case any sharks come and suddenly he just jumps into the open water. He's decided to swim over to the island and get up close to the seals.

The guys on the boat are going nuts, shouting for Tiger to come back, but he just keeps swimming through all the chum. The seals start hopping around and hollering like they do. Tiger's having a great time. After what seems like an eternity, he swims back and casually gets on the boat. I said, how pauses for a moment lost in the story.

He says, he's just different from normal people, completely fearless. Tiger Woods eaten by sharks is a timeline. Alternate timeline. I did finally find the article though, from USA Today. The basic it says, producing a tie won't help presidents' prestige, where Mike Lepresci, sort of a famous columnist at the time, shits all over this idea that this was somehow a good thing.

He said it was kind of a joke. I don't know how they end up with... I mean, it's November. It's the equivalent of May here, tons of daylight. How they ended up in this situation? If you're on tape delay anyways, I guess, you know, maybe for international broadcasts or whatever, but this is a PGA tour product. I'm surprised they ended up in this darkness situation. That seems like it could have been avoided. Yeah. I mean, just started earlier, at least, you know, I don't know what, I don't know. It's just, it's, it's clearly like the presence company, not that it's like the huge event now, but it was sort of like, in some ways, this isn't an, story to the growth of the president's cup because you got Jack and Gary

there and they're sort of, you know, are the two biggest like names of the last, you know, or two of the biggest names last 20 years of golf are throwing down for everything on the line. Uh, I think that, you know, without this happening, does the president's cup continue to kind of grow like what it did and become, you know, a little bit more must see TV. Maybe, maybe not. Okay. So they, uh, these two ran it back at no five and an oh seven as captains, um, which is, uh, yeah, we're, we're going to skip past those. I'm going to take you to 2017. And, uh, I was, I was excited to get to this one because this is kind of the first, uh,

not the first President's Cup I covered. I mean, 2015 existed with no laying up, but that was in Korea in the middle of the night. And I don't really remember. I had other priorities going on in life, but this will be the 12th playing of the Presidents Cup. We're of course going to Gliberty National. Steve Stricker and Nick Price are the captains. It's Price's third straight Presidents Cup as captain. Doug Ferguson writes for the AP writes an article that is headlined PGA tour bracing for Trump show in Jersey City. If you'll remember Donald Trump is the sitting president, it'll be the first time a sitting president has attended the event since Bill Clinton did in 2000 at RTJ. Monahan says he, we hope he comes and he'll be welcomed by us and our players, which you know, this is of course, shortly after the PGA tour had taken an event away from Trump Doral.

There was all this NFL players protesting to raise awareness of racial quality that drew the ire of President Trump. He called for them to be fired. So there's just a lot of controversy following. It's just a lot of a lot of noise going on in relation to this heading into this. I just say I love when the presidents come to presidents cup and like Monahan kind of flipped this this whole kind of statement in this as well saying like we have we've always invited the head of state they don't always come we appreciate that it's not a political event. I mean President Clinton,

President Obama and President Bush are all there as well. Phil Mickelson is up taking the selfie with with the four of them where Phil chops is basically his whole head off in the process of it. And I agree with that completely. As much as keep your politics out of my sports, it's like, yeah, this is not about the politics of the event.

It's about the people that have ascended to the highest office, both Republican and Democrat, in that part of it. So totally. Tiger is going to be an assistant captain. 2017 was the year he shot 77 at Dubai with Drew and had what was called a fusion surgery on his back in April. He said, sure. That'll be the last one around this time. There was a world. He was in there was a world where he wouldn't come, uh, return to competitive golf. He's always been able to do is hit 60

yard shots to this point as of the fall of 2017. The folks at Liberty national might be feeling themselves a little bit at this President's Cup. They're hopeful that they're gonna land a US Open or a PGA Championship at some point. Don't think that... Actually, I can see the PGA of America going to doing that, but I don't think that this is a golf course worthy of that. Not gonna get into the whole history of Liberty National, but the United States team has six rookies, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Justin Tom. These are not the rookies, but they have six rookies overall.

DJ, Spieth, JT, Ricky, Daniel Berger, Brooks Koepka, Kevin Kisner, Patrick Reed, Matt Kuchar, Kevin Chappell, Charlie Hoffman, and Phil Mickelson is playing in this. Guess how many consecutive events? As fast as you can, before you think about it, how many consecutive events is this for Phil? Rider and presidents.

Well, I remember, I mean, when you said that he was the 1994 team, that was the first international team he ever made. So I mean, I'm not going to be able to do the math, but 16? 23 consecutive team events. He was 30th in the standings and got chosen. So I kind of chose this because it's known as just a massive, massive beat down. And kind of when things started to change for the internationals

very shortly after this, it's kind of the last of the beat downs in there. But listen to this team again in 2017. Hideki Matsuyama, Jason Day, Adam Scott, Louis Eustazen, Mark Leishman, Charles Schwartzal, Brandon Grace, Sebu Kim, Johnny Vegas, Adam Hadwin, Emiliano Grillo, and Anurban Lahiri. Like not a bunch of slouches, right? Like it's not, it's not a, we're obviously very pre-live in this one. Yeah. We don't have Jumbo Ozaki's brother

taking a spot here. Exactly. Hey, Jumbo Ozaki is part of a, his brother was a part of a winning team. You keep his name out a spot exactly. Hey, Jumbo Saki is part of his brother was a part of winning team. You keep keep his name out of your mouth. We have a lot. This is memes are available at this time. We have, of course, a big Liberty thing going on here. Patrick Reed was not quite hated really yet at this point. He was still very fun. American team player. I watched a bunch of highlights for this, but his sweat, he hit the ball nice in this time period, kind of before his game got a little bit, a little bit clunky, but this is peak Spieth and Reed. So we are post two years post of the, the, the task force following the 2014 rider cup.

I know there was the 2015 president's cup, but things really turned over in 2016, the us dominated Europe at home and man to the US just go out and whoop ass in this event. It looked like some very irresponsible podcasters said something about a decade of dominance was about to come. And we can get into some of that. But they come. They show out on Thursday. Again, we're spreading spread out over four days. They go foursomes. Ricky and JT go out first. Set the tone. They beat Hideki and Schwarzl six and four.

DJ and Kuchar beat Adam Scott and Johnny Vegas. Reed and Spieth beat Sebu Kim and Emiliano Grillo five and four. Usti and Brandon Grace beat Berger and Koepka. And Day and Leash have their match with Mickelson and Kisner when Phil misses a putt on the last hole. This was the day that Phil took the selfie with the three former presidents. Friday four ball, Spieth and Reed go out and have their match with Matsuyama and Hadwin.

And that is all the internationals would get on this Friday. Ricky and JT beat Usti and Grace. Mickelson and Kisner beat Day and Leishman. Chappell and Hoffman beat Schwarzl and Lahiri. DJ and Brooks beat Adam Scott and Jonathan Vegas three and two and it is eight to two heading into the weekend. Kevin Chappell and Charlie Hoffman have kind of like a Bash Brothers arm. It's a big week for celebrations.

I remember this being a big choreographed thing. They've got kind of the Bash Brothers, Mark McGuire, Jose Conseco. I've always felt that the President's Cup's presence cups true purpose should be to like test run celebrations for the writer cup. But you know, figure out your high fives here and then we'll bring them to the writer cup. You know, it's like workshopping a play off Broadway before it goes. Phil Mickelson drains a putt on the final green to beat Jason Day and Mark Leishman. There's an image of that. You know, this is, this is pre Tiger and Phil teaming up to be in the match. They obviously don't like each other, but Tiger wearing all whites like he's Mark

Wahlberg in Shooter. Gandalf the white. This is the beginning of Tiger with the ear. Actually, 2016 was the beginning of Tiger with the earpiece, but gives him a big fist pump. And then, Phil, do you remember what happens next from there? I do not. Phil and Kisner go into their three amigos dance and the NBC kind of botches it and don't show up, but they do like the full on arms crossed and a big, big thrust.

It's funny because the camera cuts to the, the U S team guys that are like the team players are like ready to run out on the green and everybody stops and all of their jaws are like what are they doing and when they give the big thrust everybody erupts in laughter but this is a little mickelson with a disgusting act that's the theme of what happens here is not only do they dominate on the course but the us team maybe goes a little overboard with a lot of the celebration and the antics of what happens here. Going on to Saturday, we have four foursomes in the morning, four four balls in the afternoon. It gets ugly very quickly. Reed and Spieth beat Day and Leish four and three, DJ and Kutcher beat Adam Scott and Hadwin four and three, Mikkelsen and Kisner beat Vegas and

Grillo two and one. JT and Ricky have their match with Oost Hazen and grace. So it's 11 and a half to two and a half going into afternoon Saturday, four balls with a chance to need 15 and a half points to clinch the cup. So there's four matches remaining. There is a chance to do that. So Reed and Spieth beat Oost Hazen and day two and one burger and JT beat Vegas and Matsuyama three and two and DJ and Brooks beat Leash and Grace three and two. And the final match is honor bond Lahiri and Sebu Kim against Kevin Chappell and Charlie Hoffman. And do you remember what honor bond Lahiri does on the 17th green?

I do not. Other matches are done. There's only one match out there and it is 14 and a half to two and a half and Lahiri drains a putt on 17 and does the tiger points down to 12 points. And I respect it so much. It's one of my favorite moves of all time. They actually go on to win the match one up. The day ends with the U S leading 14 and a half to three and a half the largest margins since 1998 actually where the internationals held a nine point lead at Royal Melbourne over the US team in the year that they clinched. So a few other things, Roger Moppy said that Louis Ustasa winds up Jason Day on the fifth hole and asked him which hole he's getting

strokes on. That's how bad they were getting beat. Bones said Greller is going to have to start tending pins from 90 yards and in. Daniel Berger does an interview on Sky Sports afterwards. He says, our goal from the minute we got here was to crush them as bad as we can. I hope we close them out here today and we go out there and beat them tomorrow. Even worse. That was before the final match had finished on that Saturday. JT said, I thought we're going to need to have to get another captain out here to carry around burgers stones. And the internationalists had gone 13 straight matches without winning until Lahiri and Seawoo won that 18th hole.

Nick price had those two got a standing ovation in their team room when they walked in. Honestly, this is might be like my favorite era of golf, Twitter, golf, like it generally, it's really fun, really fun. Twitter wasn't a cesspool shithole. Like it was everybody was kind of like up and coming in their media career. Like, uh, you know, there were sites popping up to like new, new media was kind of exploding. It was just like a constant, like fun party all the time. Instead of everybody just bickering, bitching back and forth in the golf

world, separated and all this. I mean, think of how many characters, I mean, how many, I mean, live guys do I have to count throughout all this? We have Dustin Johnson. We have Koepke. We got Reed, obviously Phil. We got Louis Oosthuizen, Charles Swartzel, Mark Leishman, Brandon Grace. So that's eight, eight of the 24 guys here are live guys and won't be involved in President's Cups. How did Brooks Gepkina make this team? He wasn't the team. Did I mention him? Yeah he's in the team. This was the first President's

Cup that he made. The President's Cup that he didn't make was the one in Korea that we wrote the funny thing about. That was a few years ago. Yes. Uh, I was, yeah, that's exactly, I forgot about that one. Don't go, don't go digging her. I paid really hard for that one. As I understand it, the US team on that Saturday night up 14 and a half to three and a half, I sent it a little bit on that Saturday. Not so, not so much like a full on celebration party, but like, yeah, we got this shit. Maybe had a few cocktails as I understand it. And they showed up, I'd say a little hungover

on that Sunday. The internationals won the day seven and a half to four and a half to pull within eight. Dustin, this is where the competition kind of hit a low, honestly, because DJ said, honestly, it was really weird being out there today knowing there was no chance of losing. DJ went four, oh-1, Ricky went 3-0-1, JT and Spieth were 3-1-1, Phil went 3-0-1, Reid 3-1-1, no internationals finished with a winning record, Louis Usoy hasn't got

the most points with 2.5, seven American players got more than 2.5 points. This is the, maybe you have the center, but this is the origin of the C who shaking that. My very next thing is we get to the press conference where a jubilant excited American team and winning fashion. The camaraderie is off the charts. They're absolutely vibing. They're asked about some of their favorite chance. Kevin Kissner does when he goes, we got nine cups. You got one. We got nine cups. And Spieth, when asked about one of them, he goes, see who's shaking that ass, shaking that ass, shaking that ass. And everyone erupts in that one. Patrick Reed said, we could have sent three guys out there and figured out a way to get one point. Spieth butts in and says, not if I was one of them. And DJ of

course already drunk. He gets drunk extremely quick at all these celebratory press conferences. She goes on. How does it feel to be Oh, and five in singles? And everybody piles on for speed who has lost five straight singles matches dating back to the 2013 presidents cup. So DT presented stricker with the trophy, the first incumbent president to do so. A prominent up and coming Twitter account tweeted at writer cup Europe. FYI probably going to be adding can't lay as well because I was feeling pretty darn. I was feeling pretty darn good about the team that the US had just put out there. You're in your cups, Tali.

Yeah. Somewhere, somewhere over the Netherlands. I got to give a shout to Jamie Kennedy who's a chimed in. Oh, yeah. Well, we're adding Rom Fleetwood and Noran. Rom didn't play great, but Fleetwood played like a god. So he probably won that one. And of course, the golf national would be where it all comes coming down.

But I don't regret feeling like this team was was that it was a changing of the guard. And this was going to be a different era. I know this international team made a lot of changes after this. This is kind of Royal Melbourne in 2019 was much closer. And then they kind of come up with the concept of the shield and kind of this more unity on the international front instead of, you know, kind of just scraping it together. Last doesn't sound like Nick Price was a very good captain,

if I'm being honest, just looking back, uh, through, through some history, but Tron Carter spends most of the week tweeting about the web tour finals a lot more than, than, than the president's cup. Uh, he, he, I think he was protesting against Liberty national because he tweeted this, give me Liberty national and give me death. Um, that's good. It was very good. He has also spent some time celebrating John Peterson shooting 84 on the web tour with the hashtag stay woke in that time period. So that is that is 2017. Again, I remembered it being a raucous and it was his raucous and fun.

It just the storylines were not deep. And again, like the newspaper articles aren't there. Like it's just there wasn't really a whole lot of storylines going up into it. Not a whole lot of controversy. I know the internationals and a lot of their caddies were not just pleased in general with everything that had gone on a lot of you just don't do that kind of vibe quietly, kind of in the background of how much the US kind of rubbed rubbed it in. But yeah, that was that was it. That was a weirdly fun one just in terms of when I

think back on like, even if the right the presence cup is not close. Funny shit happens. Like that was an entertaining watch the dances you didn't know what was going to happen next. And it felt like, you know, in that time period, especially in 2017, there was just a real buzz on social media and like, the two sport or the two screen experience was alive and well before, you know, rocket, rocket boy had to buy Twitter and ruin it. So, you know, you know, that meme of, are

we the baddies? Like that might be the Americans in the presence. Are we the baddies? And then, yeah, I mean, 2019 was a lot better cup, uh, in terms of how close that one actually was. And that'd be a fun one to revisit into the future as well. But I, I, I don't know, I, I'm looking back on this. It's, I understand a little bit more why this event exists. I don't know. I don't feel strongly that we shouldn't shit on as much as we do. You know, it's, it's a, it's entertainment product. It's not necessarily meant to be like the rider cup in terms of, you know, the, the, the feeling around the winning and losing of it. It's better than it's, am I glad it exists? Yes, I am. Okay. It's better than a silly like the Ryder Cup in terms of, you know, the feeling around the winning and losing of it. It's better than it's, am I glad it exists? Yes, I am. Like it's better than a

silly season, you know, Napa fall event, right? Or stroke play event. Like there should be some variety like this. And I think we're probably as sports media culture as a whole, probably a little bit too hard on this event. Yeah, I think it would be really great if the internationals won for the event. I know that they've won before, but it's been a while. So that would just make it feel like, you know, it would make it feel more like a rivalry that it would give something sort of like the Americans to lick their wounds a little bit.

If they had to sit there and watch the internationals dance around and talk shit and do all kinds of caddy celebrations, all of a sudden it might mean something. International's next President's Cup is we know where it is yet? The 20 which you mean the next US one? Not the next US one. Where's it coming after Royal Montreal? It is going to Medina. It's going to Medina in 2026 and we are going to Kingston Heath in 2026. And we are going to Kingston Heath in 2028. OK, Kingston Heath would be pretty sick. Medina can be decent.

Medina's had some good history. Well, they just redid that, and that's going to be a different golf course as well. That's a good team venue as well. I went to the Ryder Cup there. It was very, very entertaining. So it's a weird, we'll have a President's Cup preview podcast out next week as well.

We'll get into teams and excitement over this event in particular, but it's, this live era does make it a lot more challenging to get an amp for. It just really is, this and the players are two events that really just kind of get crushed by everything going on in the world of golf and just sucks all around.

It does, but that's the nature of how it's going to work. So yeah. Well, some people would just pay their fines and some people would get over their butt hurt about people making $300 million and not ask them to give back millions of dollars, whatever, as we read today. Like, just can we not?

I just thought today, I'm having it's so nice here today. It's rained for 15 straight days here in Jack's. I'm going to go on a walk. I'm going to enjoy it and not think about any of that stuff. So thank you all for spending a couple hours with us learning a little bit of history about the President's Cup. KV, thank you for the work that goes into these deep dives. It is some of the most time consuming stuff we do. So if you don't mind, if you're watching on the podcast feed, go hit that subscribe button,

hit the like button, share the podcast with a friend. We'll be back with live shows all week next week. We'll have a happy hour show on Wednesday and live shows after every round of the President's Cup like we do for all these big team events. We're looking forward to that and closing out our live show season which will be at the end of next year. So thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you back here next week. Cheers. Crack on. Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most.

How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Yeah! Yeah! Expect anything different? For Fandel, it must be 21 older in President-select states. For Kansas, it's in affiliation with Kansas Star

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