CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA | Leave it to Davis Love III to find the feeling in the new name-calling, back-biting reality show world in which professional golf finds itself these days.
Love, who will captain a U.S. Presidents Cup team that will be a six-touchdown favorite over the International side at Quail Hollow Club here next week, was asked if he feels badly for his counterpart, Trevor Immelman, who is tasked with fielding a team gutted by an exodus of players to LIV Golf.
“I feel bad for the game of golf right now that this is the story going in,” said Love, pointing to the sharp comments made by Billy Horschel and Jon Rahm last week at the BMW PGA Championship where rival worlds gathered. “That's sad. I feel bad for all of us, really.”
He’s right. It’s not a happy time in golf, but it serves as another in a long line of reminders of what too much money can do.
Despite the backdrop and perhaps muted expectations, there should be an element of celebration in the early autumn air at Quail Hollow, where the enormous buildout of hospitality chalets and a 2,500-seat stadium surrounding the first tee is tangible evidence of what the Presidents Cup is intended to be.
There will be singing and fans dressed like John Daly and, if we’re lucky, a reprise of Kevin Kisner’s “Three Amigos” dance from the 2017 Presidents Cup, though his dance partner Phil Mickelson has gone off to golf’s new frontier and Kisner supposedly has sworn off such public gyrations.
The game needs a good party right now.
This is a weird time for golf, a moment when no one seems quite sure how the landscape will look a year from now.
It would have been nice if the Presidents Cup hadn’t been swept up in what’s happening, but if the BMW PGA Championship was Exhibit A in today’s fractured world, Exhibit B will be on display in Charlotte, though there will be no shortage of fan fun fueled by White Claws and proper North Carolina barbecue.
To offer some perspective on how tilted this Presidents Cup feels going in, Love’s American team lost potential members Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, and Love’s challenge wasn’t so much figuring out which six players to choose with his captain’s picks but whom to leave out.
All 12 of Love’s players rank among the top 26 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
The truth is, (the Presidents Cup) needs the American team to lose, at least once in a while, to generate a portion of the fire that the Ryder Cup has. That’s how the Ryder Cup came to be the most anticipated event in golf.
Then there is Immelman, a genuinely nice man who can put this captaincy alongside his Masters victory atop his career highlights, forced to cobble together a team that, had LIV’s money not intruded, would have looked substantially different. Losing three players among the world’s top 25 – Cameron Smith, Joaquín Niemann and Abraham Ancer – gutted Immelman’s ideal lineup. The absence of veteran Louis Oosthuizen further weakened a team that is traditionally challenged to match the Americans’ depth in a series which the U.S. leads, 11-1-1, including eight in a row.
“Over the years you look at the history books, everybody knows we've had our butts kicked, but that doesn't mean we'll come with any less passion and compete to try and win,” Immelman said.
That’s his team’s greatest advantage: playing to shock the world.
“We have to be careful,” Love said, sounding like every coach in every sport. “Certainly these guys are not going to take it lying down.”
That said, Love’s team includes 11 of the top 20 players in the world. Immelman’s team has two of the top 20.
More than the anticipated 40,000 spectators onsite daily at Quail Hollow, more than snappy team uniforms and more than actual presidents (perhaps current and former) onsite, what the Presidents Cup needs is Sunday drama.
Not the why-couldn’t-Cam Smith-wait-until-the-Presidents Cup-was-over-to-jump-to-LIV drama. Real golf drama.
The truth is, it needs the American team to lose, at least once in a while, to generate a portion of the fire that the Ryder Cup has. That’s how the Ryder Cup came to be the most anticipated event in golf. The U.S. got beat, again and again.
It doesn’t happen in the Presidents Cup, at least not since 1998, and it has rarely been close come Sunday. In the past two Presidents Cups overseas – in South Korea and Australia – the outcome was in doubt until late.
The Presidents Cup needs more of that, particularly here.
Can Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Cam Davis and Sebastián Muñoz summon the magic to pull off an all-time upset? That would be a story to tell the young ones years from now.
“We understand exactly the mountain that we have in front of us: Possibly the best American team ever assembled if you look at them on paper with their accomplishments and what their world rankings are,” Immelman said last week after announcing his team lineup while acknowledging the elephant on the first tee.
“Is it disappointing? Hey, I'm not going to lie to you; absolutely it's disappointing.”
Sad and disappointing.
Strange words, but it’s a strange time.
Top: U.S. captain Davis Love III's loaded team faces an International team depleted by LIV Golf defections.
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