Bay City Rollers
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods lead the way as the U.S. tops the Internationals, 19½-14½, at Harding Park for a fifth straight Presidents Cup victory
making their points: Woods' 5-0 record included a dramatic putt on No. 17 in Saturday foursomes, while Mickelson, 4-0-1, also had a hot putter.
Anything less than a hydrogen bomb is unlikely to awaken Fred Couples at 3:30 a.m., so when golf's maestro of the mattress climbed out of bed at such an unFreddian hour October 11, fretting over the outcome of matches that wouldn't begin until much later that morning, it became fair to examine the historical relevance of all that pre-dawn panic.
Finally, it can be said, somebody has lost sleep over a Presidents Cup. Sure, it sounds crazy, given the three-point lead and fleet of world-class tour pros the U.S. captain took into the Sunday singles, but while everyone else in red, white and blue pajamas was snoozing, care-free Freddie, of all people, was worried about losing.
So there you go. Not only is the truth sometimes stranger than fiction, but funnier, too. "Jay [Haas] and I didn't like the way the pairings turned out," Couples said, referring to the Saturday night draw and an ensuing conversation with his assistant captain. "We were trying to go the complete opposite. So I woke up, and for the next three hours, all I did was think about how we were going to do this and that. It was the only night of the week I worried about anything."
Which made it one more night than was necessary. If Greg Norman's squad of Internationals arrived in San Francisco as a two- or three-point underdog, it left town having failed to cover the spread, as the Yanks cruised to a 19½-14½ victory largely on the shoulders of the game's two best players. That Tiger Woods (5-0) and Phil Mickelson (4-0-1) would combine for nearly half of the winning total is hardly surprising, although some might characterize it as a trifle overdue.
Woods did most of his damage in a partnership with Steve Stricker, who sits right behind Tiger and Mickelson in the World Ranking. It would be easy to surmise that Couples' best couple came about because Woods and Stricker played together so often as the top seeds in the FedEx Cup playoffs. In reality, the skipper settled on the tandem in early September, then wasted little time informing Stricker of his good fortune.
That probably occurred 10 or 15 seconds after Woods told his captain who he wanted to play with at Harding Park, and for lengthy stretches during their 63 holes together last week, it looked as if Tiger and Stricker could play every day until Christmas and not get beaten once. You want dominance? Team Eldrick lost one hole in its first two matches, winning 12, and didn't trail an opponent until the par-5 fifth hole against Tim Clark and Mike Weir in the Saturday foursomes.
Armed with a driver that was behaving and a man who makes 25-footers in his sleep—sorry, Freddie—Tiger was free to take full advantage of his aggressive nature on the greens. That explains why the two-man Yank tank rolled through its first two opponents, but against Weir and Tim Clark, Woods was basically a non-factor, leaving the duo one over par through 16 holes and 1 down with two to play.
At that point nobody actually saw Superman reach for the red cape. It didn't take long, however, for everyone to notice he had put it on. "What he did down the stretch there, holing that putt [from 22 feet] on 17, then hitting that great 3-iron in there for eagle [at the closing par-5], was the big turning point of the whole competition," said Stricker, a man with a severe allergy to hyperbole. The 3-3 finish also christened a new entry in match-play vernacular: "fliparound," a noun with verb-tense variables, which occurs when a team trails late in the game but walks off the 18th green one point richer.
A pair of fliparounds in the first two sessions had kept the Internationals close, so Woods' late heroics were indeed crucial. What looked like a one-point U.S. lead instead became three, but Tiger reverted to spectator mode Saturday afternoon while Stricker poured in seven birdies and basically crushed Ryo Ishikawa and Y.E. Yang by himself. "I helped out on three holes all day," Tiger assessed, doing well not to overstate his contribution. "Steve was a stud, and I was pretty much a cheerleader."
Mickelson, meanwhile, could afford no such luxury. He compiled his unbeaten week with three different partners, all of whom came to Lefty with their games in a certain amount of disarray. After winning his opening bout with Anthony Kim, who has struggled all year and offered little Thursday, Philly Mick was paired with Justin Leonard, whose missed three-footer on the 18th Thursday had cost the U.S. a half-point, ending an entertaining first session on a bizarre note.
Lefty and Leonard combined for eight birdies to pull away from Retief Goosen-Adam Scott, sending Mickelson into the team room late Friday afternoon with a request: He wanted to team up with Sean O'Hair, who had already lost twice and wasn't making anything. "Sean and I had talked about playing together later in the week," Mickelson said. "I think he wanted to start off playing with someone he knew pretty well."
That turned out to be Hunter Mahan, but after Mickelson-O'Hair hammered Goosen-Camilo Villegas in the Saturday foursomes, the world's best left-handed golfer had successfully reinvented himself as a first-aid kit. "With Phil, he just made me feel like I could hit the ball anywhere," said O'Hair, offering a strange assessment to the positive effects of the partnership. "It's just nice to play with somebody who makes you feel comfortable out there."
