The PGA Tour is in Atlanta this weekend for its final event of the 2016-17 wraparound season. Not only will someone win the Tour Championship and take home just less than $2 million, but there will also be a $10 million payout to the golfer who is atop the final standings in the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. It’s a good time to be one of the top 30 touring professionals and, for that matter, it’s also a pretty good time to be the caddie on the bag of one of those relatively young multi-millionaires.
Golf’s official offseason will be exactly one week long as the new 2017-18 wraparound PGA Tour calendar kicks off on Oct. 5 at Silverado Resort in Napa for the playing of the Safeway Open.
For 24 of the world’s top golfers, there will be no week off between the Tour Championship and the Safeway Open. Next week, 12 of America’s finest linksters will tee it up with 12 International golfers for the playing of the 12th edition of the Presidents Cup at Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey. Initially contested in 1994, the Presidents Cup was seen as the international version of the Ryder Cup. Back then, Team USA played biennial matches with Europe. The Presidents Cup was seen as a way to approximate the Ryder Cup experience for a talented non-European contingent of golfers that included Ernie Els, Nick Price, Steve Elkington, Vijay Singh and the game’s No. 1 player, Greg Norman.
In many ways, the Presidents Cup has been vaguely reminiscent of the early days of the Ryder Cup in that the Americans have been the dominant team. Currently Team USA holds a 9-1-1 mark in the biennial matches. This time around, International team captain Nick Price is hoping to alter that trend and lead his squad to victory. He has four major champions on his team, including Jason Day, Adam Scott, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel. He has a pair of top-10 golfers in Hideki Matsuyama and last week’s tour winner, Marc Leishman. The remainder of his International team includes Branden Grace, Jhonny Vegas, Si Woo Kim, Adam Hadwin, Emiliano Grillo and Anirban Lahiri. It is truly an international group with three Australians, three South Africans and players from Japan, South Korea, India, Venezuela, Argentina and Canada. For the uninitiated, Canadian Adam Hadwin is from that golfing mecca of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I think their golf season up there runs from June through August.
The American squad is very familiar to golf fans and includes five major champions. They are Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and the elder statesman of the group, Phil Mickelson. Other Americans include Daniel Berger, Kevin Kisner, Patrick Reed, Matt Kuchar, Kevin Chappell and Charley Hoffman. Steve Stricker is the captain of Team USA.
Instead of trying to prognosticate the outcome of next week’s Presidents Cup on my own, I decided to get the opinion of Johnny Pott, the winner of five PGA Tour events in golf’s golden era of the 1960s as well as a three-time member of victorious Ryder Cup teams in 1963, 1965 and 1967. Pott was front and center during the Palmer-Nicklaus-Player era and was among the game’s top 10 during the heyday of the ‘60s. Johnny and I got together last week after the captain’s choices were picked and he had a number of great insights into next week’s action.
Pott feels that the American squad has to be heavily favored even though it has a number of first-time participants in team play. Johnny contended that the American team is loaded with “free wheelers who just don’t choke.” In fact, he made a humorous comment, stating that “Captain Stricker probably could have chosen me and Team USA would still win.” He feeks the American squad is loaded with highly ranked players and the team is playing very well going into the matches. He noted that the 12 Americans have already won more than $60 million this year. When I questioned him about the “don’t choke” factor, he added that he thought that the Americans had so much money in their bank accounts that they didn’t have to feel the pressure of making their college team, getting through Q School or staying exempt on the tour. He acknowledged that some of the Americans work harder than others to win major tournaments, but they don’t have any pressure on them to pay the monthly rent.
Pott thought that Nick Price had a difficult task at hand because his team came from so many different parts of the world. Language could be a barrier as well as familiarity. They got to this point in their career by taking very different paths whereas Americans such as Jordan Spieth, Daniel Berger, Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed and some of the others knew one another from junior golf and college golf. He also felt that team depth was a factor. Of the 10 automatic qualifiers on both teams, American Kevin Chappell was the highest in the world rankings at 27th while Adam Hadwin was the highest International golfer at 45th. While Team USA has seven rookies, Johnny added he “was so very impressed with these young players.” He also gave kudos to Phil Mickelson for playing as well as he has over the course of the last month.
Johnny is big on this latest generation of American golfers. “You think that Jordan Spieth is the best putter in the world and then you see Justin Thomas and then you think that maybe he is instead. These young players show great talent with their recovery shots. They have great timing with their swings. True, there is lots of talent among the Internationals and I think that Louis Oosthuizen is one of the best players I’ve ever seen, but if that team has half a chance, it will come down to the expertise of Nick Price to get them on the same path to victory. All those different languages would seem to make things difficult.”
Of course, we’ll know a whole lot more next Sunday afternoon when the 12th edition of the Presidents Cup concludes with the singles matches at Liberty National. With a format that varies slightly from the Ryder Cup, there will be five foursome (alternate shot) matches Thursday, five fourball (better ball) matches Friday, four alternate shot and four better ball matches throughout Saturday, and then the singles matches Sunday. The PGA Tour’s new season will start the following week at Silverado in nearby Napa.
A tip of the golfing hat to the 1968 Bing Crosby Pebble Beach champ Johnny Pott for his insightful impressions on next week’s Presidents Cup matches. Thanks for the insights, Johnny.