Captaining the International team at the Presidents Cup has long been akin to leading a re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo while cast in the role of Napoleon, doomed to a high-profile defeat. The faces of his troops may change, but for the skipper there is a dispiriting predictability about the result.
The Presidents Cup has been contested 13 times since it was created in 1994. The tally shows 11 U.S. wins, one tie, and one International victory. It came at Royal Melbourne in 1998, a time so distant that of the 24 competitors that week only Tiger Woods isn’t yet qualified for the senior circuit. It’s a dreary trend that the 2022 International captain, Trevor Immelman, is eager to upend at Charlotte’s Quail Hollow Club this month, but his task has been made no easier by a man who led the International squad to defeat twice as captain and now threatens to do so for a third time as a toxic disrupter: Greg Norman.
Norman’s LIV Golf has churned the normally placid waters of professional golf this year and is having a huge impact on a biennial team competition that often struggles to get fans talking. The problem is that much of the talk this year is about who won’t be there.
Among those players who defected to LIV — thereby rendering themselves ineligible for Presidents Cup selection — are a handful that Immelman must have assumed would make his squad when he took the job, like Cameron Smith, Louis Oosthuizen, Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer and Branden Grace.
On the bright side, every player he has lost only had memories of losing the Presidents Cup. If nothing else, Immelman’s team room will house less scar tissue.
The impact is also apparent on the U.S. side, but less damaging with America’s deeper bench. Sure, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, and Bryson DeChambeau are gone — and Will Zalatoris is out with an injury — but Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Tony Finau remain. The defections have not altered the reality that Davis Love III’s team are the overwhelming favorites. That’s been the case since 1994, but in the 14th Presidents Cup the Americans might finally have a real incentive to prove that fact.
The anti-trust lawsuit filed in August by LIV golfers — and bankrolled by the Saudi government — is part of Norman’s effort to dismantle golf’s existing world order and establish LIV not only as the game’s premier platform but as home to the world’s best players. He’s a long way shy of achieving either goal, but his campaign has resulted in a palpable resentment among Tour loyalists and a steely determination to defend their circuit from the LIV threat. Even Love, a famously mild-mannered individual, has been strident in his public criticism of LIV, Norman and his acolytes.
One of the uncompromising messages delivered by players to Tour commissioner Jay Monahan after a meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, in August was that they don’t want to cross paths with LIV players on the tee again. There will be no LIV guys in the team rooms at Quail Hollow but the shadow cast by the Saudi series will be so obvious that the ceremonies might as well include a toast to absent friends. The schism is real, and apparently permanent.
Even for the most patriotic of players, it’s not always easy to get motivated for the Presidents Cup, and for some it’s only ever been a necessary inconvenience. This edition will be unlike those that preceded it. It’s an opportunity for the U.S. team to prove that it is united behind its Tour. The team members will be intent on sending a message, not so much to the International team as to an unseen enemy.
After almost 30 years of comparative apathy, the U.S. squad really does have something to prove at a Presidents Cup.
