MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA | The day belonged
to the American team, but the week belonged
to Jim Furyk and Tiger Woods. The U.S. won
the Presidents Cup, 19-15, for the fourth
straight time. And the U.S. avenged its only
loss to the International team, in 1998 at Royal
Melbourne, the site of this year’s matches.
Furyk, who suffered through a dismal year,
went through the matches with a 5-0 record,
only the fourth player to have won five matches
in a Presidents Cup. Woods, Mark O’Meara and
Shigeki Maruyama are the others.
And Woods, who was a lightning rod as
a captain’s pick, won his singles match over
Aaron Baddeley convincingly and, as a result,
captured the deciding point for the second
straight President’s Cup.
“I felt better about my game than what I’ve
been playing this year, and I kind of want to
thank my partners,” said Furyk, who won three
matches with Phil Mickelson and another with
Nick Watney.
American captain Fred Couples, who was
captain in 2009 for the victory at Harding Park,
hadn’t counted on Furyk and Mickelson becoming a partnership.
“We needed it. (Furyk) was a leader,”
Couples said. “He and Phil told me, which was
very odd – I wasn’t planning on it on Tuesday
night – that they wanted to play together. And
they rode and rode and rode.”
Woods made six birdies in dispatching Bad-
deley, 4 and 3, in Sunday singles. But his week
was off to an inauspicious start as he and long-
time partner Steve Stricker were trounced 7
and 6 in Thursday foursomes by Adam Scott
and K.J. Choi. Couples then paired Woods
with Dustin Johnson and the pair won one
match. Woods finished the week 2-3-0.
“He was ready for a month,” Couples said.
“Certainly, I couldn’t answer how he was going
to play, but this week I think he showed to him-
self that his swing is back and he’s healthy, and
that’s more important to me. Obviously, we want
to win the Cup, but it’s more important for me to
have people realize that he can play the game.”
The U.S. took a 7-5 lead after the first two
days and then went 4-1 in the foursomes in the
first session on Saturday, giving the Americans
an 11-6 lead. The advantage was 13-9 going
into the Sunday singles, a lead that was too
difficult to overcome.
“It’s disappointing to not get the Cup this
year, but to have this event here at home, it has
been a fantastic week and one I’ll remember for
my whole career,” said Adam Scott. “We played
hard. I think it’s just a really demanding golf
course. No matter how good you are, on this
course it’s just too hard to hit the ball well to get
it around here. And they might have done it just
a little bit better than us this week.”
