The rest of the United States team couldn’t emulate playing Captain Tiger Woods.
Woods and Justin Thomas captured the first four-ball match on opening day of the 13th Presidents Cup, but the International team took command after that while building a 4-1 lead at Royal Melbourne Golf Club royalmelbourne.com.au in Melbourne, Australia.
The Americans have dominated with a 10-1-1 record in the biennial competition, but the Internationals have the lead for the first time since the second day of the 2005 event at
Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., where the U.S. went on to win, 18½-15½.
“It was a different start that the past several Cups,” International Captain Ernie Els said. “We had a great start against a very talented side. The golf course was very tough, but we made a lot of birdies going out and I was very proud of the way we finished matches out against a very talented team.
“We had great preparation and a good plan. We have a long way to go, but this was a great start.”
Woods and Thomas claimed a 4-and-3 victory over Marc Leishman of Australia and Joaquin Niemann of Chile in the opening match of the day, but that was it for the heavily-favored Americans.
After that, Adam Hadwin of Canada and Sungjae Im of South Korea downed the all-California team of Patrick Cantlay of Los Alamitos and UCLA, and Xander Schauffele of La Jolla and San Diego State, 1 up; Adam Scott of Australia (pictured right) and Byeong Hun An of South Korea (left) defeated Tony Finau and Bryson DeChambeau of Clovis, 2 and 1; C.T. Pan of Taiwan and Hideki Matsuyama of Japan got past Patrick Reed and Webb Simpson, 1 up, and Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa and Abraham Ancer of Mexico dominated Dustin Johnson and Gary Woodland, 4 and 3.
The U.S. had a chance to be a little closer, but Matsuyama sank a 27-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole that proved to be the difference in the last match on the course.
“It was important us to get out to a quick start, take advantage of it and go from there to get an early point,” Woods said of his match with Thomas.
Later, he said: “We have to go out and earn the Cup. It’s a long week and we’re not out of it. It’s a long week. We have to go back and talk about it and figure out our pairings going forward.”
In alternate-shot matches on Friday (Thursday afternoon U.S. time), Johnson and Matt Kuchar will face Oosthuizen and Scott; Schauffele and Cantlay will take on Hadwin and Niemann; Simpson and Reed will meet Leishman and Ancer; Woods and Thomas will go against An and Matsuyama, and Rickie Fowler of Murrieta Gary Woodland will face Im and Cameron Smith of Australia.
Haotong Li of China is the only player on either team who will not play in the first two days.
Said Scott after the first day: “It means a lot. It was a lot of fun. Not much was expected of us, but we got rid of the nerves early, got rolling and played well.”
Now it’s up to the Americans to respond.
For complete results and pairings, visit https://www.presidentscup.com/leaderboard.html
