“What?” Faldo said, genuinely shocked and a little concerned that Ballesteros was serious. “You want me to decide who to put in the team, get everyone ready to play, decide who is going to play each day and win my matches? No way.”

Gallacher captained Europe again two years later, and Europe won—with Faldo coming from behind to beat Curtis Strange in a crucial singles match.

The last time a Ryder Cup captain played in the matches was 1963, when Arnold Palmer was a playing captain for the U.S. team. That was long before the Ryder Cup expanded from Great Britain & Ireland to include all of Europe in 1979, and the matches went from “hit-and-giggle” golf, as Jack Nicklaus once put it, to very serious business. That year was also only the second time the matches were 18 holes apiece—as opposed to the 36 they’d been through 1959.

Here is the list of Presidents Cup captains who also have played in the matches since they began in 1994: one. Hale Irwin went 2-1 for the Americans in the inaugural event at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, a 20-12 U.S. victory.

And that’s the way it should stay, especially if the PGA Tour wants the Presidents Cup to be taken more seriously, which—to put it mildly—it wants to see happen.

There has been talk all fall that Tiger Woods might name himself as one his team’s four captain’s picks for the matches in December, which will be played in Melbourne—the only place where the International team has ever won.

There’s no doubt the tour would love to see Woods play, and so would the TV networks that will televise the matches in the middle of the night because of the 16-hour time difference between Melbourne and the East Coast of the United States.

But there are a myriad of reasons Woods shouldn’t name himself. Let’s start with his health—which is always an issue. The week before the matches, Woods is going to play four rounds in the exhibition he and his foundation run in the Bahamas. Then he has to fly across the world to Australia and, if he’s playing, will need to play practise rounds and tee it up as early as Thursday, if he puts himself in the lineup on the first day.

That might not sound terribly daunting, but Woods has said he needs to pick his spots to play as he approaches his 44th birthday with a back that’s always going to be a question mark. There’s no need for him to play in Australia. His only playing goal right now should be to prepare for the Masters.

He has no choice but to play in the Bahamas. He has a choice at Royal Melbourne.

There’s also this: If Woods picks Woods, he will have to jump himself over someone who finished ahead of him in the Presidents Cup points standings. Tony Finau, Gary Woodland, Rickie Fowler and Patrick Reed finished ninth through 12th. Woods was 13th.

There are those who want to see Woods play who are making the case that Woodland has done little since his U.S. Open win in June—though he did finish T-5 in last week’s CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges in South Korea. But Woods has done close to nothing since his dramatic Masters win in April—and he had knee surgery two months ago.

Reed, Fowler and Finau all have Ryder Cup experience—Woodland does not. Neither does Kevin Na, who has been mentioned as a possible pick with his win last month in Las Vegas.

Fowler’s first Ryder Cup was in 2010, and he quickly became a U.S. team fixture (except in 2012, when he was injured for much of the year), even when he didn’t make a team on points (2016 Ryder Cup), because he’s so well-liked and plays such an important role in the team room.

“There was never any doubt I was going to pick Rickie,” said Davis Love III, the U.S. captain at Hazeltine National. “There’s no one he can’t play with, and he helps everyone relax in the team room.” His selection by Woods, then, seems more than reasonable.

Fowler smiles while looking at the trophy after the U.S. defeated the Internationals, 19-11, at the 2017 Presidents Cup. (Chris Condon/PGA Tour)

It’s probably important for Woods to put Reed on the team for a reason 180 degrees different than Fowler: Reed has had trouble fitting into the U.S. team room at times. In 2014, when Phil Mickelson spoke on Saturday night to Reed’s first Ryder Cup team, he looked at Reed and said, “We need to know you better.”

Reed didn’t disagree, but he has still struggled to be part of the group at times. He earned his Captain America nickname in 2016 because of his partnership with Jordan Spieth—and a spectacular singles win over Rory McIlroy—but Spieth made it clear to Jim Furyk in Paris that he’d prefer to play with his pal Justin Thomas.

Woods has a good relationship with Reed—he was the vice-captain assigned to Reed’s informal pod in 2016—and Reed wears red on Sundays at tournaments as a homage to Woods. A happy, motivated Reed would be a boon to Steve Stricker’s team at Whistling Straits next year, and Woods has as good a chance as anyone to sit Reed down, captain to player, and tell him, “Here’s why I picked you, and here’s what I need you to do.”

There is also the experience question. The Presidents Cup doesn’t carry the same pressure as the Ryder Cup, in part because it has been around only since 1994—as opposed to 1927—and in part, because the U.S. is 10-1-1 in the event as opposed to a 3-9 record in the Ryder Cup since the Presidents Cup was launched. The Americans expect to win the Presidents Cup; they hope to win the Ryder Cup.

Spieth’s first international team competition was in the 2013 Presidents Cup, at Muirfield Village. He said that event, won easily by the U.S. team, helped him prepare for what was to come a year later in the Ryder Cup.

“I know it’s not the same as the Ryder Cup,” he said, “but I walked on the first tee the first day and saw Jack Nicklaus and George [W.] Bush standing there. I’d been playing on the Web.com Tour at the start of the year, and now I’m on the tee with Mr. Nicklaus and President Bush. That will make you nervous. It took me a few holes to get past that. But when I walked onto the first tee a year later at Gleneagles, I was nervous—don’t get me wrong—but the Presidents Cup experience helped settle me down.”

Spieth won’t be on this year’s team—he finished 27th in the standings—but he is certainly someone who merits captain’s pick consideration if he’s in the ballpark. This time around, he’s not.

Playing the Ryder Cup without Presidents Cup experience doesn’t mean you can’t play well as a rookie. Brooks Koepka went 3-1 at Hazeltine, but then again, he has since gone on to win four major championships.

Woodland should be part of Stricker’s team next year. Everyone agrees he would have a Fowler-like effect on the team room, and he can be comfortably paired with anyone. Giving him the experience he’ll gain by playing Presidents Cup can only be a good thing. Plus, he deserves to be on this team.

Woodland supporters believe getting him to experience in this year’s Presidents Cup is important to help him with future team events, including next year’s Ryder Cup. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Finau went 2-1 on Furyk’s Ryder Cup team in Paris, including crushing Tommy Fleetwood in singles, 6 and 4, after Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari had gone 4-0 the first two days. Finau should certainly be on this team after just missing a spot among the automatic eight.

The only two players outside players nine through 12 in the Presidents Cup ranking worthy of serious consideration were Mickelson—who finished 16th in the final points standings—and Woods. Mickelson essentially withdrew himself from consideration last week, saying he hadn’t played well enough to deserve a spot. That had to be painful because he has been on every U.S. team since the inaugural Presidents Cup.

Woods hadn’t played at all since August—other than the Monday’s four-man MGM Resorts The Challenge: Japan Skins, although he will play in Japan this week at the PGA Tour’s inaugural Zozo Championship. If he wins that, or even finishes top five, then considering himself would be justified. Even then, though, it still makes more sense to go with the players ahead of him in the points standings.

At a pre-Challenge press conference in Japan, Woods didn’t remove himself from consideration for a spot. He went on to say that he had been “consumed” with his preparation for making his picks. One would think he’d be even more consumed with all the rest of the duties that go with being a captain during the week of the matches.

If the tour—which owns, operates and runs the Presidents Cup—wants it to be taken more seriously, Woods playing just to bring more attention to the event should be something it doesn’t want. The event will get more attention when the International team begins to win more often. That’s what happened to the Ryder Cup when Europe began to win.

Of course, the tour will want Woods to play. He is uniquely popular in the world of golf. No one with a vested interest in the Presidents Cup is going to tell him not to play. Which is why Woods needs to be the adult in the room and take the Faldo approach: I need to devote 100 per cent of my time while in Australia to being the captain.

It’s the right thing for him, for the event and for golf.

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In the Q&A that followed, he clarified what exactly he meant by this. He’s missed Japan, where he hasn’t played an official round since the George W. Bush administration. He’s missed Asia, where he hasn’t teed it up in a tournament since 2013. And he’s missed the energy that comes with competing, which he hasn’t done since a lacklustre FedEx Cup playoff run two months ago ended one step shy of the Tour Championship.

Woods will get his first chance to wash away a disappointing end to last season this week, when he begins his 2019-’20 campaign roughly 7,000 miles from Augusta National, the sight of his latest (and greatest?) triumph. The 15-time major champion starts the competitive portion of his weeklong Japanese sojourn on Monday with MGM Resorts The Challenge: Japan Skins, where Woods will wear a mic and face off against Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and Japanese native son Hideki Matsuyama for a total purse of $350,000. The first in a series of annual exhibitions staged by GOLFTV, the one-day event is based loosely off The Skins Game, an unofficial offseason PGA Tour event last played in 2008, and will be held at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club, which also will later in the week host the ZOZO Championship, the first official PGA Tour event played in Japan.

Monday will mark Woods’ first competitive round since he had arthroscopic surgery in August to repair minor cartilage damage to his left knee. Meanwhile, the ZOZO will likely be his last start before he must decide whether to take himself with one of his four captain’s picks for the U.S. Presidents Cup team that competes in Australia in December. Woods will want to flash better form than he showed toward the end of summer, when he missed the cut at the Open Championship, withdrew from the Northern Trust with an oblique strain and finished T-37 out of 70 at the BMW Championship.

Jun Sato/Getty Images
Woods shows off his swing during a workshop at the Meiji University in Tokyo on Sunday.

That context will attract extra attention to Woods’ performance at both The Challenge and the ZOZO. Even so, this week was always going to be a spectacle. Woods’ presence in this golf-enamoured country brings with it a tangible air of anticipation—and appreciation. Woods last visited Japan in 2006, when his bid to win a third-straight Dunlop Phoenix Tournament (“the DPT” as Woods called it Sunday) ended with a playoff loss to Padraig Harrington.

Back then, a 30-year-old Woods was at the height of his powers—he had won the prior two majors by a combined seven shots, was No. 1 in the World Ranking by a comical margin and hadn’t yet undergone a major surgery. On Sunday, Woods returned to Tokyo as a 43-year-old father of two with an unfortunately extensive injury history. Still, he received what can only be described as a hero’s welcome.

Tiger playing rock, scissor, paper with a kid at a local children’s centre in Toyko ?? pic.twitter.com/3jxskEVDCf

— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) October 20, 2019

Woods delighted fans with an appearance at the Nike store. He visited a children’s center and looked spry as he participated in a chaotic relay race involving putters, tennis balls, soccer goals and ostensibly something resembling rules. And he finished the day by giving the Meiji University women’s golf team a clinic at its on-campus practice facility.

Tiger taking on the Meiji University women’s golf team in a stinger challenge in Tokyo ?? pic.twitter.com/gdp7b9cH4L

— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) October 20, 2019

As Woods was smiling for cameras and answering questions, two of his Challenge opponents were shooting sub-par rounds on the final day of the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges in South Korea. Day’s one-under 71 saw him finish T-31 in his first tour start of the 2019-’20 season, and Matsuyama shot a bogey-free 65 to climb into a tie for third. The two players, both of whom will enter Monday’s competition ranked outside the top 20, are trying to recapture the magic that saw Day summit the World Rankings and Matsuyama reach World No. 2.

Then there’s McIlroy, the reigning FedEx Cup champion and PGA Tour Player of the Year. The World No. 2 was at Ajinomoto Stadium on Saturday night to watch New Zealand sadly humiliate his Ireland team, 46-14, in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup. McIlroy’s last start was in September at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, where—much to his dismay—his 15-under total yielded only a tie for 26th, his worst finish since missing the cut at the Open at Royal Portrush in July.

If the opportunity to beat three of the game’s biggest stars in front of a global audience isn’t enough, McIlroy has a few options in the way of extra motivation: He could re-visit his loss to Woods in March’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, or he could read Brooks Koepka’s comments from last week, when he said Rory isn’t a rival because he hasn’t won a major since Koepka arrived on the PGA Tour.

Getty Images (3)
Matsuyama, Day and McIlroy each have their own motivations heading in

All four of Monday’s participants are familiar with high-profile events, but Woods especially should feel comfortable under the circumstances (and under the lights, as the last couple of holes will take place after sunset). This will be his 24th appearance in a made-for-TV event. The most recent came last November, when he lost a $9 million match to Phil Mickelson in Las Vegas. The first was 23 years ago in a Skins Game that included Tom Watson, who turned 70 last month.

Somewhat surprisingly, Woods has been on the winning side just 11 of the previous 23 times, meaning Monday is an opportunity to get back to .500. It’s also a chance for Tiger to show the golf world his surgically repaired knee is fine, that the late-summer struggles were but a bump in the road and that his game is Presidents Cup-ready.

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By Alex Myers
GOLFTV’s “The Challenge: Japan Skins” will take place on a Japanese golf course on Monday, but the new event got quite the introduction in a Japanese classroom. Well, sort of.

In case you haven’t seen The Challenge’s promo in which Hideki Matsuyama teaches his three opponents—Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day—a bit of Japanese, let’s start there. The entertaining clip contains plenty of classroom hijinks, good-natured ribbing, and even some valuable knowledge for those planning on playing golf in Japan. Check it out:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3bHsU4lepJ/

But what if we told you this wasn’t actually shot in a Japanese classroom—or even in Japan? And then what if we told you these four PGA Tour stars were never even in the same room at the same time? Hideki, how do you say “optical illusion” in Japanese?

The visual trickery becomes a little more clear in this hilarious blooper real from the shoot:

Not everything went according to plan on the set of the Japanese Lesson ??#TheChallengeJapanSkins | @MGMJapan pic.twitter.com/SuCDRADiae

— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) October 16, 2019

The spot was part of a series of promos for the made-for-TV competition that was shot during the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship in August. And it was filmed in a ballroom at Medinah Country Club across four separate sessions with each of the golfers. To execute the production, GOLFTV, which along with Golf Digest is part of Discovery, hired Above Average, a digital entertainment studio most known for producing “Saturday Night Live” shorts, and which also worked with Golf Digest on a fun 2017 project that imagined turning Central Park into a 36-hole golf course. So, yeah, they’re as good at being creative as Rory is at hitting a driver.

Combined with a script written by GOLFTV’s Jamie Kennedy, fill-in and translation work from Shimon Hoizumi, who manages GOLFTV Tokyo office, and assistance from PGA Tour Entertainment and Medinah, Above Average, under the guidance of president Marc Lieberman and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Matt Luem, pulled it all off. Of course, getting the golfers to deliver solid acting performances went a long way as well.

Dom Furore

“It was a real collaborative effort. Matt has a nice touch getting subjects to have fun and buy into an idea, and the guys enjoyed it,” Lieberman said. “The production accomplishments we’re most proud of were those little details like knocking off Rory’s hat to make it seem like they were all in the same room. In a perfect scenario, you have everyone all together, but we were happy with the final product.”

Of course, the final final product will be the competition itself. But if Monday’s event is anything close to being as entertaining as its promos, golf fans are in for a treat.

The post The most remarkable thing about this “The Challenge: Japan Skins” promo is something you probably didn’t notice appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Alex Myers
Tiger Woods is arguably the most-written about athlete in history. But now, the 15-time major champ will finally tell his own story.

HarperCollins Publishers announced on Tuesday it has acquired the world rights to the first-ever memoir by Woods. And the title is succinctly perfect: Back.

It’s an obvious nod to Woods’ remarkable comeback, but, of course, it also references the part of the body that plagued the legendary golfer to the point of wondering whether he’d ever return to competitive golf. After four back surgeries, including a last-ditch fusion procedure, Woods returned to action in December of 2017. He won the 2018 Tour Championship, his first PGA Tour title in more than five years, before winning the 2019 Masters, his first major in more than a decade and his first green jacket since 2005.

Back is described by HarperCollins as “a candid and intimate narrative of an outsize American life: from growing up a celebrated golfing prodigy to shattering centuries-old racial barriers as a young pro; from rising to unprecedented fame and global icon status to battling devastating injuries and personal issues; from enduring years of physical anguish to mounting an astonishing comeback at 43 years old, culminating with the 2019 Masters, where his thrillingly impossible victory captured the imagination and hearts of people around the world.” It will be the first Woods biography by Woods with full cooperation from his family and inner circle, although, he collaborated with writer Lorne Rubenstein on The 1997 Masters: My Story in a 2017 book chronicling his landmark first Masters win.

“I’ve been in the spotlight for a long time, and because of that, there have been books and articles and TV shows about me, most filled with errors, speculative and wrong. This book is my definitive story,” Woods said in a statement. “It’s in my words and expresses my thoughts. It describes how I feel and what’s happened in my life. I’ve been working at it steadily, and I’m looking forward to continuing the process and creating a book that people will want to read.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3pDlQhjiTm/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=dlfix

Woods has been recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, but will return to action at next week’s “The Challenge: Japan Skins” and at the PGA Tour’s inaugural Zozo Championship.

No timetable on when the book will be released was given.

“Meeting with Tiger, speaking with him at length about the process of writing a memoir, I was delighted to discover how much he has to say, and how ready, how eager, he is to say it,” said HarperCollins executive editor Shannon Welch, who will edit the book. “He’s at a place in his career and his life where he’s thinking deeply about his story, the highs and the lows, and how it all relates and connects. I think the result will be extraordinary.”

The post Tiger Woods is finally writing a memoir—and it has the perfect title appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The exhibition will partially mimic the “The Skins Game,” the PGA Tour’s unofficial offseason event that ran until 2008. Along with the skins format, a number of holes will include challenges with additional monetary value that support charity partners and add unconventional twists to the event. Details of these challenges will be revealed during the live broadcast.

“I haven’t played a skins format in quite some time, so it will be fun to try something a little different and add a few strategic elements as we compete,” said Woods, who last year competed in a made-for-TV pay-per-view event against Phil Mickelson, and who now has an exclusive content partnership with GOLFTV. “There has already been some friendly banter between us and that will continue until we get to the first tee.”

U.S. fans can watch the “Japan Skins” live on Golf Channel starting at 11 p.m. ET on Oct. 20. Globally the event will be available on demand for free on GOLFTV by registering for the service. The show will be produced in Japanese and English, and covered by a lineup of presenters, commentators and on-course reporters.

GOLFTV and Golf Digest are both a part of Discovery.

Players will be competing for a total purse of $350,000, with the first six holes worth $10,000, and hole values escalating to as much as $100,000 on the final hole. If no player wins the 18th hole outright, a sudden-death playoff for the value of the final skin will ensue (but the value will not multiply with each playoff hole). The winner of “The Challenge: Japan Skins” is the player who takes home the most money.

“I’m a huge fan of the skins format. I love the way it rewards attacking play and think it suits my game quite well,” McIlroy said. “Any time I can go directly at pins to try and make birdies and eagles, I think it puts me at an advantage.

“The other fun thing about skins is how you find yourself rooting for the other guys if you’re not in a position to win the hole. You’re hoping they can tie with someone else so you can play for that skin on the next hole. With the skins format, you’re always in it until the end.”

Added Matsuyama, Japan’s top-ranked player: “It’s a real honour for me to play with these guys in front of a home crowd. I’ll be grateful for all the support from the fans in Japan, but with the popularity of Tiger, Rory and Jason, I know they’ll also be strongly supported wherever they play. It’s amazing to have these great champions playing in Japan and doing so much to promote and grow the game in my home country, but you can be sure I’ll be trying to beat them on the course.”

Hideki Matsuyama, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods will square off in “The Challenge: Japan Skins” on October 21st staged by @GOLFTV. ?

All the details: https://t.co/9O8USDVI7E pic.twitter.com/8mZJISKTHQ

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) September 19, 2019

Starting at noon local time, “The Challenge: Japan Skins” is expected to finish under floodlights. Approximately 3,000 guests will be invited to watch the event at the course. Spectators will be a mix of GOLFTV competition winners, registered users and event partners. A limited number of tickets to the event are set to be made available for sale to the public.

“To be able to bring many of golf’s biggest names to GOLFTV screens for our customers is hugely exciting for everyone involved,” said Alex Kaplan, president and general manger of Discovery Golf. “Fans will be able to see a totally new competition join the golf calendar, supporting some fantastic charities and showcasing the very best golf has to offer in the most fun, exhilarating and unpredictable way.”

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