Sometime later tonight or in the wee hours of Wednesday morning I will have the captains picks for Thursday's 6 foursome matches. In the Presidents Cup, unlike the Ryder Cup, the captains and their assistants sit across the table from each other and make the picks on the fly.
I believe Greg Norman gets the advantage of picking second first, then it alternates.
Here is the schedule of play.. (all times ET)
Wednesday, November 16 9 p.m.-2 a.m. (GOLF / live coverage) 6 Foursomes
Thursday, November 17 9 a.m.-1:30 p.m. (GOLF / tape-delayed)
7:30 p.m.-2 a.m. (GOLF / live coverage) 6 Fourballs
Friday, November 18 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (GOLF / tape-delayed)
3 p.m.-2 a.m. (GOLF / live coverage) 6 Foursomes, 6 Fourballs
Saturday, November 19 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (NBC / tape-delayed)
6:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. (GOLF / live coverage) 12 singles
Sunday, November 20 12-6 p.m. (NBC / tape-delayed)
Australian WWOS.....Presidents Cup captains Greg Norman and Fred Couples will on Wednesday pick their pairings for Thursday's opening day of the tournament at Royal Melbourne.
The first day of competition features six foursomes matches, in which each team's pairs take alternate shots playing the same ball.
The US have dominated the alternate-shot format in past meetings, a key to their historic overall dominance of the Internationals, who have won just once in eight previous clashes.
The International team have the added hurdle of trying to unite players from four countries, with five Australians, three South Africans, three South Koreans and Japan's Ryo Ishikawa grouped against the United States.
The three Koreans and Ishikawa have all been assigned interpreters, which Norman said added a layer of work to bonding as a team, which began with a dinner on Monday night."I got up and made a little speech to try to get everybody comfortable. But even when you make a speech, you've got to be a little bit more thoughtful in your word process, because you're going through an interpreter," Norman said. Those are the things that make it a lot more difficult for me, because when you have experienced teams with communication, it's like, hey, now these guys know how to go out as a team and work and operate."
Ishikawa did not arrive in Australia until late on Tuesday, which Norman said was not ideal, but something the team had to deal with.
Veteran South African Ernie Els, a Presidents Cup regular, said teaming with Australians was a great experience, given the two nations were so often fierce sporting rivals."We give each other quite a hard time away from the course, which is great too, everybody's got a great sense of humour," Els said.
He said the South African and Australian players were happy to make light of the other country's recent sporting failures, with the Wallabies' rugby World Cup quarter-final elimination of South Africa one topic which Els said "still burns a bit".
But Els got his own back by bringing up the Australian cricket team's dismal effort in being bowled out for 47 in their recent Test loss to the Proteas."The (Australian) boys were quite quiet about that one, but I've brought it up a couple of times," he said."Especially to Geoff (Ogilvy). Geoff is a good one, he likes to rub it in, Geoff is a good chirper
Bryan Angus also on twitter@mummmbles
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