Tiger Woods is now 'Golf Saban' and other things we learned at the USA's Presidents Cup win

The 2017 Presidents Cup was another uncompetitive bore but it wasn't completely uninteresting. Some observations beyond just the golf shots and match results.

You've already digested a full meal of content on how uncompetitive the 2017 Presidents Cup was and how this American team was one of the best ever and just getting started on what could be a decade of dominance. While the competition was a bore, watching the U.S. team light it up, really from the top of the roster to the bottom, was impressive and worth watching.

We don't need to re-hash all the specifics of a lopsided four-day match play event, but here are some notes beyond the actual golf shots and matches that I gathered from a few days at Liberty National.

These matches feel different with Tiger roaming

Watching Tiger Woods was the most enjoyable and entertaining part of the Presidents Cup. If I'm being honest, I probably never appropriately appreciated watching Woods play when we had him at his peak. I was younger, dumber, and could not put things in context all that well. Now with him mostly out of public view in the sport, the rare occasions where he does pop up seem so special and carry a certain weight. And that includes when he never swings a damn club.

In all contexts, it was a entertaining to watch him and listen to him and just see him.

1. It's fun to see all our shitty little jokes on the fantasies of Woods leading SEAL missions in some remote corner of the globe looking a little closer to reality with him marching the course wired up with comms-line earpieces and carrying a TrackMan briefcase that could be some sort of mobile command unit. This will never not be funny or get old.
2. It's cool to see him become this sherpa guide to what is clearly a superpower of a 20-something group of players coming up in these events. Woods has likely the greatest golf brain in the history of the game, and has to feel less threatened leaking some of that brilliance to players who can't use it against him in his prime. On Saturday, I called him Golf Saban: He's got the best 'croots, puts in an obsessive attention to every single detail, has no real time for all the media and promotional nonsense that comes with these exhibitions, and is the driving force behind what is now two straight methodical blowouts (and even mixed it up with an official after what he thought was a bad call). We already knew "process" was one of his go-to words and from all accounts, the way he prepared the team and himself as a captain for last year's Ryder Cup was nonpareil. The way he threw himself into the role was a motivating and contributing factor to the team's success at Hazeltine, and that appeared to be the case again this year. Process and preparation.
3. He seems to love it too — U.S. captain Steve Stricker hinted that Woods was getting as much out of it as the team, telling the New York Times, "This is a two-way street." Woods having a real purpose in this game, both for him and us, is something we need for the next 20, 30, or 40 years.
4. It's moving to see him celebrate with colleagues and competitors, so many of whom he was often trying to destroy on the golf course. We're thinking mostly of Phil Mickelson here, with whom Woods had a ... we'll use ... contentious relationship. Woods did not have a particularly strong desire to be friends with anyone on Tour, but especially someone hailed as a potential all-time great. Mickelson played a role in the two being frosty at times too. Now we're in the sunset of both careers, and the two seem legitimately happy to be paired up as the brain trust reformatting how American team golf is organized and outfitted for the next decade or two. I don't care if this is soft as hell, but it's moving giving all the history and scar tissue we have with these guys and they have with themselves.

A business convention

The location, a short ferry ride from Wall Street, may have had something to do with it. But walking around Liberty National was an entirely different experience from the Ryder Cup, and really any major championship or golf tournament I've been to.

This felt like more like a convention for "important looking" people to entertain each other or network about "important" things. The amount of finely pressed slacks and button-down shirts exceeded anything I've seen at any other golf tournament. The point felt more like an arena for corporate schmoozing and the attendant golf event was simply an outlet to congregate and for it to happen at this place.

With that kind of vibe permeating the grounds, it's hard to hype the crowds as having some sort of impact in a way we might thought when it was announced this was coming to New York. That kind of scene may be reserved for Bethpage and the 2024 Ryder Cup. The first tee scene was fun, but the crowds tapered off throughout the course. It may have just been the difficulty of navigating this particular venue. But at the Ryder Cup, every match is five to 10 deep along the ropes. Here, that happened maybe around just one or two marquee matches, and sometimes not even at those bigger matches.

When Justin Thomas holed out from the bunker at the 14th on Friday afternoon, he exhorted the crowd to get into it and the response felt, to be honest, subdued. The 14th hole this week, which is the 18th during normal club play, was supposed to be the highlight hole, an arena running up into the clubhouse with captivating views. But the hospitality suites lining the hole and surrounding the green just muted the atmosphere a bit and the response to Thomas' hole-out was a bit flat.

There were crescendos here and there, but that flatness existed across the course in my observation.

The Ryder Cup certainly has a corporate schmoozing element to it too, with brand partners and hospitality on the course. But it also has the massive livewire crowds and grandstands enveloping each match. The Presidents Cup was not that and this is, of course, fine. The purpose of the Presidents Cup can be more business-centered, and it doesn't have to be a same as the Ryder Cup. Just don't oblige the hype about the "rowdy NYC crowds" making this unlike any scene in golf. Maybe that changes in Australia in 2019 or Charlotte in 2021.

Epcot National

Again, critiquing or praising the venue of Liberty National needs to be done with an understanding of this event's purpose. The cup is a largely made-for-TV exhibition and this course was great for TV. You saw the hundreds of pictures and videos all week already, but I really cannot overstate how stunning the vista is from Liberty National.

As a course, it felt inauthentic. One colleague compared it to Disney World and there was definitely an amusement park, albeit an extremely high-class one, feel to it. This was a dump that they filled up, tarped over, and built an emerald golf course, man-made lakes, and a glistening glass clubhouse on top of for $250 million, among the most expensive courses ever built. There are towering walls of concrete, a din of sirens, shipping and truck fumes, and then there's a lush green shade of a perfectly manicured golf course. Nothing about this feels like it was cut and shaped out of the natural land provided and that's how you end up with the inauthentic feel.

It worked just fine for match play, although I'd argue there's way too much water on the course. Red-paint hazard lines are running everywhere and indeed, there were stretches were it felt like every other highlight on the broadcast was of a world-class player dumping one in the drink. There were some complaints about the routing leaving them with two par-3s in the final three holes, but I thought that added a funky element I didn't mind.

Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

Again, this comes back to the purpose of this thing — it's not the Walker Cup at a classic LACC. It's big business and TV entertainment. The views were inspiring and stunning and I think the course worked fine for these purposes.

Irreconcilable differences?

The tones of the winning and losing press conferences at these team events are always so fascinating to watch. Press conferences usually don't matter in golf, but they're entertaining and enlightening at these match-play contests. Aside from the usual lighthearted partying in the USA winner's press conference (gasp, even Jordan Spieth cursed!), I thought the most notable aspect was the contrast in captain's comments on just where this event may be going.

First came Ernie Els, a veteran of these events, assistant captain this year, and rumored to be the next head captain of the International team in 2019 at Royal Melbourne. On multiple occasions, Els used the phrase "going back to the drawing board" with the PGA Tour. It's clear the International side does not feel like the current arrangement, in which the PGA Tour owns and operates the entire event, is setting up most equitably for them. "We just want to feel that we are being treated fairly and that we get something going our way a little bit," Els said.

We heard repeated refrains about how the Internationals feel they're at a disadvantage not getting to play every year, or less often, as the American team. They also want more control from the PGA Tour, and Els cited scheduling, golf course setup, and team selection process as areas where that could be taken.

The Big Easy also specifically cited "less matches and less points" as something that would be beneficial to the International side — the thinking goes that less points and less matches mitigates the International side's lack of depth compared to the USA.

This is where the contrast between captain's press conferences seemed most stark. The usually understated and diplomatic Stricker was pretty direct when asked if there should be format changes or points reduced.

No, we had the format change for South Korea, and I don't know how many points that we needed to reduce, but I think it's fair. I mean, we weren't really too happy with the reduction of points to start with. We wanted an event that kind of allowed all our players to go out there and play.

So yeah, I don't see anything changing.

Stricker added that they all voted against the reduction in Korea, saying, "and the points system was still changed — ultimately, it doesn't seem like it would be up to us."

So it would appear that after this last blowout, we're headed for a showdown over the rules and format. It again puts the entire viability of the competition on trial, how it's run, and who runs it.

The Fanatics

It's great to have an International voice and superfan group involved in this thing, from Columbus to Korea to NYC. But I have serious questions about who is backing and underwriting this operation. Are you telling me this group spends thousands of dollars to travel the globe every two years to watch their team get its ass kicked? It seems like the people investigating George Soros paid protesters should spend their time digging into the Fanatics' operation.

I think they're a nice element to the competition and creative with their chants, but I need to know more of the why and how behind it.

Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

Phil's brutal honesty

Standing on the green immediately following another Sunday singles match win, Phil Mickelson let loose this howitzer of a quote.

We have a dynamic here that is different than I've seen, and that is these young guys are not only great players, fiercely competitive, but they have a quality that's taken me decades to acquire, and that is they are genuinely happy for each other's success.

Piggybacking for the Phil-Tiger observations from above, I think that sheds light on why the U.S. struggled for so many years in the Ryder Cup and why it seems set up so well for the future now.

Creating a new identity

The blowout reignited all the takes about how the Presidents Cup is a useless competition and I've certainly hit some of the issues with it in the notes above. Maybe being on the ground up close for a couple days imbued me with some empathy I didn't know I had, but the PGA Tour does bust its ass at this thing and is hustling to make it as strong as possible (there are, of course, motivating economic interests too!).

I think it would be stupid to do away with it or completely overhaul it. Team golf is the best — this is an incontrovertible fact. Make some tweaks, give more power to a home team, figure out a temporary way to make it more competitive. The lack of International depth is always cited as the reason why it's not competitive, but their best players have not played well either at many of these, including this year with Hideki Matsuyama and Jason Day. This core group of U.S. 20-somethings looks dominant, but there will be a swing when the Internationals have a run.

The PGA Tour carving out an identity that's more than "the other one that's not as good as the Ryder Cup" may be the biggest Prez Cup task. The Tour has done this really well with The Players, an event that now has the self-confidence beyond trying to force an identity as the "fifth major" into something that occupies its own totally unique space in the game. Maybe it means some format tweaks, or schedule tweaks, or qualification tweaks. But even after this past blowout, I'm hopeful there is a future for the Presidents Cup.