A good day for the U.S.A.

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This article was published 09/10/2009 (6142 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t what Mike Weir had in mind when he volunteered to take the reins of the International Team on Day 1 of the Presidents Cup.

A 3-and-2 loss with his South African partner, Tim Clark, to the U.S. side of Phil Mickelson and Anthony Kim in the first alternate-shot match, a format that has never been friendly to the world team, precipitated a steady turning of the colours on the giant scoreboards, from blue to U.S. red.

And in the end, what had started out so promisingly for Greg Norman’s team morphed into a white-knuckle job in which the Americans’ favourite primary colour was all over Justin Leonard’s face as he honked a two-and-a-half-foot par putt to turn a victory for him and his partner Jim Furyk into a halved match with Retief Goosen and Y.E. Yang.

And somehow, the Internationals avoided the usual Day 1 ending: a deep hole, and the world team peering out from the bottom of it. Instead, the first round of matches ended a mere 3.5-2.5 in the home team’s favour, and for the visitors, who were down 5.5-0.5 two years ago in Montreal, that’s a victory.

With Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker welcoming Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa to the big-time with a 6-and-4 spanking of the 18-year-old and his Aussie partner Geoff Ogilvy, the Americans stormed back from an early deficit to seemingly take control heading into today’s set of six best-ball matches.

Nowhere in the Internationals’ imagined scenario was there a really excellent showing in the opening-day alternate-shot matches, where they habitually get creamed. Their expectations were, let us say, modest. And lo and behold, as the first three matches reached the turn, the International team led all three. But most of the matches were constantly teetering, and the lead began to bleed away.

Weir’s match was a comedy of errors early, many of them by Clark and Kim, that reached its nadir at the par-four sixth hole, where Kim’s drive hit a tree left of the fairway, well back, and Weir followed by hitting one to the right, also off a tree. His ball bounded back along the cart path nearly 100 yards, with fans yelling “Go! Go! Go!” as it rolled farther and farther from the green.

Mickelson, standing in the left trees trying to figure out how to get the ball back in the fairway, turned to the fans and said: “And this is the best the game has to offer.”

Clark promptly hit another tree, then Weir hit another, Kim chunked his pitch shot, but by and by, the teams reached the green, and Weir pushed a four-footer wide of the cup to lose to a U.S. bogey.

The match changed dramatically as soon as Mickelson began to hole putts on the back side, and he holed enough of them to turn the Weir-Clark 1-up lead into a two-hole deficit by the 15th, with neither Weir nor Clark able to make anything of significance. Indeed, they didn’t make a single birdie all day, and the match ended at No. 16 with Weir missing a downhill eight-footer for birdie after Kim made his from 10.

At that point, the Americans were rolling, and a 4-2 lead seemed likely until Leonard’s meltdown.

“It’s a cruel game,” said International captain Greg Norman. “You have to feel for Justin, who played beautifully, and at the same time look what happened to (Weir and Clark), who looked as though they might win and then ran into Phil and A.K. making four birdies in a row.”

The Internationals’ two full points came from captain’s pick Adam Scott and Ernie Els, who beat Hunter Mahan and Sean O’Hair 2-and-1, and Vijay Singh and Robert Allenby, who hung on to edge Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink 1-up.

— Canwest News Service

— Canwest News Service