Weir’s miracle eagle lifts Internationals

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/10/2009 (6141 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAN FRANCISCO — When the Presidents Cup is lopsided, one way or another, it is a channel just waiting to be changed.

When it’s close, and this one is, you can’t take your eyes off it.

The International Team was all set to be interred, with little fanfare, in some scruffy corner of Harding Park Golf Course — trailing Friday’s second session 5-1 at one point, watching the Americans make clutch shot after clutch shot — but a pair of stirring rallies in the final two holes, capped by a near-miraculous eagle by short-hitting Tim Clark at the 18th in the day’s final match, guaranteed the drama will extend well into the weekend.

Clark hit his Sunday punch twice — splitting the fairway on his tee shot, crushing a 250-yard fairway wood into the heart of the green, then sinking the putt to bring him and his partner, Vijay Singh, back from the dead against Stewart Cink and Lucas Glover.

They took the last two holes to win 1-up, while Mike Weir and Ernie Els won the last three of a see-saw match with Jim Furyk and Anthony Kim, in which neither team ever led by more than a hole until an amazing recovery shot by Weir at the last led to a conceded eagle, and a 2-up victory.

For much of the day, International Team captain Greg Norman must have been surreptitiously rehearsing a concession speech, with only his two Asian rookies — Y.E. Yang and 18-year-old Ryo Ishikawa — recording a decisive win, 4-and-3 over Kenny Perry and struggling Sean O’Hair.

But in the space of a half-hour, everything changed, and a 3-3 saw-off in the best-ball matches meant the Americans will take just a 6 1/2 to 5 1/2 lead into today’s double set of five alternate-shot and five best-ball games.

The Internationals hung tough for much of the day, but the matches they lost, they really lost.

Aussie Robert Allenby and Colombia’s Camilo Villegas got very little going against a very beatable U.S. team of Hunter Mahan and Zach Johnson, though the margin was only 2&1, and Geoff Ogilvy and Angel Cabrera made nothing happen and got steamrolled 5&3 by Tiger Woods and the fellow who looks like his best-ever partner, Steve Stricker.

The third Aussie on the team, and surprisingly the best of them so far, Adam Scott, lost decisively with partner Retief Goosen to Phil Mickelson and Justin Leonard, who put the day’s first American point on the board, winning 3-and-2 after an impressive display of clutch putting. And it was Leonard, who had blown a 30-inch putt at the end of play Thursday, who clinched it with an 11-footer at the 16th.

"I was pretty upset when I finished (Thursday), but I went in and kind of made a joke about it in the team room, and knew I needed to come out and play well today," Leonard said. "I rode (Mickelson) all the way around and made a couple of putts today."

With Yang and Ishikawa easily handling Kenny Perry and Sean O’Hair, and Singh and Clark battling Stewart Cink and Lucas Glover down to the wire, the onus was on Weir and Els to come back from one down after 15 holes in their match. But Furyk was magnificent, absolutely carrying Kim, who has struggled from the outset this week and was a passenger with Mickelson in their Day 1 win.

Weir birdied the 16th, Els the 17th to go 1-up, and then, with Els’ tee shot in an impossible lie in the fairway bunker on the par-five 18th and Weir’s nestled nearly up against the boundary fence left of the rough, the little Canuck took a fierce lash at a fairway wood and launched it onto the green, 18 feet behind the hole. When Furyk’s birdie putt slid just past the lip, he conceded Weir’s eagle.

"I couldn’t see whose shot it was," Els said of the Weir recovery. "I was in the bunker and saw a ball come out of (the far rough) like a rocket and I was asking Ricci (his caddy) if it was Mike’s shot. It was an unbelievable shot. That was sweet."

 

— Canwest News Service