CLEARWATER, Fla. – Peter Jacobsen, the seven-time PGA Tour winner turned broadcaster and golf general man, created the World Champions Cup in part because he felt senior golf needed a team event in the form of the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. In at least one respect, the fledgling tournament, whose second match kicked off Thursday morning here at Feather Sound Country Club, mimics its more established cousins: The best players from the U.S., Europe and around the world play for their flags in a format that breaks with the drumbeat of traditional stroke-play events. But this World Champions Cup has its own identity in many more areas.
First of all, no hecklers!
We’re kidding, but only kind of. The 18 players who took part in the first three six-ball sessions on Thursday morning were welcomed to the first tee by a few hundred fans peering down at them from a half-filled wraparound stand – but not with booming chants from the US or being-being-being or by a foul-mouthed presenter. . . just with old-fashioned applause. Patriotic symbolism was also in short supply, aside from Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” blaring from the speakers at the tee. No fans in face paint. No Viking horns. No Stars and Stripes overalls. The pair of Team USA supporters who did have American flags draped over their shoulders said it was a last-minute impulse purchase snagged while shopping for throat lozenges at CVS.
However, if the environment had no electricity, this created fluidity. One moment you could be sitting in the front row as Colin Montgomerie smooths balls on the shooting range or Miguel Ángel Jiménez fires a stogie; the next minute you could be sitting tee-side as big winners like Stewart Cink, Darren Clarke and Mike Weir ripped their drives (and, in Clarke’s case, cracked wise) in the opener. There were even better sight lines available on the course; While at a Ryder Cup you have to find space and be four or five holes ahead of a group for a decent vantage point, at the World Champions Cup you can get so close to tees and greens that you can hear the chatter of the players. (Yes, that was Jerry Kelly on the par-5 5th, beating up his partner, Steve Flesch, for an awkward bathroom encounter Flesch had on the way to the tee.)
The format of the World Champions Cup also differs far from that of the Ryder or President Cup. For starters, there are three teams in the mix, which makes scoring difficult; traditional head-to-head match play doesn’t work.
When Jacobsen conceived the event with his co-founder, Intrasport chief Charlie Besser, Jake said the two men “locked themselves in a room with piles of papers” to come up with a scoring system. What they opted for was a stroke play format that is contested in 24 groups of nine holes and includes both team and singles play.
On the first two days of the three-day event, players compete in six-balls (i.e. best ball score with three pairs in each group) and Scotch Sixsomes (which is a modified version of alternating shot). In both formats, according to the official rules, “the team with the lowest score on a hole receives two points. The team with the second lowest score on a hole receives one point. The team with the highest score receives no points. When teams finish with the same score on a hole, those teams receive the same number of points.” On Sunday, the event concludes with six singles matches, with the scoring corresponding to the team formats. There are a total of 648 points to earn. At the first event, in 2023, the US won in a nail-biter, amassing a total of 221 points, which, astonishingly, was only two more than the international squad.
“Two years ago, a number of players said to me: ‘I don’t understand the format,’” Jacbosen told me. “All I could say to them was, ‘Once you play the first hole, you’ll get it.’ And then they all came in and said, ‘Oh, okay, yeah, I get it.’
If six players and their caddies on a hole sound like a crowd, that’s because it is, especially when they’re standing together around a tee box or pacing a green. Just keeping track of who gets the credit can be a chore, unless you were Stewart Cink on Thursday morning. In his first six-ball match, Cink found himself in the unenviable and ‘annoying’ position of hitting the ball last. each hole. “We didn’t win a single hole,” he told me after he and Jason Caron collected 7 points in their match against Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjorn (Europe), and Steven Alker and Mike Weir (International). “So I hit nine straight holes and sixth for three hours straight.”
That bit of shame aside, Cink said he likes sixball because with so many balls in play, “there’s always some action on the hole, good or bad.”
Jerry Kelly, who scored six points with Flesch on Thursday morning, sounded like he was less suited to a format that requires an educator’s patience. Kelly, who has a reputation for playing fast, said he was starting to get antsy. . . on the first tee. “After the fifth guy,” he told me, “I stepped him off the tee real quick.”
Alan Bastable
Kelly said heavy traffic on the greens was also a challenge. “It’s hard to get around everyone’s goal, and pretty much everyone stepped on a goal,” he said. “Really a bit of a cluster in your head, and you’re not concentrating as much on your game as normal because you’re always trying to avoid someone or trying to figure out when it’s your turn to hit. Gets you out of your game a little bit more.”
Steve Stricker, who with his partner Justin Lenard earned just 5.5 points in the morning session before returning to 9.5 points in the afternoon, said the key to sixsome golf is to give yourself mental breaks when the game slows down – and it does. shall slowing down: the nine-hole morning sessions all lasted more than three hours. “You just have to leave and go to another area for a while and not pay attention,” Stricker told me.
As the afternoon matches headed to the final hole, a par-4 with water just to the right of the green and a seat behind it, the crowd was larger and livelier than for the opening tee shots. Three women in star-spangled caps stood near the green angling spot, surrounded by a few cameramen and photographers, while fans in the stands, where bartenders served drinks, evoked an ephemeral America! sing.
But really, it was the blue-and-gold that deserved the cheers. When Justin Leonard holed the final putt of the day, a 5-footer for par, Europe had a 4.5-point lead over both opponents. Maybe this event isn’t so different from a Ryder Cup after all.
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