Rory is ready to don his cape and save the day – again.
If captain Trevor Immelman, whose International team has been pilfered of its top talents by rogue LIV bandits, had the means to call up Europe and request emergency reinforcements against an American juggernaut, Rory McIlroy is eager and willing to report for duty at the Presidents Cup in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“One hundred percent,” said an animated McIlroy when the proposition was brought up by Global Golf Post last week at Wentworth. “It’s at Quail Hollow. Have you seen me play Quail Hollow? I’d love to play. Actually, I said that to Trevor many times. Trevor and I have even had some chats recently because a couple of his team have decided not to play for him, so I said to him, ‘I’m available if you can get me in. I’m sure there might be some Australian or some South African in me somewhere, I don’t know.’
“Yeah, I’d love to play if I could. But obviously that’s not an option.”
What if it were an option? What if the Presidents Cup changed its charter to expand the International team roster to players from anywhere outside the United States – U.S. against The World? What if it was time to make a change to save the biennial match and lift it from its predictable one-sided irrelevance?
The Presidents Cup needs help, and there’s one proven way to fix it – invite Europe.
It’s too late for McIlroy to step to the tee at Quail Hollow and help the underdog Internationals in the 2022 Presidents Cup. But it’s not too late for 2024 and beyond to lift the Presidents Cup to a level it has struggled to reach since its inception.
Since the PGA Tour created the Presidents Cup in 1994 to try to capitalize on the outsized success and growing popularity of the Ryder Cup, it has struggled to gain the same kind of competitive traction. The Americans have won eight in a row dating back to a famous draw in South Africa in 2003. The Internationals have won only once in 13 matches – a 20½-11½ romp in Melbourne, Australia, in 1998 when Peter Thomson’s side was blessed with five major champions who would eventually collect 13 major trophies between them.
The Ryder Cup once had similar problems. Created in 1927 as a contest between the United States and Great Britain, it got off to a promising competitive start with the first four editions being split on home soil. Then the whole affair became rather tedious for roughly the next half-century. From 1935 to 1983, the Americans outclassed their cross-Atlantic rivals 19-1-1 – the lone victory coming in 1957 in England when the experienced collection of Brits and Irish beat up a U.S. team with six rookies on it.
The Ryder Cup was hardly inspiring until there came in 1977 an inspired idea – expand to include continental Europe. The idea was the brainchild of Jack Nicklaus, who by that point had perhaps grown a little weary of not being challenged in the biennial matches since his famous concession for a halve as a rookie in 1969. In conversation at Royal Lytham & St. Annes with Professional Golfers’ Association president Edward Stanley, the 18th Earl of Derby, Nicklaus proffered the idea of including the rest of Europe to make the contest more competitive.
The Earl of Derby liked the idea well enough to invite the rest of Europe, starting in 1979 with a pair of Spaniards including the fresh-faced reigning Open champion Seve Ballesteros. A young German named Bernhard Langer made the squad two years later.
The Ryder Cup would never be the same dull affair it once was.
In 1983, the team from Europe with Ballesteros and Langer came within a point of upsetting the Americans at PGA National in Florida. In 1985, the Europeans – with four Spaniards and one German – won at The Belfry and in ’87 defended by winning for the first time on U.S. soil against captain Nicklaus at his own Muirfield Village. Despite the defeat, it’s doubtful Nicklaus regretted his suggestion a decade earlier.
Since the continental expansion, Europe leads the U.S. 11-9-1, with the lone tie keeping the Ryder Cup in Europe’s hands in 1989. That competitive transformation has made the Ryder Cup one of golf’s most popular events along with the major championships and often the most eagerly anticipated week on the calendar every other year. Its success is why the Presidents Cup exists in the first place.
McIlroy’s willingness to entertain the idea of playing in the Presidents Cup – and the fact that he already talked about it with Immelman – illustrates the potential to take the event to the next level. The only reason Europe was excluded to begin with was in deference to the Ryder Cup and not wanting to presume that those same players would want to commit to another international team event every fall.
But the best Americans play in these spectacles every year without complaint. Why should a truly International team be forced to compete with one continent tied behind its back?
How eagerly would next week’s matches at Quail Hollow be anticipated if McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland and Matthew Fitzpatrick were part of the International team roster along with Hideki Matsuyama, Adam Scott, Sungjae Im and Corey Conners? You think that squad would be burdened with the tag of underdog? And if LIV Golf hadn’t poached talents like Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer and Louis Oosthuizen, you could make the argument that the talented American side might even be a little overmatched.
The threat posed by LIV Golf’s incursion is just an opportunity for the PGA Tour to make the same change the PGA overseas made more than four decades ago to save and bolster its product. The competitive relevance of the Presidents Cup was already threatened before LIV ever existed. Why not add a few more logs to the fire to make it burn brighter?
There are ways to make it work without leaning too far into making it a second edition of the Ryder Cup. As the leaders of college football have shown as they unveil plans for an expanded 12-team playoff in the near future, there is room to include everyone while raising the overall scale and caliber of the competition.
Mandate at least one player from Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, North America and Europe be on the 12-man International roster. Like the Olympics does with countries, cap the limit to no more than four players from any one continent to ensure global representation.
It’s too late for McIlroy to step to the tee at Quail Hollow and help the underdog Internationals in the 2022 Presidents Cup. But it’s not too late for 2024 and beyond to lift the Presidents Cup to a level it has struggled to reach since its inception.
Unite the whole world against U.S.
“I’d love to play,” said McIlroy.
Put him in, coach.
© 2022 Global Golf Post LLC
