EMC World Cup of Golf missing star lineup

BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2003 World Cup | Preview | 11 Nov 2003

The World Cup of Golf gets underway on Thursday at the Pete Dye designed Kiawah Island course in South Carolina, with the event perhaps lessened by an absence of the leading players from several of the countries participating. Many of those same players are involved in the President’s Cup the following week. Perhaps it is time for the controlling bodies of both events to revisit the scheduling to ensure that both tournaments get a fair go and that the World Cup of Golf actually represents its title.

The United States is represented by US Open Champion Jim Furyk with Justin Leonard as his partner. Furyk is currently the third ranked American behind Tiger Woods and Davis Love and Leonard the eighth ranked.

Australia has Appleby but not Allenby and joining Appleby is the fourth ranked Stephen Leaney who was the third ranked Australian when the team was selected.

Vijay Singh’s non-participation means that the tenth placed finishers last year, Fiji, will not have a place in the field this year. Canada and Zimbabwe are in a similar position with Mike Weir and Nick Price electing not to play.

Defending champions Japan will be in South Carolina, and although Shigeki Maruyama heads their team, his winning team mate from 2002, Toshi Izawa, will be replaced by Hidemichi Tanaka.

South Africa, who won the event two years ago in Japan with Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, is represented by Trevor Immelman and Rory Sabbatini.

The team of Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley will represent Ireland once again at the same course where they captured their 1997 victory.

Argentina is represented by the two players who took their country so close to victory in Buenos Aires in 2000, namely Angel Cabrera and Eduardo Romero.

While the lack of leading players detracts somewhat from the event in terms of star quality, it opens up opportunities for lesser teams to shine. So too does the format, where fourball and foursomes replace combined individual totals. This allows the team with not necessarily the best skills, but the best combination, to prevail.

The favourites will still be the Americans from perhaps Japan, England, South Africa, Australia and Argentina but countries such as Korea with K.J. Choi and S.K. Ho, Sweden (Frederik Jacobson and Niclas Fasth), France (Thomas Levet and Raphael Jacquelin) may well surprise.

New Zealand is represented by Michael Campbell and David Smail. Campbell is playing reasonably well at present (7th at his last start in Spain at the Volvo Masters) but Smail seems to have lost his way of late, missing his last three cuts in Japan. If they can rediscover the form and combination that took them so close in Japan in 2001, then they have a chance, but given current form, their highlight of the week may well be seeing the All Blacks making the final of the “other” World Cup going on at present in another land.

A first prize of $US1 million awaits the winning team therefore for many in the field, the richest event in which they will have ever played.