Captains face daunting task of producing perfect pairings

By Helen Ross
Courtesy of PGATour.com

Fred Couples, one of Nicklaus' two Captain's Picks, mentioned a potential pairing with Tiger Woods several times on Tuesday. (AFP/Timothy Clary)

Jack Nicklaus has long been regarded as one of the game's most fearsome and focused competitors.

So it certainly went against type on Tuesday to hear the man who is arguably the greatest ever to play the game talk about the challenge of making the pairings for his U.S. Team at The Presidents Cup.

"What you do is make a really nice plan for the first day, and then you've got a really nice plan for the second day, and then you panic the third," Nicklaus said good-naturedly.

"That's basically what we all do -- scrambling to find out who has played well, who has not played well, and you throw away all of the things you've thought about for the last six months and do something else."

Two days before the first ball is struck in the first Foursome match, though, Nicklaus was hardly in panic mode. He said his squad is "pretty well organized," and a subsequent press conference with six of the U.S. players offered a few hints to the strategy.

Fred Couples, one of Nicklaus' two Captain's Picks, mentioned a potential pairing with Tiger Woods several times, once saying, "I did play with Tiger in Australia, and it was truly, truly a treat. I think I'm looking forward to that."

When pressed, though, Couples said, "We're just trying to throw you off. I'm really playing with (Phil) Mickelson." Woods simply flashed that megawatt smile and said, "I know, but you can't know."

As Nicklaus and his International counterpart, Gary Player, ponder their pairings for this week they'll look at personalities as well as past performances. There's a wealth of talent on both teams, so the edge might come in finding the respective comfort zones.

"I know you've heard it all the time, everyone thinks they can play with everybody and they all get along great, but when you're on the course, you have to know the guy pretty well because you're not going to win every single time you play and you have to be able to say the right things and have some fun with it," said Couples, a veteran of four Presidents Cups.

Davis Love III recalled being nervous the first time he played with Woods at the Ryder Cup at The Belfry. At the same time, though, he was similarly unnerved when tapped to team with rookies Stewart Cink and Chad Campbell last year -- albeit for different reasons than when he was paired with the game's No. 1 player.

"I had never played with Stewart in a match, and last time at Oakland Hills, I was very, very nervous playing with him because I just didn't know how," Love said. "Maybe I'm supposed to be the veteran and the leader and I was nervous playing with Chad Campbell, too, for the same reason; that I'm supposed to help him out enough so that I can get as much as I can out of him.

"Sometimes it's different pressure with different people. Certainly with Tiger, you can just help a couple of holes, you're going to be okay, but that's what team golf is all about."

Foursomes is particularly challenging. Not only are the players -- particularly the Americans -- unaccustomed to playing the alternate-shot format, the captains must decide whether to pair teams with similar games or mesh two pros whose strengths complement each other.

"Foursomes and four-balls are a little different," International Team rookie Peter Lonard said. "I think you've got to have the personalities but you've also got to have the similar games (in) foursomes, so you don't get guys that are used to hitting the fairways (hitting) out of the rough all day."

When things simply aren't working, the tendency sometimes is to, well, panic. Look beyond the surface, though, and you might find a loss can be deceiving. Sometimes captains can pull the trigger on a pairing too quickly.

"I've said a hundred times that I could be paired with Chris (DiMarco) and we could go out there and pump our fists and shoot 2-under par in best ball and win a match and Davis and Tiger can go out and shoot 9 under and lose to Trevor Immelman and Nick O'Hern, when they are 10 under," Couples said.

"It looks like we were great, and yet we played terrible. So, you know, this win-and-loss thing is a little mixed up. I think sometimes the captain has no idea, so he'll come out there and say, hey, you and Chris are going to play in the afternoon, and Davis, I'm going to split you up with Tiger because you lost when they basically were like machines, so it happens all the time."

The captain who makes the best decisions -- and the players who execute them the best -- will more than likely be holding The Presidents Cup come Sunday.