Team U.S. steamrolled the worldwide Team in route to a commanding 4-1 lead after the first day at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in South Korea on Thursday.
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Louis Oosthuizen and Branden Grace of South Africa provided the lone point for the global team with a 3-and-2 win over Matt Kuchar and Patrick Reed.
Play begins on Thursday with five foursome matches and continues Friday with five fourballs.
“They have been wanting this pairing”, Haas said.
Publicly, Day is bearing much of the pressure from the media after a barnstorming end to the PGA TOUR season which included his first major title and three other wins in the space of six starts. Spieth and Johnson won the match 4 and 3 in what turned out to be terrible golf by Leishman and Lee.
“A tough day for us”, Price said. They were the only ones to get a point for captain Nick Price and looked strong in doing so.
American captain Jay Haas would have been delighted with the pairing of Masters and US Open champion Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson as they beat Danny Lee and Marc Leishman 4&3.
The Americans took a quick lead with a birdie on No. 2, only for the South Africans to birdie the next hole.
“Our team is so fragmented”, Price said.
Maybe one fewer match really did help the global team in this Presidents Cup.
The opening match between Bubba Watson and J.B. Holmes against Adam Scott and Hideki Matsuyama saw the Americans one up after a birdie at the second and they forged ahead from there.
“I think Danny will have a fantastic week here”.
“I was pretty (upset) I didn’t get picked”, Johnson said with a laugh.
Both teams have players noted for their massive distance off the tee such as Jason Day and Dustin Johnson but Nicklaus said it would be the players who negotiate the course’s huge, undulating greens that would be in the ascendancy.
By then, the Americans were ahead in three other matches, and the worldwide team could have used a win to at least keep it close. Four-ball is a fancy name for your basic best-ball game that you play on the weekend with a partner. “I hit a couple of really good iron shots for him coming in and he just kept burying them and burying them”.
With the United States Team having won eight of the 10 Presidents Cups so far and fielded another stacked squad this year, the first day could make or break the worldwide Team’s chances of turning the table.
Jordan Spieth has played in one of each in his short but already stellar career, and it was hard not to notice the contrast between the two cups.
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But just when the Aussie-Kiwi combination appeared to be fighting back into the match early on the back nine, all manner of problems beset them.
