The Presidents Cup must become a mixed event
Amidst golf’s civil war, attention has been stolen from the 14th playing of the President’s Cup. The event has lacked juice in recent years, and 2022 is no exception. The international team has won just one of the 13 meetings since its inception in 1990, and it’s hard to imagine a different result on Sunday to the one history has regularly produced.
In a period of transition for the sport, there is no better time to shake up the format and introduce and mixed event that golf has been desperately lacking.
LIV Golf’s brash arrival on the scene forced changes to each team’s lineup. The US team has lost star power from the stacked roster that swept aside Europe in last year’s Ryder Cup.
Dustin Johnson was the first major champion to jump ship to the Saudi-backed tour, and former teammate Bryson DeChambeau soon followed his lead. A few weeks later, ironically after telling journalists that it was inevitable that PGA Tour players would “sell out” and join LIV, Brooks Koepka sold out and joined LIV.
This is a blow for the US teams moving forward, but the pool of players is arguably as deep as it’s ever been for the Americans.
This is not the case for the International team. Open Championship winner and World No.3 Cameron Smith and rising Chilean star Joaquin Neimann are also off to LIV, along with veterans Louis Oosthuizen, Marc Leishman and the Mexican duo of Carlos Ortiz and Abraham Ancer.
All of these players were set to make the International team, and the lack of depth has made life difficult for International captain Trevor Immelman. After the shake up, the average World Ranking for the US team is 12, while the International team lags behind at 49. No wonder the US are such strong favourites heading into Quail Hollow.
The Presidents Cup needs to revolutionise to prevent it from becoming viewed, if it isn’t already, as a pre-Ryder Cup warm up for the US. Bringing female players into the fold is a radical idea, but it feels like an open goal for the PGA Tour.
Golf has always flirted with the idea of mixed events with little substance. A major breakthrough came on the European Tour this summer at the Volvo Car Scandinavian Mixed 2022 which saw a historic finish as female Linn Grant stormed to a nine-shot victory.
The tournament was a huge success for women’s golf and a much-needed PR win for the European Tour in a difficult year.
A mixed Presidents Cup would help tap into a huge Asian and Oceania market for female golf. In contrast to the men’s game, the women’s game has a greater international feel with more countries being represented outside of Europe and North America.
Women’s golf is particularly strong in Asian countries in comparison to the men’s game, and eight of the top-10 women’s players in the world are for outside the U.S.
The idea also makes sense for the PGA Tour in their ongoing battle with LIV Golf too. It feels like it is only a matter of time before LIV targets the women’s game. LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman’s bold and false claim that the LPGA is sponsored by Aramco, a Saudi oil company, suggests that the league will be looking to expand further than its current male only league. http://gty.im/1426353463
The PGA Tour must land the first punch in this inevitable tussle and it needs to do it now. This change could prove decisive in the future of women’s golf and secure a meaningful link between the male and female tours.
Bringing female players into the Presidents Cup would equate the teams, thus make for more exciting competition while helping to grow the game. The PGA Tour was naïve and unprepared for the first wave of LIV Golf attacks, it cannot make the same mistake again.
This seismic change will have its opponents, but if the PGA Tour wants to create better, more intense competition while at the same time strengthen its footing against another LIV invasion, this idea should be an easy decision.
