MELBOURNE, (Reuters) – Tiger Woods delivered the knockout punch to the International team yesterday to silence critics of his early Presidents Cup selection by captain Fred Couples.
Woods captured the 18th and winning point for his team at Royal Melbourne when he closed out Australian Aaron Baddeley 4&3 on the par-five 15th with an exquisite bunker shot to less than a metre from the flag.
The wall of the bunker was so steep Woods could not see the hole when he played from the sand but he quickly scampered up the face of the trap to see where the ball finished.
Couples was the first man to rush onto the green and shadow box Woods to celebrate.
“For Tiger to get the winning point makes us feel very good as a team,” Couples said after celebrating his second win in charge of the U.S.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been vindicated in golf, but I feel like I know what I’m doing. When I picked Tiger a month early, he worked six to eight hours a day on his game.
“When a guy looks you in the eye and says: ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be right’, it brings a smile to your face, especially when it’s Tiger.”
Without a tournament win in two years after off a year plagued with injury and struggles to master his re-engineered swing, Woods looked like the Tiger of old against Baddeley, notching six birdies and found all the greens bar one.
