Irish pair are ready to reign in sunny Algarve
They are amongst the golf holes at the Victoria Club in Vilamoura on Portugal’s Algarve which will test the representatives of the 24 nations contesting the 51st World Cup of Golf beginning tomorrow.
The Arnold Palmer designed Victoria course, features 22 lakes with an overall area of 12 hectares. Once water is avoided, the fairways are generously proportioned and if the greens are undulating and more than 11 on the stimpmetre, suggesting very fast, they are both yielding and true and a lot of putts and birdies will be made.
However, they won’t come from the likes of Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Retief Goosen or Phil Mickelson, all of whom have snubbed the event, much to the dismay of those who went out of their way to get here, like Ireland’s Paul McGinley.
“It’s disappointing the World Cup doesn’t get a stronger field,” he said on arrival in Vilamoura last night. “There’s a huge amount of history and it’s a shame it does not attract the top players in the world. It’s important to us - we don’t view it the same way. I’ve never missed an opportunity to play and never would.”
Partner Padraig Harrington agrees. “I like the World Cup, I like representing Ireland - it’s a big deal for Paul and myself. There are not that many opportunities in pro golf when you can represent your country. Golf is a selfish game but Paul and I played team golf for Ireland as youngsters and Ireland is a country that excels in team events.”
Their sense of disappointment is a little over the top and not just because the absence of so many big names affords them a better chance of claiming large proportions of the €3.4m prize fund with €600,000 each for the winners. The powerful England team of Luke Donald and in form David Howell are favourites at 7/2 with Spain and Ireland both on offer at 9/2.
That’s the order in which they finished last year but you expect an even mightier effort from Sergio Garcia and Miguel Jimenez in the Spanish colours. Based on world rankings, England are a total of 28 (Howell 13, Donald 15), Ireland 34 (Harrington 14, McGinley 20) and Spain 63 (Garcia 6, Jimenez 57).
The event begins with the first of the two fourball rounds tomorrow when Harrington and McGinley go out with Venezuelan pair Manuel Bermudez and Carlos Larrain. It could be a long day for the Irishmen, already pretty exhausted having made their way to Portugal from China via Largs in Scotland, where Harrington had yet another session with coach Bob Torrance, and London, where McGinley looked in on his wife Alison and three children.
The United States can never be dismissed from the equation whatever the formation of their team. This time Stewart Cink (world ranking 25) accepted an invitation rejected by their leading eight - Woods, Phil Mickelson, Chris DiMarco, Jim Furyk, Kenny Perry, David Toms, Davis Love and Fred Couples - and he chose up-and-coming Zach Johnson (49th) as his partner. They won’t be too far away at the finish.
Since the event came under the umbrella of the World Golf Championships in 2000 - Woods and David Duval won for the US that year - it has switched to two rounds of foursomes and two of fourballs. It began way back in 1953 as the Canada Cup. Ben Hogan and Sam Snead triumphed three years later, Snead and Arnold Palmer won twice including 1960 at Portmarnock; Palmer and Jack Nicklaus four times together and Couples and Love had four successive victories. McGinley and Harrington first played together in 1997 when they triumphed at Kiawah Island and have been together ever since.
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