Presidents Cup course wins plaudits

Captains Fred Couples and Greg Norman lavished praise on Royal Melbourne ahead of this week’s Presidents Cup, with the United States leader saying some of his players have already ranked it the best they have played.

Speaking today at the composite course as the International team look to try to repeat their only victory in the 15-year competition, at the same venue in 1998, Couples and Norman could not speak highly enough about the Alister MacKenzie layout.

“Obviously Greg has influenced Royal Melbourne to get their course in the shape of any golf course I’ve ever seen. It’s absolutely perfect,” Couples said.

“Some of our players came out yesterday and a few of them are calling it the best course they’ve ever played.

“I came here in ’88 and played, and I played St Andrews and Augusta, and these are three of my favourite courses.

“It fits your eye and it’s just an unbelievable looking course.”

International captain Norman added: “We’ve got a couple of guys on my team that have not played here and I’ve been speaking to them very directly about how to approach this course.

“It is so unique in a lot of ways.

“It is my favourite golf course, the composite course, in the world.

“It’s absolutely been timed to perfection and Mother Nature has been very, very helpful on that part to get it where it is.

“It’s all going to depend on the weather coming in... but if it stays the way it is Royal Melbourne is going to be the golf course we all love to play.”

While both skippers were predicting four days of low scoring because of the assembled talent at a course that Norman said can be “defenceless” when conditions are fine, they did also warn that things can quickly change if the weather does.

“If you get out of position around Royal Melbourne, you’re out of position and you can’t recover,” Norman said.

“The golf course is defenceless if there’s no wind and a little bit of moisture in the air and on the ground.

“It’s not a very, very long golf course at all and then if the wind gets up, which it’s predicted to be on Friday... this place will eat your lunch.

“For a golf course with no water on it and no out of bounds, you can be so intimidated on some of these tee shots – I don’t care how good you are.

“It’s really always got you a little bit off balance unless it’s dead calm and soft.”