PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent
MONTREAL -- Vijay Singh, through years of delivering many terrific shots and few memorable remarks, long ago established his reputation as a man who speaks most eloquently and emphatically with his golf game.
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On Friday at The Presidents Cup, Singh raised his game a few octaves and pushed the decibel level several notches, and, in metaphorical terms, shouted down Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk in the day's high-profile Four-Ball match to ignite a clarion-call victory that awakened the International Team at just the right juncture.
The result was delivered nearly at the speed of sound.
The 5-and-4 decision Singh and Stuart Appleby slapped on Woods and Furyk at Royal Montreal Golf Club was the most lopsided of this seventh Presidents Cup and the worst match-play loss -- singles or team play -- that Woods has suffered in his professional career.
Singh, who hinted at being lucky but performed like a champ, holed out from off the green on two of the first six holes, once for eagle. Appleby, meanwhile, who has not had much success in this biennial competition, added an eagle and four birdies in combining with his Fijian partner for a best-ball score of 11 under par through 14 holes.
"Amazing," Captain Gary Player, standing greenside, whispered while shaking his head after Singh tapped in from three feet on the 14th hole for his sixth birdie to dispatch the U.S. duo. "Eleven under par ... what a way to win. It's just what we needed, really."
And Singh, who improved to 5-1 in four-ball matches against Woods, was the catalyst.
"To beat the dream team, we didn't do it easily, but we did it decisively," beamed Appleby, who won for only the fourth time in 18 matches. "Obviously, Vijay came up big. We got cleaned yesterday and we needed to bounce back. Vijay set the tone."
"Our match went really well," Singh said with distinct understatement.
Right from the get-go.
Singh missed the green with his approach on the opening hole, short-siding himself in a bunker. The last time he was in the sand was the 14th hole of Thursday's Foursomes match with Mike Weir, and he holed out. Sure enough, he did it again, splashing out from 33 feet and watching as it trickled in the left side.
Five holes later, his pitch-and-run from 36 yards at the par-5 sixth found the cup for an eagle and gave him three hole-outs from off the green in a 10-hole stretch.
"The way it was going, I didn't want to putt," Singh, 44, joked. "I didn't even know how to putt until the seventh hole. But I was confident in what I was doing and relaxed playing with Stuart. We really gelled well."
Singh, twice a winner this year but who has sank to 12th in the world rankings, had arrived in Quebec with little momentum after a disappointing run in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. His only top-10 finish -- actually, his only finish better than 60th -- came at THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola. He'd been fighting not only a series of aches and pains, but also swing changes intended to minimize the physical maladies.
His play has picked up at Royal Montreal's Blue Course, leading to more red numbers. On Friday, he hit 7 of 11 fairways and 9 of 14 greens. And when he misfired, his execution was even sharper, a development that is best left to him to explain.
"The greens are so soft that you can do something with the shot," Singh said. Then he smiled. "You know," he added, "I haven't been playing well lately, so I've had a lot of practice with those shots."
"They chipped in twice, 11 under par through 14 holes ... that's pretty good playing," said Woods, whose record overall against Singh is 5-5-1 with Woods owning the lone singles victory, but who also dropped to 2-7 in Four-Ball, the most losses in Presidents Cup history in that format. "We needed to take it a lot deeper, and we didn't do it."
The Internationals had to dig a lot deeper to get out of that five-point hole after the first day. The scoreboard says they accomplished that mission. Singh and Appleby taking down a team comprised of the Nos. 1 and 3 players in the world was a boost to the collective psyche.
"No matter who you play, it's one point," Singh said. "Our main goal was to go out there and get that one point."
Then he added, "It was a good statement in one respect, because Tiger, obviously he's playing unbelievable golf, and Jim is never out of the hole. So for us to beat them, it was a good beat. At the end of the day, it was a point that really mattered."
Indeed, it was a point that spoke volumes.
| STANDINGS | ||
| Results | Points | |
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US TEAM | 19.5 |
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INTERNATIONAL TEAM | 14.5 |
| Leaderboard | ||