2009 marks the eighth playing of the Presidents Cup; October 8-11, 2009, and held at the Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco, California. The Presidents Cup is run by the PGA Tour, played every two years, and matches a team from the United States against an International team. The International team is comprised of golfers from outside the U.S. and Europe. (Europe plays the U.S. in the Ryder Cup, and is thereby excluded.)
The Presidents Cup was created to provide the world's best non-European players with the opportunity to compete in an international team match-play competition, and San Francisco is only the second U.S. city selected to host the event, while also the first on the West Coast. Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Australia will host the 2011 Presidents Cup, thus becoming the first venue outside the United States to host The Presidents Cup more than once.
U.S. and International Team Captains, Fred Couples and Greg Norman, are both major championship winners, and both have played in The Presidents Cup during their standout careers; a first for captains in The Presidents Cup history.
The 2009 International Presidents Cup team will be comprised of Geoff Ogilvy and Robert Allenby (Australia), Vijay Singh (Fiji), Camilo Villegas (Colombia), Retief Goosen, Tim Clark and Ernie Els (South Africa), Angel Cabrera (Argentina), Mike Weir (Canada), Y.E. Yang (Korea), and with the Captain's picks being Adam Scott and Ryo Ishikawa.
The 2009 United States Presidents Cup team includes Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Kenny Perry, Zach Johnson, Stewart Cink, Sean O'Hair, Jim Furyk, Anthony Kim, Justin Leonard, and Captain's picks of Lucas Glover and Hunter.
The inaugural Presidents Cup was played September 16-18, 1994, at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, with the Hale Irwin captained U.S. Team defeating David Graham's International side, 20-12. The U.S. retained the cup in 1996, but the Internationals scored their only outright Presidents Cup victory during the 1998 match in Australia. In 2000, the U.S. Team got their revenge with a dominant 11-point victory over the Internationals, taking their record to 3-1-0.
