2015 Presidents Cup: Nick Price Decides to Sit Sang-Moon Bae on Day 1

The Presidents Cup is hanging on by a thread; there is little question about that.

International captain Nick Price admitted as much earlier this week at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in South Korea by making the following statement, as reported by the Daily Mail:

"

I will tell you guys, this is a really important Presidents Cup. I'm not going to say, 'What if?' But this better be closely contested. I'll let you guys figure out the repercussions. It’s hard for these guys. You ask these guys to give up a week and to play in an event that is not competitive. Any one of these guys can go play anywhere around the world and receive money and they can easily dump this event if they wanted to. Most of them don't want to do that.

"

World No. 2 Jason Day backed up Price’s view of just how important the 2015 Presidents Cup will be to the long-term survival of the matches.

“This is a huge deal for us right now. If it doesn't happen and we keep losing guys won't get interested in it and won't want to play in it and won't want to travel,” Day said, as reported by the Daily Mail.

OK, so we are all in agreement that the Presidents Cup is currently in a sorry state and that it is imperative for the International side to at least bring some form of drama to the 2015 competition.

Korean-born Sang-Moon Bae is arguably the biggest story of the week heading into the 2015 Presidents Cup for several reasons:

1) He is the only South Korean citizen taking part in an event that is being touted as the largest men’s golfing competition ever held in South Korea.

2) Bae has more experience at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club than any player in the competition this week. The 29-year-old South Korean has won the Shinhan Donghae Open (a Korean Tour event) twice at the course.

3) This will be Bae’s last professional event before beginning a mandatory two-year stint in the South Korean military, which is something that is required of every male in South Korea.

Getting off to a fast start is imperative in any team competition, and the International side is in desperate need of some form of a spark to get the momentum tilted in its direction.

While the American side is certainly a formidable force with 10 of its 12 team members ranked within the top 25 in the Official World Golf Ranking, International captain Price possesses a secret weapon.

He possesses a lightning rod in Bae that can capture the energy of more than 20,000 South Korean golf fans right from the opening tee shot. One would certainly assume that Price would be more than eager to send his hometown hero out early on Thursday morning to get the golf-crazed South Korean fanbase riled up.

But apparently Price had other ideas.

The opening five foursomes matches will begin at 11:05 a.m. Thursday at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club, and only two players for each side will be sitting out the first session.

The American side will be sitting Bill Haas and Chris Kirk.

And the International side will be sitting Charl Schwartzel, who was in bed all day yesterday with some form of the flu, and, amazingly enough, local hero Bae will also be on the sidelines when the Presidents Cup officially commences for the first time ever in Bae’s home nation of South Korea.

Price explained his decision during a press conference immediately following the foursomes selection, as reported by ASAP Sports):

"

Charl is not well. Charl has got a really bad bug at the moment. He's in bed as we speak. So he was iffy for tomorrow. And he and Moon played yesterday. I felt kind of bad that I had to bench Moon, but I didn't want to split up any of the other teams that played yesterday and played well together.

"

Fair enough, but these guys are also some of the best golfers in the world. Surely Bae could have been paired with another player who would have been thrilled to have the support of 20,000 Korean golf fans on his side.

Price instead went with Adam Scott (paired with Hideki Matsuyama) and Louis Oosthuizen (paired with Branden Grace) in the first two matches.

Scott hasn’t won anywhere in the world since the 2014 Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial, he has two missed cuts, a T45 and a T63 in his past four events and he is attempting to move to a short putter with a cross-handed grip for the first time in his career this week. Oosthuizen withdrew from his last event (the Tour Championship) with a hamstring injury and has a poor 1-3-1 record in his Presidents Cup career.

The International side may very well come flying out of the gate tomorrow morning, and the whole issue of Bae sitting out the opening session will be all but forgotten by the time the teams are sitting down for some Korean BBQ on Thursday evening.

But one cannot help but think Price has missed a golden opportunity to use his own personal lightning rod to get the 20,000-strong Korean crowd into the matches early and spark a desperately needed fast start for the International side.

And an over-matched International team heading into what Price himself described as a “really important Presidents Cup” with a 1-8-1 record can hardly afford to miss any opportunity to turn the momentum in its direction.