ILE BIZARD, Que. – Mike Weir and Jim Furyk mingled with dozens of sport-coat types at Royal Montreal Golf Club on Tuesday night at a reception celebrating 12 months to go until the Presidents Cup. A plate of sushi. The biggest shrimp anyone has ever seen. Furyk drank a beer on stage answering questions about golf and life.
The two captains are getting ready for next year’s biennial competition, with its return to Canada for the first time since 2007 when Weir took down Tiger Woods in a historic Sunday singles match-up. Now Weir is in the captain’s seat, and he said no matter what happens, it’s going to be hard to top what happens next year in Montreal.
The Canadian said leading the International squad against Furyk's Americans at the 2024 Presidents Cup is going to be the highlight of this stage of his career.
“To be the captain, man, I’ll be 54 years old (next year). My best playing days are over,” Weir admitted from the stately clubhouse of Royal Montreal – Canada’s oldest club. “In my own individual career – I have memories. If someone brings something up from the Masters, I can recall the putt I made on 18 to get into the playoff. But the Presidents Cup memories are on top of those.
“In my mind, they’re the top memories outside my own game. That’s how much it’s meant to me on my career.”
Weir and Furyk are connected in plenty of ways. For starters, they were born on the same day (May 12, 1970). They both have won one major championship, and it came in 2003 -- Furyk won the U.S. Open. And they both said the key to their captaincies will be their authenticity.
“As captain you have to be yourself. I am what I am,” Weir said. “I’m an intense guy when it comes to competition. I’m feisty. I’m competitive. That’s me. Ernie Els is very competitive but he’s ‘The Big Easy.’ He’s more laid back. You want to bring that to the table and the guys know if you’re faking something.”
“Ultimately you have to be yourself,” added Furyk. “I’m not really a ‘rah-rah’ guy. I don’t give big dramatic speeches. It was just never my style. I think I need to lead in that same style as well. If I change, everyone is going to know it’s fake. You have to be yourself.”
One thing Furyk is going to have over Weir is a team nucleus that will carry over from this year to next. Furyk is going to be an assistant captain to Zach Johnson at the Ryder Cup in Rome in two weeks and he said it’s likely 75 per cent of that team will be on his Presidents Cup squad next September.
The International team at last year’s Presidents Cup was decimated when a handful of guys, including top-ranked Cameron Smith (who had won The Players and The Open Championship), decided to jump to LIV Golf. With the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour coming to an agreement on a go-forward framework agreement (and potential merger), there’s a chance some of those LIV golfers, like Smith or Brooks Koepka – who was a captain’s pick for this year’s American Ryder Cup squad – could be back in the fold at Royal Montreal.
Furyk and Weir will each have six captain’s picks for the 2024 Presidents Cup, a change from years’ past, and six automatic qualifiers.
“By the end of the year we’re supposed to have a much better handle on what’s going on with this framework idea. We’ll see. We’re going to have to react and figure out how things work,” Furyk said of what his team makeup could be. “What we know now is if you’re eligible to play on the PGA Tour, you’re eligible to play the Presidents Cup. Mike and I are both going to react to that. And we’ve left ourselves a lot of leeway. He’s going to have six picks and I’ll have six picks and there’s leeway for that.”
For Weir, this is a multi-decade culmination of individual successes for Canada’s best-ever male golfer. Ryan Hart, the executive director of the Presidents Cup, recently told The Globe and Mail he believes this could be one of the most memorable Presidents Cup events ever. They’re expecting 30,000 fans per day through the gates with marketing efforts beginning next week across multimedia and through Montreal’s public transit system. One hundred buses wrapped in Presidents Cup messaging are set to roll out soon.
Weir said it’s “crazy” how fast things have gone to this point, and with 12 months to go there’s still plenty to do – uniforms, team menus, logistics, gifts, and analytics analysis with his European-based data team, just to name a few. Oh, and actually meeting some potential players too.
But there’s also a singular goal. Out of the 14 Presidents Cup competitions, Team USA has won all but one.
“Trying to win is the priority here,” Weir said with a smile. “There’s been a lot of talk about being close the last couple of years, which has been great. But it would be good to take it over the line.”
If that’s the finish line for Canada and Weir, it would be well celebrated. But Weir is only at the starting line for now.
Time to get to work.
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