US look to Presidents Cup for redemption

MEDINAH – Stung by an epic last-day collapse that cost them the Ryder Cup, America’s top golfers are already looking ahead to next year’s Presidents Cup matches for a measure of redemption.Leading 10-6 entering Sunday’s final singles matches at Medinah, the Americans were overtaken for a stunning 14 1/2-13 1/2 European triumph that allowed the visitors to keep the trophy.Many of the same US players who lost in the Ryder Cup will play next October for US captain Fred Couples in the 2013 Presidents Cup at Muirfield Village against a non-European Internationals squad captained by Zimbabwe’s Nick Price.“I learned 4 1/2 points is awfully hard to get,” Couples said Tuesday. “They took it pretty hard.”The Americans lead the biennial golf rivalry with the Internationals 7-1-1, losing only in 1998 at Melbourne, Australia, with a 2003 draw in South Africa.But some US players are already looking forward to next year’s event in the wake of the Ryder Cup heartbreak.“When you get a little disappointed, you get a little edgy. You look to the future,” Couples said. “For a lot of these players, it’s really to bounce back and start playing golf again and put that aside.“Oddly enough two of them were actually talking about the Presidents Cup Sunday night. A couple of players were at my table and telling me, ‘The par-3s are all even numbers and the par-5s are all odd numbers, so can you give me Bubba Watson as a partner,’ just little things like that.“It’s a great opportunity for me to lead us to victory.”Price is already trying to capture the spirit of the European side in a squad where players are spread from the other corners of the globe, many of them based on the US tour and with little else naturally in common.One notion is that the 2013 event will be staged at Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village course, the same layout where the Europeans won the Ryder Cup on US soil for the first time back in 1987.The Internationals have never won the Presidents Cup on US soil.

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US look to Presidents Cup for redemption