DUBLIN, Ohio - The Presidents Cup begins Thursday morning at Muirfield Village Golf Club.
If you're wondering what, exactly, the Presidents Cup is, you've come to the right place.
Now a bi-annual event played in non-Ryder Cup years, the Presidents Cup pits the top 12 American golfers in a four-day, team format against 12 International counterparts. Fred Couples captains the U.S. Team, while Nick Price captains this year's International Team. The World Golf Rankings dictated the first 10 players for each team, with each captain then getting two selections.
There will be 34 matches over four days, all in a match-play format. The first will be team matches -- 11 foursome (alternate shot) matches, 11 four-ball matches -- and on Sunday, there will be 12 singles matches. Each match is worth one point, meaning the race to win the Presidents Cup is a race to 17.5 points.
It's a lot like the Ryder Cup, with two major differences. One, the Ryder Cup is Team USA vs. the best Europeans, while the Presidents Cup is Team USA vs. the top 12 non-European internationals. This year's International Team is made up of golfers from Australia, Argentina, Canada, South Africa and Japan.
The other difference from the Ryder Cup is that every golfer plays every day. There's still strategy in making pairings -- and on Sunday, the order in which players will be sent out -- but players don't have to worry about being benched or can't be saved for a final round.
The "home" team is the heavy favorite, though Australian Jason Day lives in Columbus and is a member at Muirfield. The PGA stops here every year in the late spring for Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament, which Tiger Woods has won five times and Matt Kuchar won last year. Couples has paired Woods and Kuchar for Thursday's matches.
Seven of the world's top 11 ranked golfers are on Team USA. The Americans have an experience edge, too, as Phil Mickelson has played in every Presidents Cup (there have been 10; it started in 1994) and Woods has played in nine of them. Woods hasn't been on the losing side since his event debut in 1998 and has scored the clinching point in the last two.
World No. 2 and 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott, No. 16 Day and No. 19 Charl Schwartzel headline the International Team.
Thursday's four-ball pairings are as follows, in order of each captain's announced selections. The first tee time is 11:45 a.m. ET. Thursday and Friday; on Saturday, there will be a round of five four-ball matches followed by five foursome matches
Match 1: Day and Graham DeLaet, International vs. Hunter Mahan and Brandt Snedeker, U.S.
Match 2: Bill Haas and Webb Simpson, U.S. vs. Scott and Hideki Matsuyama, International
Match 3: Louis Oosthuizen and Schwartzel, International vs. Mickelson and Keegan Bradley, U.S.
Match 4: Steve Stricker and Jordan Spieth, U.S. vs. Ernie Els and Brendon de Jonge, International
Match 5: Angel Cabrera and Marc Leishman, International vs. Kuchar and Woods, U.S.
Match 6: PGA Champion Jason Dufner and Zach Johnson, U.S. vs. Branden Grace and Richard Sterne, International
