Golf: No grizzles here for Jack

Jack Nicklaus isn't worried whether the famously-incompatible Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson play together for the US in this year's keenly anticipated President's Cup match against the International team.

But the greatest golfer the game has seen - and the captain of the US team - may be able to instil into his team some of the legendary mental strength for which Nicklaus himself was famous during his playing prime.

It's universally agreed that the winner of 18 major championships from The Open of 1962 to the Masters in 1986 was unsurpassed in his ability to avoid distractions and make every shot and every putt that mattered.

"There were a lot of players who were better putters than I was, but I don't know if there were many players who were better when they had to make the putt. And that's where my forte was. When I had to make the putt, generally speaking, I made that putt."

Nicklaus is famous for saying that he never remembered a three putt. The inference being that he was able to completely forget any instances of golf's ultimate self-inflicted sin, move on with his game and not be bothered by opportunities gone begging.

But he insists that some years he did go months and months without a three putt.

"I've been several years when I've gone into June before I've three-putted a green. People don't believe me. Rick Reilly wrote about this in Sports Illustrated and people said: 'Yeah right, everybody three putts'. But it's true - some years it was months before I had a three putt.

"The reason is that I concentrated on distance so much that I always had the ball around the hole. To get back a little putt that you miss is really difficult, the only place you can make it up is with another putt, so you just don't do it."

He reckons any golfer can follow his example.

"Just don't do it. That's what I used to say to myself. It wasn't anything about my stroke, I just made up my mind that I was going to make it."

Nicklaus was in New Zealand overseeing final plans for his new signature course to be built at Kinloch on the shores of Lake Taupo and - if things go to plan - the course will be bursting forth in lush spring growth when the President's Cup is played this year. But on the shores of Lake Manassas, Virginia in late September, the superstars of the International team like Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, not to mention a few hardened Aussies, had better not take their superior world rankings or Europe's humbling Ryder Cup win over the US as a given they'll flatten America's best.

The Team USA boss is ready to even up his record after a loss and a draw and he's a man who doesn't like coming second.

"It brought out the best in me when I had to do something. I didn't like losing. I hate to lose."

But he won't be applying that hard-edged mentality to his playing combinations - so don't expect Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to play foursomes or fourball matches together - unless they really want to.

This year's contest at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club near Washington, D.C. is being billed as "unfinished business" after the 17-17 tie in South Africa in 2003. The play-off between Ernie Els and Tiger Woods that year was called off because of darkness and thetrophy shared.

The 2005 contest returns to a course where the USA have never lost. But it will be only a year after a USA team suffered their most humiliating Ryder Cup loss to a European side that was considerably weaker, according to world rankings, than the Gary Player-captained International team.

That Ryder Cup went dreadfully wrong for the USA from the very first morning when Woods and Mickelson, ranked the best two players in America but not known as the closest of buddies, were paired together by team captain Hal Sutton in the first fourball match against Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington.

The combined shot-making talent of Woods and Mickelson should have ensured an American victory. The Scotsman and the Irishman won 2 and 1. That afternoon Sutton put his two superstars together again in an alternate shot foursomes match. They lost to Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood.

Hutton's decision to pair the two was condemned as the start of the rot that led to the rout.

Mickelson and Woods have seldom spoken since.

But Nicklaus, who has the task of restoring some pride to American team golf, is prepared to take a distinctly laissez faire attitude to his pairings.

"Basically it's Tiger's and Phil's decision, yes or no," he said. "I never asked either of them if the question was posed to them by Hal Sutton. If they want to play together they can play together. I certainly don't want to have two guys play together that don't want to."

Nicklaus seems to be taking an inclusive approach to the often prickly task of finding appropriate pairings for matches which constitute 22 of the 34 matches.

"When we went to South Africa we got on the airplane and Tiger said to me 'Jack, I'd love to play with Charles Howell'. And Charles Howell came to me and said 'Jack, I'd love to play with Tiger'. So I said fine and they played all four matches together.

"And that's the way I generally do it. I let the guys tell me who they want to play with, but if there's something that I think might work I would certainly go to the guys and ask them if they want to play together. I don't know whether Tiger and Phil wanted to play together or not."

Nicklaus' team was whipped at Royal Melbourne in 1998 before he returned for the tie in South Africa. This time though he thinks a bit of history will help.

"We're going to a golf course that I have never seen, but the USA have played there three times and won all three.

"Last year the European guys played really well and dusted us on our own soil but, where we're going for the President's Cup, I think our guys have a little more confidence there."

Jack Nicklaus will be on Breakfast, TV1 at 7.45am on Wednesday.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY