President's Cup Pairings Annouced

Mark O'Meara and David Duval, the best two players in America this year, will get a chance to keep their Presidents Cup record perfect.

O'Meara, the PGA Tour player of the year after winning the Masters and Open Championship, will be paired again with Duval, the leading PGA Tour money winner, in the first of five foursomes (alternate-shot) matches against the International team at Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

O'Meara and Duval, 3-0 in the 1996 matches, will go up against Peter Thomson's two captains picks -- Greg Turner and Frank Nobilo of New Zealand.

"They said they would like to get out first, and I honored their wish for that," said U.S. captain Jack Nicklaus .

Thomson also decided to put his top two Australians together -- Greg Norman and Steve Elkington -- in the second match against John Huston and Jim Furyk. Norman and Elkington have never been paired together in the Presidents Cup, but won the Shark Shootout together last month in Norman's return to golf after shoulder surgery.

Elkington and Norman have been looking comfortable together. (AP)

"They wanted to play together if it was possible," Thomson said. "So I made it possible."

Tiger Woods , who went 1-2 while paired with O'Meara in the Ryder Cup last year, will be paired with Fred Couples in the marquee match -- they'll go up against two-time U.S. Open champion Ernie Els and reigning PGA champion Vijay Singh.

Five foursomes matches will be played Fiday morning (Thursday afternoon in the U.S.), followed by five four-ball (best-ball) matches.

"I don't think there were any surprises," Nicklaus said. "It's pretty difficult to get a surprise pairing when you have 24 of the world's best players."

Unlike the Ryder Cup, every player must be in at least one match on the first day. Nicklaus decided to sit out Phil Mickelson and Mark Calcavecchia for the first batch of alternate-shot matches, while Joe Ozaki of Japan and Carlos Franco of Paraguay will sit for the International team.

Calcavecchia, on his first national team since the 1991 Ryder Cup, is 0-4 in alternate-shot matches and 4-0 in the best-ball matches. Mickelson is 1-3-1 in his alternate-shot matches in either the Presidents or Ryder Cup.

That's not to say Nicklaus spent the night tossing and turning about who will be paired together, or studying spread sheets of his squad's record in match play. He has said he would leave the pairings largely up to the players, and that's exactly how it turned out.

"I think they were more responsible for making the teams on the first day than I was," Nicklaus said. "I wanted the guys to be comfortable with who they are playing, happy with what they are doing."

Couples and Love have a history of playing together in cup matches, but Nicklaus said Couples and Woods wanted to play together. Love and Justin Leonard, who played in the World Cup of Golf last year, are in the final pairing against Stuart Appleby and Nick Price.

The other American pairing is Scott Hoch and Lee Janzen, the last-minute substitute for Hal Sutton. Janzen and Hoch both live in Orlando, Fla., and won an alternate-shot match together in the Ryder Cup. They will play Shigeki Maruyama and Craig Parry.

In another variation from the Ryder Cup, instead of each captain submitting his pairings and the order in which they will play, a coin flip decided which captain filled in the first tee time, and they took turns for all five matches.

Nicklaus won the coin toss and deferred.

"I call heads-tails," he said.