Tiger Woods/Mike Weir match-up a Presidents Cup cop-out

MONTREAL - The captains of the two Presidents Cup teams took the easy way out today and chose local favorite Mike Weir to go against Tiger Woods in tomorrow’s singles match-ups.

It’s been the match everyone’s been talking about all week, the two biggest gallery draws in the competition facing off in a final day in which the International Team has to win 10 out of 12 matches to take home the Presidents Cup.

As unlikely as that is now, it was the perfect time for Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player to throw together some really interesting match-ups - though they did slot Vijay Singh against Phil Mickelson - like Woods against Rory Sabbatini.

Instead, they bowed to popular calls among the legions of Weir fans who’ve been raucously supporting their homegrown boy all week. Before this event even started, people had him going up against Woods on Sunday.

“All of our players would like to see it, the public certainly would like to see it, the media would like to see it,” Player said.

Let’s face it, they had to make sure that those holding tickets bothered to show up tomorrow - this was the easiest way.

Nicklaus said he asked Woods ahead of time if he minded the pairing.

“He had the choice to do it or duck it, and he didn’t duck it,” Nicklaus said.

Why would he?

Here are the match-ups in Sunday singles:

Presidents Cup Sunday singles matches

Rory Sabbatini (I) vs. Scott Verplank (U.S)
Ernie Els (I) vs. Lucas Glover (U.S.)
Vijay Singh (I) vs. Phil Mickelson (U.S.)
Mike Weir (I) vs. Tiger Woods (U.S)
Angel Cabrera (I) vs. Woody Austin (U.S.)
Adam Scott (I) vs. Zach Johnson (U.S)
Trevor Immelman (I) vs. David Toms (U.S.)
Nick O’Hern (I) vs. Stewart Cink (U.S.)
Geoff Ogilvy (I) vs. Steve Stricker (U.S.)
K.J. Choi (I) vs. Hunter Mahan (U.S.)
Stuart Appleby (I) vs. Charles Howells III (U.S.0
Retief Goosen (I) vs. Jim Furyk (U.S.)

Stayed tuned to WorldGolf.com for complete Presidents Cup coverage.