Golf: Home ground no advantage for Internationals side

In the lead-up to the Presidents Cup much was made of the supposed home-ground advantage Royal Melbourne would provide an International team loaded with Australians.

International captain Greg Norman relied on it when he named Robert Allenby and Aaron Baddeley as his "wild card" selections and the other Australian players nodded wisely to the help they would get from the course.

Even South Africa's Ernie Els, the winner of three tournaments at Royal Melbourne, including one in which he shot a course record 60, would be greatly assisted by the terrain.

After three days, two in which the unique peculiarities couldn't have been more apparent, the United States team has a commanding lead, Allenby is yet to win a match and another Presidents Cup is on its way to the USA.

Overwhelmingly it has been the Americans who mastered the greens on the first two days.

They came to grips with the bounce, the speed and the slopes at least as well as, and mostly better than, their opponents, including those raised on Melbourne's renowned sandbelt.

For at least one man who also learned to play at Victoria Golf Club, across the road from Royal Melbourne, the local knowledge theory was always something of a myth.

Peter Thomson, who captained the International team to its only Presidents Cup victory, isn't surprised.

"The conditions on the first two days were brutal, as bad as I've seen them here," Thomson said.

"It came down to who played best and who understood the game the best."

That was the Americans.

When he led the Internationals to victory at Royal Melbourne in 1998, Thomson steered away from loading the team with Aussies, choosing New Zealanders Frank Nobilo and Greg Turner.

"I thought they were both very good players who were playing well at the time and, despite a fair bit of pressure, I chose them," he said.

"The thing is, these fellows are the best professional golfers in the world, they sum things up very quickly."

Even though he wishes otherwise, Thomson was proved right over the first three sessions of this event.

From the first 17 matches only three victories included Australian players with two others involved in halved matches.

The results make the home ground advantage in golf about as relevant as the fast-disappearing notion that Australian tennis players still have an edge on grass courts.

- AAP