Trevor Immelman has laughed at the well wishes sent to his International Presidents Cup team on Friday by LIV Golf commissioner Greg Norman.
Captain Immelman’s rest-of-the-world side has been depleted because players who joined LIV Golf are ineligible for the match against the United States.
Australian Cameron Smith, the current Open champion, is among those absent.
Former captain Norman tweeted that he wished the team “the very best”, to which Immelman replied: “LOL.”
Australian Norman led the International team to their only success in the previous 13 Ryder Cup-style matches that are played biennially, winning in Melbourne in 1998.
“Outside of all this angst, golf is golf, competition is competition; something every golfer thrives on,” two-time major winner Norman wrote on Twitter.
“As a former player and captain of the International Team, I wish Trevor Immelman and his entire team the very best in repeating our only 1998 Presidents Cup success in Melbourne.”
Immelman, a South African, wrote his three-letter reply before adding: “I’m an extremely open and honest person. I pretty much say it exactly as I’m thinking it.
“What I said was exactly what I was doing when I read that tweet. I was laughing out loud. I learned long ago that lying is dangerous because you’ve got to have a good memory. So I’d rather just tell the truth.”
Chile’s Joaquin Niemann, Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen and Australia’s Marc Leishman are all also missing from the International side, having also opted to join Norman’s Saudi Arabian-funded start-up, which has held five of its scheduled eight invitational events so far in 2022.
All five would have made the 12-man squad and while both teams have lost players to the controversial LIV Golf circuit, Immelman’s side has arguably felt the pain more, given he has been forced to field eight debutants.
The Americans are without Dustin Johnson, who won all five of his matches in last year’s record-breaking Ryder Cup victory over Europe at Whistling Straits.
Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka are other major winners who have left the PGA Tour to join LIV but the US Presidents Cup side still contains 10 of the world’s top 16 players.
And that strength is showing at Quail Hollow in North Carolina this week with the US side leading 8-2 after the opening two days.
The victory target is 15½ points and the US could reach that on Saturday’s third day with four foursomes (alternate shot) and four fourball matches to be played, with 12 singles matches to follow on Sunday.
