Fred Couples and Nick Price
DUBLIN, Ohio - Fresh off his third consecutive victory as captain of the United States Presidents Cup team on Sunday, Fred Couples intends to step down from the position.
The 54-year-old said he has no desire to shoot for a fourth consecutive win over the Internationals when the biennial competition resumes in South Korea in 2015.
"A three-peat's good enough for me," Couples told NBC after Tiger Woods clinched the decisive point at Muirfield Village Golf Club where the Americans triumphed by 18-1/2 points to 15-1/2, their fifth straight victory at the event.
Couples did not rule out a possible role as an assistant and he may well be in contention in the future for a captain's role at the Ryder Cup but he bowed out of the Presidents Cup with a familiar smile on his face.
But while one captain was ready to depart the stage, another was looking for a return engagement.
Beaten but unbowed after a grueling week that ended in defeat, Nick Price said he would love another chance to captain the International team.
The Zimbabwean said the disappointment of defeat had only whetted his appetite for more and he would happily take on the job again.
"This was just a phenomenal week for all of us and I want to congratulate the U.S. team. They played golf that was just incredible to watch," Price said.
"They combined well, but for this team, I would be honored if they ever asked me to be captain of this team again, don't care where it is."
As a player, Price competed in five Presidents Cups but said none of those experiences had prepared him for the unique challenges he faced as captain.
His team, which comprised players from six different countries, only came together for this first time this week and Price's prime role of trying to match the best combinations was made even more difficult because of torrential rain during the tournament.
The heavy downpours caused havoc with the schedule and forced a backlog of matches. With tournament organizers forced to make up time, the players had to arrive at the Muirfield Village Golf Club before dawn and stay until after dusk.
"Of all The Presidents Cups I've been involved in, this was probably the hardest because of the weather conditions," Price said.
"These guys got out of bed 4:30 the last two mornings. Come play 36 holes yesterday in very sloppy conditions, and again today played, what, 25, 27 holes."
With some players having to be involved in as many as three separate matches on the same day, Price and Couples were then left with the task of choosing their pairings while matches were still in progress.
"The hardest part was trying to figure out the pairings. I felt like I didn't have enough time," he said.
"It's the same for Fred, so that's no excuse. But I think Fred may have had a little experience in that as well ahead of me."
Price defended his decision not to pair Masters Champion Adam Scott of Australia with Tiger Woods, in what would have been a head-to-head clash between the top two-ranked players in the world, saying his main objective was to think of what was best for the team.
Scott won his match against Bill Haas to close the gap on the Americans but Woods clinched it for the home team when he beat Richard Sterne in a later match.
"I did my pairings this morning to try and win the Cup, not to put 1 or 2 together or 3 or 5 or whatever," he said.
"It's very hard to hide what your intentions are when you have to do that, because if I wanted to put all the guys who are playing the best out first, who had played the strongest this week, to get some momentum for the guys at the back end, after I put two or three names down, Fred knew exactly what I was doing."