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Price replaces Norman as Pres Cup captain

3 minute read

Zimbabwe's Nick Price has replaced Australia's Greg Norman as the Internationals team captain for next year's Presidents Cup.

FP - Zimbabwe's Nick Price has been appointed to replace Greg Norman as the Internationals team captain for golf's 2013 Presidents Cup, tasked with ending the Americans' overwhelming dominance.

Three-time major champion Price will guide the Internationals against the US, again led by Fred Couples, in the biennial contest at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio from October 3-6.

Price succeeds Norman who led the team, drawn from non-European players, defeated by the US in San Francisco in 2009 and at Royal Melbourne last year.

The Americans have won the Cup battle seven times, with one halved, and their only loss came way back in 1998 in Australia.

"This is a huge honour. I'm very excited," Price said. "It's probably the most excited I've been about anything in the last five or six years. This has been a moment that I've been waiting for an awful long time."

Price will have the distinction of being the captain with the most Presidents Cup experience as a player, having competed for the Internationals five times (1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2003).

He will hark back to that lone International team win at Royal Melbourne in 1998 for inspiration.

"The win that we had in 1998 was just phenomenal," Price said. "If I could recreate that feeling again for the guys who play at any time, it would just be very special because you never forget those moments."

Couples is re-appointing as US captain after beating Norman's men in 2009 and 2011.

Couples says Price's task is tougher than his because rallying an American side is easier than pulling together players from all over the world, even though most of them play on the US PGA Tour.

"I have guys that I can go play an event next year and see them all pretty much on the spot," Couples said. "Nick may have to get on his plane and stop about nine times to find his guys, so it is a little bit harder.

"I've seen their teams, played against them. They are incredible players. We just somehow get the lead and we stay in the lead and we win and I think Nick will try his best to figure a way how to not have that happen."

US PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said that starting with the 2015 Cup, the leaders of international tours will select the Internationals captain.

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