Tiger Woods Leads by Example in Presidents Cup Comeback Win

MELBOURNE, Australia — Tiger Woods’s final putt on Sunday was still rolling toward the hole when he started to remove his cap for a postmatch handshake with Mexico’s Abraham Ancer.

It had already been a long week for Woods, but he wasn’t done, and there was no time to waste.

Woods’s 19-foot birdie at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club, which secured his 3-and-2 singles victory, improved his Presidents Cup record for the week to 3-0 and vaulted him into first place on the event’s career win list with an overall match record of 27-15-1.

It was Woods’s ninth Presidents Cup as a player and first as a captain. He might have managed an even better game than he played in the United States’ 16-14, come-from-behind victory.

The United States’ opponents, the Internationals, also had a first-time captain, Ernie Els, a PGA Tour member who turned the appointment into another full-time job. He devoted the past year to studying statistics as if they were tea leaves. And he left no team-bonding exercise undone, so great was his obsession with finding a way to turn around the fortunes of his team, which had only one victory in the 12 previous competitions.

Els, 50, gave his players wings, but he couldn’t make them soar. After jumping out to a 6-1 lead, the Internationals won only eight of the final 23 points, including four of the 12 available in Sunday’s deciding singles.

For Els, the loss was especially difficult to digest because he has spent the better part of his professional playing career running headlong into the wall that is Woods. He finished second to him seven times in his career, including four times in majors.

The 13th edition of the Presidents Cup was going to be where Els’s luck turned. But in the end, the Americans, led on and off the course by Woods, were too good.

“Tiger, you got me,” Els said ruefully during the trophy presentation.

Woods, who turns 44 at the end of the month, was like Bradley Cooper in “A Star Is Born,” earning kudos for both his direction and individual performance.

Matt Kuchar, who clinched the victory for the Americans, said, “It was really cool being part of this team and having Tiger as captain in that you get Tiger to speak up a little more.”

Kuchar, whose 5-foot birdie on the 17th hole gave him a 1-up lead against Louis Oosthuizen, guaranteeing the United States at least a half-point for the match, added, “We had a room full of some of the greatest golfers in the world, and when he speaks, we all listen.”

Kuchar played the penultimate singles match. Woods sent himself out first because he wanted to finish early so he could spend the bulk of the day spurring the rest of the team around the fast, firm course.

But as he acknowledged afterward, he also jumped at the chance to pair himself against Ancer because he stated in an interview last month that he’d love to go up against Woods in singles.

Be careful what you wish for. Woods produced six birdies in the 16 holes.

Woods sent out Patrick Reed third, against C.T. Pan, but not before he smoothed Reed’s path, working the officials as adroitly as any N.B.A. coach.

On Saturday, after Reed, who partnered with Webb Simpson, was handed a third consecutive loss, Reed’s caddie, his brother-in-law Kessler Karain, got into a physical altercation with one of the scores of hecklers who had been hounding Reed all week. They had called him a cheater and a disgrace because of an incident in Reed’s previous start, in the Bahamas, in which he was assessed a two-stroke penalty for clearing sand directly behind his ball during practice strokes.

Woods had been asked on Saturday if he thought the fans’ behavior was disrespectful, and his answer seemed directed at the tour officials running the event. “Have people said things that have been over the top?” Woods said. “Yes. I’ve heard it. I’ve been in the groups playing when it has happened, and I’ve been inside the ropes as a captain today witnessing it.”

Message delivered. The security around Reed during his singles match was much more visible than at any other time during the week. At least four armed police officers walked the match. They waded into the stands or stopped alongside the gallery ropes to issue warnings to spectators who spoke out of turn.

Karain sat out Sunday’s session and was replaced on the bag by Reed’s swing coach, Kevin Kirk. Reed’s wife, Justine, who used to be his caddie, also was nowhere to be seen, depriving Reed of his two main pillars of support. She stayed back in the team room to avoid becoming an easy target for Reed’s critics.

Fortunately, Reed said, he had Woods in his corner, and in his ear.

“Tiger believed in me, and that’s why he threw me out early, to get the momentum,” Reed said. “Tiger’s such a great captain; it doesn’t matter whether you are 0 and 3, he’s going to get behind his guys no matter what, no matter what they’re doing or what’s going on.”

He added, “When you have that kind of support going on, that’s what makes you want to go out and battle.”

His teammates had said all week that Reed was a bear better left unprovoked, and he proved them right against Pan, making birdies on his first four holes — and five of his first six — to race to a 6-up lead after seven.

When they realized they weren’t getting under Reed’s skin — he birdied eight of his 16 holes — the fans redirected their voices. Instead of rooting against him, they started shouting support for Pan, who cut the deficit to 2-up before bowing out, 4 and 2.

Reed and Woods never trailed in their matches, and their fast starts created a wave of momentum that the rest of the Americans rode to the finish. Tony Finau, who played the No. 2 singles match, erased a 4-down deficit in the final eight holes of his match against Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama to salvage a half-point.

On his back nine, Finau said, he thought of the resilience displayed by his captain, who has returned from four back surgeries to win three individual tournaments, including the Masters, in the past 15 months. It inspired him to dig deeper.

“I basically told myself, I can’t give up on my teammates, my guys, my captain,” Finau said, adding, “We are very inspired to play for Tiger, with Tiger, and it’s so satisfying to win this Cup because of that.”

Woods, the player, had dispassionately disposed of Ancer, but Woods, the captain, shed tears when the team victory was clinched. “I love seeing other people cry,” Steve Stricker, one of Woods’s assistant captains, said. “Especially Tiger Woods.”