Norman, The Cup's One-Armed Bandit?

Greg Norman will play hurt at next week's Presidents Cup.

OK, as captain of the International Team that is taking on the Americans at San Francisco's Harding Park Golf Club, Norman will not hit a shot, but no question he is ailing.

Captain Shark has his right arm in a sling, the result of arthroscopic shoulder surgery performed Wednesday.

"A bit of a surprise," Norman said Friday. "I was trying to delay it until January of next year, but the doctor said I needed to get it done now."

Norman spoke on a conference call. Originally he was scheduled to appear in person at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Fla., to promote the Shark Shootout scheduled to be played there in December. But surgical procedures have a way of changing plans -- just not, Norman insists, his well-laid ones for next week.

"Well, it'll affect me writing out my pairings because my right arm is in a sling, absolutely," Norman said, laughing. "But I will be a lot more relaxed with it next week than I am right now. It's not going to affect anything that I'm doing at the golf tournament as far as the captaincy."

By Norman's thinking, that's because he already has done the heavy lifting.

When competition begins Thursday against the American team captained by Fred Couples, the golfers take over.

"Look, this tournament is about the players, it's not about the captains," Norman said. "And I can just tell you that point blank.

"I think that from my perspective, and I'm sure Freddie is going to be the same way, we should stand in the background. We've done all our work. We've just got the minor details of just doing pairings. All the work a captain is responsible for doing happens in the two years leading up to the event. So now it just becomes the players."

There are good ones to watch. The U.S. team is Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Kenny Perry, Zach Johnson, Stewart Cink, Sean O'Hair, Jim Furyk, Anthony Kim, Justin Leonard, Lucas Glover and Hunter Mahan.

Norman's crew is Geoff Ogilvy, Vijay Singh, Camilo Villegas, Retief Goosen, Ernie Els, Angel Cabrera, Mike Weir, Robert Allenby, Y.E. Yang, Tim Clark, Ryo Ishikawa and Adam Scott.

The Americans will be favored, but Norman, being Norman, concedes nothing.

" I have had a formula for the way I'm going to approach this for the last month and a half," Norman said. "I have my ideas, there's no question about it. I'm very methodical in my due diligence and analyzation of players and golf balls and styles.

"I went out to Harding Park to play it deliberately for that reason -- to understand the golf course, to marry up what I think are players playability-wise to the golf course. I've done a lot of due diligence on it. It doesn't mean to say you're going to do the right thing, but at the end of the day, it's totally up to the players. You put them together and you just hope they go out there and perform to the level they want. "

The Presidents Cup was held for the first time in 1994, designed to give non-European players an opportunity for Ryder Cup-like experiences. Although the Ryder Cup's U.S. vs. Europe history is long and far richer, there are some things about the young United States-International competition that merits praise.

Chief on the list is a competition that so far remains friendly, more a celebration of golf than the back-and-forth sniping that has become common between the U.S. and Europe.

Former Ryder Cup team captains have written books critical of their competition following their matches. Norman and Couples committed to get together to play golf.

Among the Shark Shootout announcements made Friday was Norman and Couples agreeing to be teammates in the two-man Shark Shootout competition.

"I think that's a great thing for myself and Freddie," Norman said. "Obviously we're Presidents Cup captains, we're great friends, and we talked about it at length up in Washington, DC, went up there for the last press conference for the Presidents Cup, and just proud to say that he'll be my partner.''

That's assuming Norman, 54, is back playing golf by December.

In the meantime, one arm is enough to wave a flag.