The Presidents Cup, which will be played for the eighth time in 2009, was developed by the PGA Tour to give the world's best non-European players an opportunity to compete in international team matchplay competition.

A biennial event, the first Presidents Cup was played on September 16th-18th 1994 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia. The United States team, captained by Hale Irwin, defeated the International side, of David Graham, 20-12.

The United States also won the second Presidents Cup, held two years later at the same venue, where Arnold Palmer, no stranger to high-level international competition, was in charge of the pairings as the US narrowly defeated Peter Thomson's International Team,16 1/2-15 1/2.

The 1998 Presidents Cup saw a venue relocation away from the US, as it was played in December at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia. Clearly being away from home did not suit the US side so well, as they were comprehensively defeated, 20 1/2-11 1/2.

Back on home territory in 2000, the United States avenged the 1998 defeat with a 21 1/2-10 1/2 victory.

With the 2001 Ryder Cup postponed by a year in the light of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, the next Presidents Cup did not take place until 2003, but it became the most memorable of all of the matches when it ended in a 17-17 tie.

Prior to the start of the final-day matches, the rules stipulated that captains should select one player to play in a tie-breaker, in case there was a tie at the end of the final match. Upon a tie the captains would reveal the players who would play a sudden-death match to determine the winner.

In 2003, however, the tie-breaker match between Tiger Woods and Ernie Els was called off after three holes in the gathering darkness, and it was decided that the Cup would be shared by both teams.