Mike Weir relives 2007 Presidents Cup match against Tiger Woods at Royal

But the match between Weir and Woods wasn’t just the most thrilling on-course exhibition of the competition. Beating Woods also was the spark Weir needed to become a PGA TOUR winner again.

“I found the focus again and these things can just boost your career,” says Weir. “And it did.”

Fifteen years on, Weir has been named the International Team’s captain for the Presidents Cup’s return to Royal Montreal in 2024. He’ll take the reins from Immelman, who helmed the team in 2022 at Quail Hallow. Weir was a captain’s assistant for Immelman this year.

Weir went on a river-rafting trip with his family in southern Utah the week after the 2007 Presidents Cup, then won the Fortinet Championship in his very next PGA TOUR start. It was his first win in more than three years.

He recorded eight top-10 finishes in 2008 – his most in a season since 2003, the best campaign of his career– en route to finishing sixth in the FedExCup.

He made the TOUR Championship in 2009, as well, after finishing inside the top 25 in exactly 50% of his starts.

“It was a nice little boost at the end of that season and into the next,” Weir says about facing Woods in 2007. “There was a direct correlation from that whole week.”

It was one of the Presidents Cup’s unique characteristics that made the Weir-Woods match possible. Captains don’t submit their lineups for each session in an envelope, unaware of their opponent’s plans. They do so face to face, responding to each captain’s move with a counter of their own.

Pitting Weir, the greatest male Canadian golfer of all time, against arguably the best to ever play the game was all but inevitable when the captains sat down Saturday night to set the next day’s Singles matches. The International Team’s leadership, Immelman says, thought it was “the right thing to do” and Weir didn’t shy away from taking on Woods, then the No.1 player in the world.

“It was a pretty short discussion,” Immelman says with a smile. “There was a huge buzz around the course …with the Canadian guy taking on the best player in the world.”

Prior to the 2007 matches, Weir had been in a bit of funk. He was the lowest-ranked player picked for the International Team, but with the Presidents Cup being in Canada for the first time it made all the sense in the world to have him on the roster.

Weir had, of course, won the Masters just four years prior and reached No. 3 in the world. He was named the Canadian Athlete of The Year, among many honors he earned in his home country that year.

He hadn’t, however, won on the PGA TOUR since The Genesis Invitational in 2004. He had a steady season in 2007 but nothing stood out until he notched back-to-back top-10s in mid-summer, including a T8 at The Open. He finished 20th in the International Team’s points standings and was 46th in the world heading into the matches.

“There’s some weight to carry when you’re picked in your home country and you…