International team captain Nick Price admits it is vital for his side to win the Presidents Cup to maintain interest in the biennial contest, both from fans and his own players.
In contrast to their recent Ryder Cup record of eight defeats in the last 10 contests, the United States have dominated the Presidents Cup, winning the last five in succession and eight out of the 10 since it began in 1994.
"I will tell you guys, this is a really important Presidents Cup," Price told a pre-event press conference at Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in Incheon, South Korea.
"I'm not going to say, 'What if?' But this better be closely contested. I'll let you guys figure out the repercussions."
One of those repercussions could be players not wanting to take part at the end of a busy season, with f ormer Open champion Price admitting: "I t's hard for these guys. You ask these guys to give up a week and to play in an event that is not competitive.
"Any one of these guys can go play anywhere around the world and receive money and they can easily dump this event if they wanted to. Most of them don't want to do that."
World number two Jason Day agreed with his captain, adding: " This is a huge deal for us right now. If it doesn't happen and we keep losing guys won't get interested in it and won't want to play in it and won't want to travel.
"I'm here for the captain and for the guys. We would like to win one. No one likes losing."
Price hopes a reduction in the number of matches from 34 to 30 will favour his side by allowing him to rely more on his star names, including US PGA champion Day and fellow Australian Adam Scott.
The International players wanted an even greater reduction to bring the Presidents Cup in line with the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup, Price adding: " We seem to think looking at the past, that the most excitement there is in an event is when you have a 28-point format. I think the Solheim Cup showed that two weeks ago.
" Some people think that you're hiding your weakest players, but in actual fact what you're doing is putting your strongest team forward. It's glass half-full or glass half-empty, depends which way you look at it."
In Thursday's foursomes matches, Price paired Scott with Hideki Matsuyama against Bubba Watson and JB Holmes, with South African duo Louis Oosthuizen and Branden Grace then taking on Matt Kuchar and Patrick Reed.
India's Anirban Lahiri and Thailand's Thongchai Jaidee then face Rickie Fowler and Jimmy Walker, who halved three and lost one of their Ryder Cup matches together last year, with Australian duo Day and Steven Bowditch up against Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson.
The final match sees Danny Lee and Marc Leishman up against world number one Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson, with US captain Jay Haas surprisingly splitting up the unbeaten Ryder Cup pairing of Spieth and Reed.
"They have been wanting this pairing," Haas said. "And what Jordan wants, Jordan gets right now. So that was our thinking there."
Haas' son Bill and Chris Kirk will sit out the opening session, with former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel and Korea's Sangmoon Bae left out by Price.
Schwartzel has been struggling with flu-like symptoms but Price added: "I felt kind of bad that I had to bench Bae, but I didn't want to split up any of the other teams that played yesterday and played well together."
Source: PA
