If Tiger Woods wants to play all five sessions in the Ryder Cup again it looks as though he will.
No American captain has given arguably golf's greatest-ever player a rest since he made his debut at Valderrama in 1997.
Home captain Davis Love said: "If Tiger says 'I'm feeling great, I want to play as much as possible' then obviously he's the best player we've ever had, so you've got to defer to that and let him go.
"His answer so far is that he would be happy and ready to play singles, so he's very non-committal - but he messes with me a little bit. I haven't gotten a definite answer."
It would be a big call to bench Woods, but the facts are that he has won only nine of 23 foursomes or fourballs games against Europe, has gone over four years since the last of his 14 major victories, has had leg injuries and, of course, is getting older.
He has also found himself outshone by Rory McIlroy in the last two seasons and the 23-year-old Northern Irish star is perhaps even more of a key figure in Chicago later this week.
Former United States captain Paul Azinger has even spoken of Love trying to work out where McIlroy will be placed in the team order, then picking his two hottest players to face him and probably Graeme McDowell.
"He's given me a lot of suggestions, but not that one," Love stated.
"They have a lot of good players. I think the best strategy for me is to put our best teams out there and not really worry.
"In this format it's hard to target a guy. You don't know who is going to be their hot team.
"Certainly in my Ryder Cup history we have run up against some guys that you didn't expect were going to be hot.
"Monty (Colin Montgomerie) would come in not playing well and he would play great every time. You just never know.
"I'm not aiming at guys. It's hard to play that game.
"We are going to put them out more in the order we like guys to play in, certain guys to go first because they are raring to go and then certain guys lay in the back because they want to see how the matches are playing out.
"I'm going to let guys pick a little bit and then I've got a couple ideas on who should go first and who should go last."
