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And one of his changes, his final pairing, has pitted World No 3 Ernie Els and rookie Tim Clarke against World No 1 Tiger Woods and US young gun Charles Howell, America's biggest winners in Thursday's foursomes.

The US duo beat Stuart Appleby and KJ Choi 4 &3.

Nicklaus, meanwhile,  has opted for a strong start and finish, making his changes in the middle of the morning field.

Although Phil Mickelson and David Toms lost at the 18th in Thursday’s foursomes, he has retained the combination on the strength  that they are proven pairing in team competition. They'll go out first against Robert Allenby and Mike Weir.

In what looks like a Nicklaus ploy to get some early points on the board he is sending out the formidable-looking combination of Davis Love III and Kenny Perry against Retief Goosen, paired this time with KJ Choi, and not VJ Singh in the combination that gave the International their first point on Thursday.

Nicklaus has also broken up his  World Cup pairing of Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard, sending Furyk out third with Jay Haas and against Stuart Appleby and Adam Scott.

Leonard follows that match with Chris DiMarco, the Americans pair scheduled to take on World No 2 Vijay Singh and wily Nick Price.

Els-Tiger-SA and US young gun combination goes out at the back of the field in a match expected to draw huge galleries

“I think they are all good pairings,” said Nicklaus. “They are all good players and I see some very good matches and ones that will produce a lot of interest, especially the last one since Tiger and Ernie are in the match.”

“We had to take into consideration that you have to leave out two players in the morning and two in the afternoon so we changed our teams considerably,” Player explained. “Foursomes is a completely different game to better-ball so we tried to put together the guys that we felt would do better in better-ball.”

Players sitting out Friday morning's betterball matches but - according to Presidents Cup rules  must play in the afternoon foursomes - are Australians Stephen Leaney and Peter Lonard for the Internationals and Jerry Kelly and Fred Funk for the US team

Friday Mornings Presidents Cup Pairings

Fourball Matches (Local time; US names first)

Match 7 07h15 - Phil Mickelson, David Toms vs Robert Allenby, Mike Weir
Match 8 07h26 - Kenny Perry, Davis Love III vs Retief Goosen, KJ Choi
Match 9 07h37 - Jim Furyk, Jay Haas vs Stuart Appleby, Adam Scott
Match 10 07h48 - Chris DiMarco, Justin Leonard vs Vijay Singh, Nick Price
Match 11 07h59 - Tiger Woods; Charles Howell III vs Ernie Els, Tim Clark

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