For players, the Melbourne days when the wind blows from the north are the ones they dread. The course this week, fast and fiery already, looked like it was out to regain its fearsome reputation earned in the early 1970s when Claude Crockford, the club's curator made the most feared putting surfaces in the game.

Here was a day when some of the game's best players were forced to play some of the most precise golf of their lives and Jason Day, YE Yang, Ryo Ishikawa and Hunter Mahan went without making a single birdie. Tiger Woods only made two, he and Dustin Johnson losing to Baddeley and Day on the last hole.

Two points behind after two sets of matches is perhaps already too much to make up given Greg Norman has too many players who have little or no apparent idea of how to play the golf course.

The Korean YE Yang has already accused the greens of being ‘unfair' (whatever that means) and KT Kim is out there having played just 27 holes in practice. It is impossible to learn even a little bit about the nuances of Royal Melbourne in a day and a half.

Worse, Japanese star Ishikawa arrived late on Tuesday and played one practice round. Greg Norman would have been excused for calling him on Monday and telling him not to bother coming. Greg Chalmers or John Senden would have been more than useful replacements.

The International team needs to pick up a point at least on Saturday and go into the singles within a match of the Americans. The Asian players, the wonderful and inscrutable KJ Choi excepted, will be too much for the Africans and the Australians to carry on Sunday. They will have learned more about Royal Melbourne but this is a form of the game they barely know exists.

One assumes the hot wind will be replaces by a cold one on Saturday after the requisite Melbourne southerly change that always comes at the end of these searing days.

At the end of the day, Aaron Baddeley redeemed himself after Thursday's dreadful tee shot of the 18th hole by making a fine four to beat Woods and Johnson. Coming a match behind Geoff Ogilvy holed from two metres for his four (after Choi had driven left and taken himself out of the hole) to beat Bill Haas and Nick Watney by one hole. Those two putts give their team a glimmer of hope but they will need to do more heavy lifting if there is to be any hope by Sunday afternoon.