The biggest surprise, as it turns out, is not that Nick Faldo made the bad
call going into the final day of the Ryder Cup but that he did not make the
call at all. As the players spoke before scattering across Europe, it
emerged that Faldo had played only a supervising role in drawing up the
singles running order. “We pretty much chose where we wanted to play,” Ian
Poulter said. In admitting so, he thought that he was doing his captain a
favour.
As an insight into Faldo's leadership, that revelation has to be regarded as
alarming, even by those who believe that the Europe captain has been flogged
too harshly for losing the Ryder Cup to the United States. There we were
marking Faldo down as a man who wanted to micro-manage this team to victory
when the reality was that he sat in the Brown Hotel in Louisville allowing
his players to dictate strategy, like Sven-Göran Eriksson in his last days
as England head coach. How old-fashioned of us to think that selection was
the captain's business.
This tale unravelled at yet another fractious press conference for Faldo,
although it said something for him that, as a few reasoned but pointed
questions came from the floor, his players were willing to step in and take
the bullets.
From Lee Westwood: “We hold the golf clubs and we hit the shots, not the
captain.” Sergio García: “If I would have played better and won my match,
maybe we would be talking and writing a different story. It has nothing to
do with Nick.”
Their loyalty is admirable, but the more they spoke, the more they raised
troubling questions about Faldo's stewardship and particularly that last-day
running order, which will remain a talking point until someone bends down to
tee it up at Celtic Manor in 2010.
The order in which the singles are sent out is often a cause of prolonged
debate because one team - the losing team - are left with hypotheticals that
can be argued until the Kentucky bluegrass grows 10ft high. Would the US
have won a close contest in 2002 if Tiger Woods had not been left stranded
as the last man? We will never know, but it was a lesson in the perils of
leaving your best players to go out late.
The danger in backloading the order was one of the main factors that should
have informed the discussion as the Europe team gathered on Saturday
evening. Two points adrift, Faldo and his team were fools if they did not
also regard early momentum as a priority.
García opted to lead and his team-mates, as he must have hoped, were behind
him. “We thought Sergio could get us off to a flying start,” Poulter said,
but then he had not had the opportunity to witness first-hand the Spaniard's
putting jitters over the previous two days.
If that was the first mistake, it was compounded by a far greater one and an
extraordinary admission from Poulter. “We thought the Americans would leave
their best players to the end,” he said, to the sound of jaws hitting the
floor. It was on this wild assumption that the Englishman requested to go
out tenth because he thought that he would be “in the mix” and Westwood to
go out 11th for similar reasons and because he had done so at the K Club in
2006.
At no point does anyone, least of all Faldo, appear to have asked: “What if we
are struggling? What if the US start strongly? Can we take the risk of
leaving Poulter and Graeme McDowell, the most in-form players, or Westwood,
the most experienced Ryder Cup campaigner - not to mention Padraig
Harrington, three times a major winner - to bring up the rear?”
Admirable as it is that Westwood and Poulter should have been itching to take
the responsibility of closing the match, it appears that they were, naively,
imagining the glory shot. What they needed was a veteran, a wise captain,
saying: “Lads, we'd all like to hit the winning putt, but what we really
need is to get these Yanks on the run.” Where was that man? Where was the
wisdom of Faldo, who had trumpeted the 18 Ryder Cup appearances by himself
and José María Olazábal as a reason for not recruiting any more assistants?
As the Europeans gathered, the members of US team were also sitting round a
table, but that is where the similarities end. Paul Azinger consulted his
players, but rather than open the floor to debate, he presented his team
with a couple of prepared scenarios. Happily for him, they grasped the one
that he had earmarked, the one “I'd had in my head for probably two weeks,
honestly”. In sending out his four most aggressive players followed by his
Kentuckians and then “my steady, supportive kind of personality guys”, he
had achieved what every coach desires - getting his own way while having the
players believe that they had contributed.
Europe's order was less a plan than a claiming of tee-times by individuals
imagining their own role in proceedings. And for Faldo to argue that it came
close to working is straining the truth beyond credibility.
Yes, there was half an hour when the match was tantalisingly poised, but there
was also a deflating hour and more at the end when his best players were
left on the course with no chance to alter the outcome. The pressure - and
this is the crunch - was never on those, such as Poulter, McDowell and
Westwood, who would have been most able to withstand it.
This is no persecution of Faldo, even if he is one of the most obstructive men
I have come across in sport. If he thought himself beyond a reasonable
inquiry into a heavy defeat, and his dumbfounded reaction to fair questions
on Sunday night suggested so, then he was ill-equipped for captaincy.
Yes, he was amply vindicated in his decision to pick Poulter as a wild card
and, yes, he could have expected more from some senior players. There are
many things the captain cannot control. The order of play, however, is not
one of them. How can Faldo even pretend to be blameless when, on this
central issue, he so demonstrably failed not only to make the right call
but, as his players have established, to take the lead?
Boo Weekley may be a genius after all
It is easy to laugh at Boo Weekley for his tobacco-chewing impersonation of
Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. And you will not see a dafter
sporting clip all year than his Kentucky Derby ride, slapping his thighs as
he clip-clopped down the 1st fairway.
This is the man who told us that Paul Azinger wanted his players to
“compatibate”. “Look here, they got so many words in there I can't
understand,” he said.
And the player who compared himself to a “juiced-up dog running around a
greyhound track chasing one of them bunnies”.
We have all had our fun with golf's gator-wrestling hick, but having made
himself the star of “Boo-S-A”, you had to wonder if Weekley is an innate
marketing genius.
“I just want to thank all those brave men and women fighting for our freedom
on foreign soil,” he said in his victory speech, cementing his place as the
all-American hero. Shrewd guy. I know whose agent will have been busiest
yesterday racking up the endorsement deals.
Galleries hollered but in a nice way
As Sergio García tapped down Anthony Kim's pitchmark inches from the 13th
hole, a deep American voice came booming from the back. “That won't be
troubling you, Sergio. Let's get on with the game.” Over three days of
walking around a-hootin' and a-hollerin' galleries, it was the worst heckle
I heard. This is not to say that Lee Westwood did not encounter a couple of
idiots, but we will all be happy if the crowds at Celtic Manor manage to be
both as raucous and as well-behaved.
