So, the dreaded 50?” I begin.

“No, it’s not dreaded,” he replies.

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“It’s just a number?”

“Oh, I think it’s better than a number,” he says. “It’s a significant number. It marks 50 years of . . . life. Hopefully it’s halfway [laughs] hopefully it’s the front nine and now we start on the back nine; that’s probably a good way of looking at it.”

“Quite an amazing front nine,” I suggest.

“It sure was,” he says, smiling. “If you were to look at it in golfing terms, I guess you could say that the first three holes when I was growing up and learning the game were pars or birdie, that was great. And then for the next three, when I was winning majors, I might have gone eagle, eagle, eagle. But over the last three holes I’ve definitely given a few back. Gosh, yeah, definitely a couple of double-bogeys there.”

“The last year hasn’t been easy?”

“No.”

“Is ‘traumatic’ too strong a word?”

“No, the past 18 months have been tough. I went through a period where I was a bit lost for a while, a kind of limbo time. Before, the next goal was always a trophy or the next major, but when you haven’t got that to aim for, how do you make yourself happy? How do you find happiness? Enjoyment? Fulfilment? What are you trying to achieve?”

THE MONTH is May 2006. His five-year marriage to Valerie Bercher has just ended and he has returned alone from Orlando to a new apartment in Windsor. He spends the afternoon browsing in art shops and the evening hanging his purchases to the walls. He dines alone on a supper prepared mostly by Waitrose: avocado and prawns, moussaka and some fruit for dessert. The latest album from Coldplay is playing in the background.

His manager, Iain Forsyth, phones and they arrange to meet next morning. His mobile phone bleeps with an incoming text: “Have just heard. Gutted for you. Don’t beat yourself up.” He washes up and gathers a bundle of his smalls — socks, T-shirts and underwear — for the washing machine. He flicks on the TV and surfs the channels for comedy before drifting off to sleep.

The night is long and restless. He awakes at 5.30am and stares at the ceiling, listening to the silence. He likes the silence. He likes his own company. But he hates being alone.

This is the conundrum. How to explain it? The loner who hates being alone. He makes a cup of tea and gets back into bed. He dozes until seven and opens his eyes, but that hole in the pit of his stomach continues to grate. “What happens now? What is the goal in my life? Where do I go from here?”

“EVER tried cocaine?” I ask.

“No,” he replies.

“Never?”

“No, I’ve never seen hard drugs, never mind taken them; I’ve not even had a drag from a cigarette.”

“You’ve never seen hard drugs?”

“No.”

“Or been offered them?”

“I was offered a spliff once. I’m in Hawaii and this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, want to come to a party tonight? Want some bud?’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘Do you want some bud?’ I thought he was talking about Budweiser, that’s how square I was. So, no I have never seen it; I am pretty naive on that, pretty square.”

“That’s a surprise,” I observe. “I would have thought, given the circles you move in, that you would have been offered it at least once.”

“But I have never been in those circles,” he argues. “I’ve never been a party-goer. Some guys are down in the nightclubs until four o’clock in the morning, but I’ve never been like that. I was going to say ‘hate’, but I’m not interested in nightclubs. Why go to a place where it’s smoky and it stinks and it’s so loud that you can’t even talk?”

“So what was your release?” I ask.

“My release?”

“Yes, what was your release when you were the world No 1?”

“To just get away from things,” he says. “To go fishing for the day.”

“Fishing! And that would be enough, would it?”

“Yes, I have always been that way. It started as a kid by going cycling. I’d come home and get on my bike and ride through the villages of Hertfordshire and get lost. I’d be out there for hours, just riding from village to village down beautiful country lanes, so that was my first release.”

“You enjoyed your own company?”

“Yeah, I’d go to the range on my own and I’d be happy as a sand-boy doing my routine; getting up every morning, arriving at the club, practising and making up games on my own and then playing in the afternoon on my own with imaginary friends — or imaginary pros, rather, and I was happy, mega-happy. I have never been bored with golf. I still enjoy tipping a bag of balls out and having somebody watching my swing.”

“So, you’re saying that when you were world No 1 and the pressure was intense, that a day’s fishing could reboot you?”

“Yeah, it was just great to get away; to get down on the river with no clock-watching and spend the day there, but I haven’t had enough of that; my schedule for years has been crazy. It’s like, Jackie Stewart calls me and says, ‘Why don’t you come to Monaco next week?’ And I’m thinking, ‘Oh no’, because I know Matthew [his son] would love to go. So I tell him a week later, ‘Guess who called me, Matthew?’ and he is literally beating me up. ‘Oh Dad, you’re joking’. And I say, ‘Next year’, but it’s tough to keep saying, ‘Next year’.”

“So why not do something about it? You’re in control of that.”

“I know I’m in control, but when you are busy, you are busy and it just hasn’t been possible lately with my TV commitments.”

“So at what stage of your life do you stop saying, ‘I must do that’ and just do it?”

“I know. I am going to have to be ruthless. Obviously there has been a lot going on emotionally off the golf course, but now that the TV is taking off and I have a map of where I am going, maybe I will be able to sort it out soon.”

THE MONTH is July 2006. He is having breakfast with his parents, George and Joyce, at a house they have rented in Hoylake for The Open. It’s the morning of the third round and he will spend the day working in the commentary booth after failing to make the cut. The conversation strays from golf as the tea is poured. He has met a woman he quite likes during a recent visit to Turkey and has decided to inform his parents. George’s brow has suddenly furrowed.

“What will the children think?” he asks.

“I don’t know, Dad,” Nick replies.

“Are you concerned about this?”

“We shall see.”

“Well, I’m very concerned — they might take it very badly.”

“Yes, Dad, but they might also take it very well.”

“But aren’t you worried by what people will think?”

“No, Dad. I am not going to live my life by what other people are thinking. It’s my life. It has nothing to do with them.”

“HOW are your parents?” I ask.

“Great,” he replies. “They are all happy in their own little world.” He laughs.

“Why did you laugh?”

“Because they are so happy together.”

“When did you speak to them last?”

“I speak to them regularly; I popped in a few weeks ago when I was home and we had dinner down in a good old [local] pub with Danny [Desmond, a lifelong friend] and Diana [Desmond]. They had just come back from a cruise; I sent them on a cruise for their 60th wedding anniversary and they loved it.”

“They’ve been married 60 years!”

“Sixty years they’ve done, yeah.”

“Okay, so this is a tough one, but how have they made it work for 60 years but you can’t?”

“Yeah, I can’t. I’ll be on wife No 9 by 60,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know, it’s a different era, isn’t it? Crumbs, they met literally at the end of the war and have lived a completely different life. Dad worked the classic nine-to-five and they had minimal resources. You worked, you had your little camping holiday in the summer and that was the mindset, where I’ve had a very different life.”

“The life of a star?”

“Yeah, you are pushing yourself to become the world No 1; you’ve got the spotlight; you get pulled; you are the centre of attention. I have always been the centre of attention in my business, and if your partner can’t deal with that, you have a problem.”

“It’s just over a year since you broke up with Valerie?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been divorced three times now?”

“Yes.”

“That text you got last year, ‘Don’t beat yourself up about this’. Did you beat yourself up? Do you beat yourself up?”

“Erm . . . the hardest thing for me was little Emma and what she has gone through. It hit me hard on Christmas Day. Daddy comes around for Christmas presents in the morning and she starts crying when he has to leave — that really cut me up [his eyes well with tears] and I got very emotional. But she’s a smart kid and she has twigged that now Dad goes to his house and Mum’s at this house and it’s a bit easier, but you still feel bad.”

“Because of the effect it’s had on her?”

“Yeah, because the poor thing doesn’t understand.”

“And what about the effect on you?” I ask.

“It keeps crossing your mind; you ponder it; I’m still angry at times and I feel let down, but of course there are two sides to it. The bottom line is that it didn’t work and you just have to keep going; you have to rebuild your life and do the things you want to make yourself happy. I learnt another big lesson in life and all you can do is move forward and start again.”

THE MONTH is September 2006. It is 6am on the Monday of Ryder Cup week and his sleep has been fitful again. He flicks on the TV and the news is mostly bad: some poor woman has been stabbed in the throat and had her child snatched in America. They are forecasting storms and heavy rain for the K Club. He picks up the phone and calls Hulya (pronounced “Hulia”) in Turkey.

He breakfasts alone in the kitchen of his apartment: porridge, two boiled eggs, two slices of soda bread, apricots, yoghurt. He pours a glass of water, swallows some cod liver oil and strides out the door with a bag of dirty laundry. The dry cleaners in Datchet is a five-minute drive. There are three customers ahead of him in the queue and he stands in line. Ten minutes later he hands the bag to the assistant and asks for the shirts that he deposited last week. She asks him for his ticket. He returns to the apartment to collect his golf clubs and drives to the Berkshire for a corporate day. Chit-chat and small talk have never been his forte. The day is long and bloody exhausting. He is playing the eighth when the guy starts pecking at his brains.

“They say Seve was never the same when he hit that four iron into the water at The Masters in ’86,” he announces. “Was it the same for you, Nick?”

“How do you mean?”

“When did you turn the corner, Nick? When did you realise you had lost it? Was it a particular shot that you hit?”

“Not really,” he replies. “I think it takes a while. I think it’s more a lack of belief.”

“And when did you stop believing?”

“Carnoustie in ’99.”

“WHAT did you learn?” I ask.

“About what?” he replies.

“You said you learnt another big lesson when things with Valerie crashed. What did you learn?”

“The big thing I learnt was that you’ve really got to assess the other person early in the relationship. You can’t say to yourself, ‘Well, I don’t really like that about them’, and hope those things which annoy you will change. Or that you will be able to change them. I’ve learnt to pay attention to your own emotions and the fact that you have choices all the time. ‘Yes, I can accept this’. Or ‘No, I cannot accept this’.”

“You don’t handle conflict well?”

“No.”

“That’s been a recurring theme in your life?”

“Yeah, I guess you are influenced very much by your mum and dad, and we never had massive rows or arguments. Some families argue every week and believe it’s good to clear the air, but I came from a family where if something was said, it was your choice how you dealt with it. So I have never been good at dealing with things or maybe discussing those things.”

“You ignore the problems and hope they go away?”

“Yeah, maybe you . . . I don’t know, that’s a tough one. I think I’ve always dealt with things very factually, and women obviously deal with things very emotionally and you have to learn how to communicate, and that has been difficult for me. I’m a jump-in-and-fix-it type of guy. There’s a problem? We fix it. Or ‘It’s your problem — you deal with it’. We’re so different, men and women. When talking to a woman you’ve got to understand the emotions . . . I have a lot to do on that one.”

“Do you think you can get it right?”

“I think that I’ve learnt to recognise the areas where I have got to be more sensitive.”

“Is there someone out there who is compatible for you?”

“I’m sure there is, yeah.”

“Is it hard to keep taking that leap of faith?”

“Yeah, it is, because you are probably even more cautious, which . . . I don’t know, maybe that’s a good thing. In my current relationship we’re just living for each day and enjoying each other’s company and doing the best we can for each other with no serious commitment to the future.”

“It’s obvious that you find it hard to talk about.”

“Yeah, it has been hard, especially at 50; coming back to hotel rooms and looking at the wall . . . I wasn’t expecting that to happen again at this stage of my life, and to be starting all over again was not what I intended.”

THE MONTH is June 2007. It’s a steaming Friday evening at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio and after a long day in the commentary booth, Faldo has taken his golf clubs from the trunk of his car and is hitting shots on the range.

His first six months as the lead golf analyst at both CBS and the Golf Channel have earned him rave reviews.

And serious money (CBS alone is paying him a reported $8m a year).

But he hasn’t played a competitive round of golf since November and The Open is fast approaching. He pulls a three wood from the bag and targets a distant flag with an array of fades and draws. His arms and face are matted with sweat. His girlfriend, Hulya Parta, has laid a rug beside his golf bag and is reading a book.

Jim Nantz, the CBS presenter, ambles across to present two friends. “This is the great Nick Faldo,” Nantz beams. “And this is the lovely Hulya.” Faldo smiles and shakes hands but returns impatiently to his work.

“WHERE has he been hiding all these years?” I ask.

“Who?” he replies.

“The funny guy on TV.”

“I suppose I never got a chance to let him out,” he says. “The people who’ve been around me know what I’m like, but I’m sure I’ve probably embellished it a bit.”

“He seems a lot happier in the commentary booth than he was on the golf course,” I suggest.

“Yeah, I didn’t enjoy the last five years,” he says. “You go to the golf course and beat your head in and you’re not the same golfer, physically, technically or mentally, and that was very frustrating. And then you are given the opportunity to do something which is incredibly powerful — and this was something I really didn’t appreciate — the power of television, especially in America, is quite amazing.”

“When did you first become aware of it?”

“From the very start, from the ABC days . . . I mean, you always got recognised walking down the high street or in airports, but this was amazing. I remember walking down a street in New York and four out of five guys either said, ‘Hi Nick’ or nudged their mate. The funniest was when I walked into a Wal-Mart with four old ladies and they all came over and said, ‘Watched you on the golf’. And you think, ‘Wow!’ So it’s very powerful.”

“Is it intoxicating?”

“Yeah, it’s a bit like golf. You’re there live, you’ve got one shot at it and there’s an adrenaline rush to pay attention and say the right things, so it has its buzz.”

“But the real buzz is that you’re good at it?”

“Yeah, I think I can bounce around; I’ve got the English accent I can play on and there are my silly voices, and it’s gone well.”

“Take me back to your first experience of it.”

“Well, I bounced between Sky and NBC at the 2002 Ryder Cup and that went very well, and then I had an approach from ABC. They said, ‘Well how about doing [The Open at] Troon?’ The amazing thing is that you are given a microphone, but nobody gives you a rule book; nobody says, ‘Well, this is a word you cannot say’ or ‘This is the out of bounds’. They assume you know what to do.”

“And you did?”

“Well, yeah, I did an eight-hour Saturday with a 20-minute break and a 7½-hour Sunday and I was so tired after, but obviously I enjoyed it. ABC was a great team, a fun team, with fun producers — Mark Lumas and Brant Packer — so we had a good team: Andy North, Judy Rankin, Zinger [Paul Azinger], of course, Mike Tirico, we got on well. I enjoyed that. You make friends quicker in this business than on the golf course because you’ve gone in with a different attitude. I’m not trying to . . .”

“To beat the crap out of them,” I suggest.

“No,” he says, smiling. “I’ve gone in as a team member, that’s the stock phrase over there: ‘It’s all about the team’.”

“And you didn’t find that difficult because the goal had changed?”

“Yeah, exactly. And you pick up the odd thing; there was this guy, we called him Pac-Man, and he always used to say, ‘Have a good show’. And you realise, ‘Yeah, it’s a show’. It’s not three hours of beating people over the head with golfing facts and figures. It’s, ‘Have a show’.”

“The Sports Illustrated survey the magazine asked 71 Tour players which analyst they preferred, Faldo or Johnny Miller. Faldo polled 82 per cent to Miller's 18 per cent] must have been gratifying?”

“Yeah, obviously I was very pleased with that; it’s nice to get some player reaction. Johnny has been up there a long time; I think he has done 16-odd years or something.”

“What is it about America? You’ve spent a fair chunk of your life here now.”

“Yeah, on and off for the past 20 years. I think the American public are . . . there is not the same attention paid to marriage and break-ups. I’m not tabloid news over here. I’m just a sportsman. I’m not . . .”

“Is ‘judged’ the word?”

“Yeah, that’s it, and there shouldn’t be any judgment. You are a golfer with a great record and respected for that. People are nice. I wander through the crowd now and people want to introduce you to their kids. It’s very nice.”

“Would you swap what you have for what you were?”

“If I could play the way I used to, I would, yeah.”

“Because nothing beats that?”

“Nothing beats that, no. If I was still out on the golf course and could still turn in the scores, I think I would rather be out playing.”

THE MONTH is July 2007. It’s a Thursday afternoon and Nick Faldo is gazing out on the Firth of Forth from a house near Dundee. Tomorrow morning he is shooting an Open preview for ABC at Carnoustie.

Tomorrow afternoon he will fly by private plane to Vienna for a corporate sponsor, Maybach. On Sunday he flies back to Carnoustie and will begin his preparations for The Open with his son, Matthew, who will caddie for him this week.

On Monday his daughter Emma will be jetted in from the US. On Tuesday the crew from the office arrive with his friends from Sweden and Surrey. On Wednesday morning Danny Desmond will fly his parents and his daughters, Natalie and Georgia, by private plane from Hertfordshire. And on Wednesday afternoon, at exactly 3pm, the best British golfer of all time will be 50 years old.

“WHAT about the back nine?” I ask. “How does it start?”

“With a party,” he says. “I’m going to have a photograph taken with Mum at three o’clock and we’ll have a party on Wednesday evening.”

“And what’s the goal after that?”

“Well, obviously my family is very important and my No 1 goal is to be a better father and to orchestrate more time to be with them. And then you have the business goals; I’ve got my [golf course] design work, which I really enjoy, and the TV stuff is going well — the goal there is to enjoy it and to be as good a presenter as I possibly can.”

“And what about happiness?” I ask. “Have you found it yet?”

“Yes, I’m happy. The toughest thing is all the travelling you have to do with your career; you are constantly juggling time to see your children — that’s the biggest sacrifice, unfortunately, but it gives them a lifestyle they would never have had.”

“So it’s give and take?”

“Yeah, I have so many wonderful opportunities and there’s so much I want to do, but it’s just finding the time to do it. I suppose I’m like a lot of people who think, ‘Well, it’s going to be great in six months’. We all live like that.

“We forget to live for today, but you have to put it together and I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on how to do that yet. But I’m working on it.”