People ask me, “Jack, who do you think will win?” I say, America. I mean I am American and like most Americans, I’ve grown tired of hearing about how dominant Europe has become in recent times. If you ask me why I think America will win, it’s because I believe they have the better players, despite the evidence of the most recent Ryder Cups.

If you go on Oakland Hills in 2004 and the K Club in 2006, when Europe won both matches, by nine points, you’re going to struggle to support the case that America will win but I believe our players are far better than those two Ryder Cup performances showed them to be. I also have a tremendous loyalty to a number of the guys in the US team, people I worked with in Presidents Cup matches.

Since Great Britain and Ireland became Europe, there is no question but that the Ryder Cup has become a better competition, although you could argue that it has now gone too far the other way. Maybe

Europe has now become too strong. This time around I think this is probably the least experienced American team that we have put out in the past 10. If you look at it, it is probably the first time that the Europeans are probably favourites on paper. When they clobbered the US at Oakland Hills, I felt that we would be stronger there because our guys knew the course so well, but we weren’t. Europe dominated us there and we got another pretty good thrashing at the K Club.

So obviously the European team is confident about what it is doing. I’m hoping the new blood in the American team will make for a better event. I believe Valhalla is a golf course the Americans will do well on but then you look at it and think: “Well, the Europeans now play as much golf over here as they do over there.” And if Oakland Hills didn’t give us an advantage, there’s no reason why Valhalla should.

What I can’t explain is why Europe have dominated so much in recent times. Through most of this year, the European team has played very well; Padraig Harrington and Miguel Angel Jimenez have played well, Sergio Garcia has played well. But then you look a little closer and most of the European guys who came to play the recent FedEx Cup didn’t do very well.

Harrington didn’t have a good tournament and neither did the other Europeans. Only Garcia was playing well, and a lot of our guys were playing well but who knows what will happen at Valhalla? I’m just making the point that there’s no reason why America can’t win. We understand team play as much as you do, we want to win this as badly as you do. Paul Azinger is an inspirational guy, and will be a very proac-tive captain.

My style was different. I captained a lot of these guys in Presidents Cup teams and my goal was to let the players be part of the process – rather than my dominating them, let them dominate me. I looked at senior guys and asked, “Who would you like to play with? What can I do for you? And guys, I am only going to ask you to attend one function all week and the rest of the time you are on your own to do what you want to do.” Nobody ever missed a dinner. I made it their responsibility, not me treating them like kids. They all responded very well, including Tiger. He was terrific.

I haven’t captained a Ryder Cup team since 1987, which was, of course, when Europe won at Muirfield Village. We couldn’t win a match on the 18th that year, couldn’t finish the job off. I look back at that European team and think of the guys they had. Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Bern-hard Langer, Ian Woosnam, those guys turned out to be great players. If America win at Valhalla, eight years from now you could be looking back and thinking, “Man, that was a great up-and-coming American team”. How do you know?

People look at recent results and wonder if the American players are perhaps not as good as their rankings make them out to be but they get their rankings playing against the best players in the world. To get their ranking points, they are consistently finishing ahead of Europeans because a lot of your guys are playing in the US now. I suppose you could say the Americans are playing where the surroundings are familiar and that gives them an advantage. On that basis, maybe they are not as good as the rankings say, but how else do you measure them?

I have wondered whether the players who were around in my time, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, Tom Watson and Johnny Miller, are better than the players Tiger Woods is beating. It could be that Tiger is just that much better than everybody else and that’s why he’s so far ahead of them but you would like to think the players of today are every bit as good as the players in my day but you see it week after week after week, players who are not able to finish a golf tournament.

Whether it is an American or a European, or an Asian, none of them seem to be able to finish a golf tournament. I always knew if I was to falter in the final round, someone else was going to step up and produce a 65 or 66. That doesn’t happen much today. The exception has been Harrington, who has played great in the past two majors. He is one, what about the others?

I wonder about the American collegiate system, where it’s all medal play, I wonder about the effect of all the prize money – a player can finish fifth now in one tournament and earn more than I earned in a good year. But, really, I don’t know. I don’t have the answer.

When I look at the teams for this year's Ryder Cup and focus on the senior men in both teams – Lee Westwood, Harrington, Jimenez and Garcia for Europe, Phil Mickel-son, Jim Furyk, Kenny Perry and Stewart Cink for the US – I don’t see that much difference. I think that’s a toss-up. Phil has good team qualities. I remember one Presidents Cup match, I was asking the senior guys who they would like as partners and it was obvious no one was picking Woody Austin and Phil saw this and said: “Hey, I’d like to play with Woody, I’ve wanted to play with Woody.”

Of the young Americans, Anthony Kim has played as well as any golfer over the past six months, with the exception of Harrington. Hunter Mahan hasn’t played as well as I thought he would but he is a very good player, I know that from his performance in the Presidents Cup. Of the younger Europeans, Ian Poulter is a very good player. He is a player that I would have given a wild card to and I think Nick made a good choice. Justin Rose is a very good player as well. But he and Poulter don’t win as often as they should.

Because of their recent supremacy, the Europeans will be confident and will probably consider themselves favourites to win. I know some people have said the atmosphere in Kentucky will be boisterous but I can’t imagine it being a loud crowd. Louis-ville is a quite conservative part of the United States and I think the crowd there will be fair to both sides. This is not going to be like a Ryder Cup staged in New York, which would be a madhouse. No, the people who turn up at Valhalla will be there to see good golf, regardless of which side produces it.

Unless I'm misreading it, I don’t imagine there will be many guys coming from the bars and then making themselves heard on the fairways.

Valhalla has been changed over the past year, and the guys will find it more challenging than before. A lot of holes have been greatly changed. The sixth is probably the best example. We moved back the green there about 80 yards and it is now a really tough 500-yard par four. Where the guys were hitting seven or eight irons, they will now be hitting a three or four iron.

What makes Valhalla more unusual is the difference between the front side and the back side. The front nine is built on Floyd's plain, a test of golf that you might find somewhere in Britain. The back nine is through a wooded area, with lots of fairways framed by woodland, and it’s a very different test. The 16th will be very tough, a 511-yard par four. I was against the change at first but now I admit it was right.

I like really tough holes in matchplay golf because generally there are different ways of playing them and when players take those different options, that makes matchplay very interesting.

As I’ve said, I don’t believe your guys are better team players than ours, and I don’t accept either that you are better at foursomes and fourballs. I believe our team is every bit as good as yours, if not better, and we have home advantage. The difficulty I have is with the matches at Oakland Hills and the K Club.

Ask me to explain how the US got a thrashing in each of those two matches and I don’t have an answer. I can’t explain it, but I still believe we can do it this time.

Jack Nicklaus: player, captain, Ryder Cup legend

Jack Nicklaus played in six Ryder Cups and was on the winning side five times. He is also remembered for conceding the putt to Tony Jacklin on the final green at Royal Birkdale in 1969 that ensured the match between the two sides would be tied. Nicklaus’s Cup record is won 17, halved 3, lost 8

It was Nicklaus who, after too many one-sided wins for the Americans, proposed that the Great Britain and He was appointed US captain for the 1983 match at the PGA National. The USA won by one point. He led again four years later at Muirfield Village, which he had designed, but lost by two points, the first US defeat on home soil. He can be seen here embracing opposing captain Tony Jacklin and Ballesteros

Nicklaus designed the course for this year's contest at Valhalla, Kentucky, in 1986 and was asked in 2006 to make it more spectator-friendly for this week's Ryder Cup. He is also an ambassador for RBS, proud supporters of the Ryder Cup in Valhalla and official bank of the PGA of America

HOW THE ACTION WILL UNFOLD AT VALHALLA
Friday, September 19 1.05pm: Foursomes series, four matches, matchplay format. Two players from each side play one ball, taking alternate shots. One player tees off on odd holes, the other on even holes. The lower score of the two sides wins the hole. Matches can be halved 5.45pm: Fourballs series, four matches, matchplay format. Two players from each side play their own balls. The low score from either side wins the hole. Matches can be halved

Saturday, September 20 1.05pm: Foursomes series, four matches, matchplay format (as Friday) 5.45pm: Fourballs series, four matches, matchplay format (as Friday)

Sunday, September 21 5pm: Singles series, 12 matches, matchplay format. Captains enter players’ names in a designated order in a closed envelope. They are then drawn against the corresponding players from the opposition. All times are BST First team to 14.5 points wins

TV COVERAGE
Friday, September 19Sky Sports 1, 12.00pm – 12.00am

Saturday, September 20Sky Sports 1, 12.00pm – 12.00am

Sunday, September 21Sky Sports 1, 4.30pm – 12.00am

For more about the Ryder Cup and RBS, go to www.rbs.com/golf