It is rare that a press conference offers much beyond the obvious , yet at Valhalla last Sunday evening, there were moments of enlightenment. The European players, Nick Faldo and his first lieutenant, Jose Maria Olazabal, were seated in a line, easy targets before the firing squad, except that only the captain interested those with the guns.

The sixth question got to the heart of the antagonism felt towards Faldo. It began by reminding the captain how many of his decisions had been criticised and now there would be renewed criticism. “Do you care, and if not, why not?” Before the look of bewilderment settled on Faldo’s face, the normally-so-nice Justin Rose uttered a scathing “Thanks” in the direction of the questioner. Feelings run high when Rose gets thorny.

Lee Westwood tried to defuse the situation by advising Faldo to say he didn’t care about criticism. That’s what so many of today’s generation of English professionals loved about the old champion: when he was the best he didn’t give a damn about those who found fault with his manner or his ways. However, this is a different time in Faldo’s life, a different Nick in many ways. To him, the question implied he didn’t care about losing the Ryder Cup. “Do you think I don’t care? That’s a bit harsh,” he replied. It is impossible to convey the vulnerability that filled his response with pathos. Yet his innate decency, his absolute commitment to the Ryder Cup and his team, were never more obvious than in that moment of emotional fragility.

The players sensed the unfairness of it all. “Can I jump in?” asked Ian Poulter. “Can I jump in?” asked Sergio Garcia. “Can I jump in?” asked Rose. To hear the players so eager to defend the losing captain was, in its way, as uplifting as anything we had seen through three days of spectacularly good golf. Europe arrived in Kentucky as a team and though well beaten, they would depart as a team. As it should be.

Eventually it was Westwood, the closest the players had to a leader, who spoke. “We hold the golf clubs and we hit the shots, not the captain. If you want to talk about me being rested Friday [he meant Saturday] morning and Sergio being rested, that’s the session we won, so Nick was right to do that.” That set the tone and when subsequent bullets were fired, the players and Olazabal instinctively jumped in front of their captain and made sure he couldn’t be hit. When Faldo was told his order of play in the singles had made two of his best players, Poulter and Graeme McDowell, redundant and asked if he wouldn’t be beating himself up over this, it was Garcia who took the hit. “If I would have played better, and I would have won my match, maybe you know, maybe we would be writing a different story.”

It was the players who lost the Ryder Cup, not the captain. Had we known in advance that Garcia, Westwood and Padraig Harrington would not win a match between them, we would have told their teammates not to bother turning up. Had we known that the US team would make so many putts, shoot so many birdies and produce a team performance of sustained bril-liance, we would have known that another European victory was virtually out of the question. How could anyone have known that rookies Anthony Kim, Boo Weekley, Hunter Mahan and JB Holmes would play so well? Faldo was the target for many reasons. He didn’t deal well with the media during his great years and he paid for that. Neither is he clever in a room full of journalists and when he tries to be, he makes things worse. But this failing is not important and it doesn’t make him a bad guy, far from it. And he was not a bad captain. His decision to pick Poulter was always correct and didn’t need the vindication that came with the player’s excellence at Valhalla. His pairings did not all work but they were thoughtful and it was easy to understand his reasoning. By leaving out Garcia and Westwood on the Saturday morning, and Harrington on Saturday afternoon, Faldo demonstrated decisiveness and a fine understanding of what was best for the team.

The most frequently expressed criticism is that he got his singles order wrong but that is arguable a n d , i n h i s defence, there are t w o c r i t i c a l points. Firstly, all 12 of Faldo’s men w e r e a s k e d w h e r e t h e y would like to be positioned and their views were central to the final formation, as was the case with the US order. Harrington, for example, thought he would do best if sent out last or second last. Other players’ views were similarly taken into account.

The second point is that the US were so good on Sunday that it mattered not a whit how the Europeans were lined up. For example: if Harrington had played up the order in, say, Ollie Wilson’s place and performed as he did against Chad Campbell, the triple major champion would have been slaughtered by Boo Weekley. Wilson’s golf against Weekley would, by the way, have been good enough to beat Campbell. Europe needed one more victory from the top six matches to have set things u p f o r W e s t w o o d a n d Harrington and how easily it could have come. What would have happened if Mahan had not holed the long downhill putt that allowed him to halve an excellent match with Paul Casey? Even better, consider what happened in the most decisive match of all, Holmes against Soren Hansen.

Having been two holes down, Hansen fought back and when he made birdie on 15, and Holmes missed his short birdie putt, the match was all square. Just then, you would have backed Hansen because he was playing the better golf and Holmes’s missed putt seemed likely to play with his head. So, on the next two holes, the extremely difficult 16th and the difficult 17th, Holmes gives himself tap-in birdie putts on both holes. Could Paul Azinger have anticipated that when he sent Holmes about his business? Please.

But you have to smile. Colin Montgomerie, who can be even funnier than the kilted cardboard cut-out carried round Valhalla for three days, said he would have done things differently and, basi-cally, led Europe to another great triumph. Trust Brave-heart to be modest and sympathetic during the tough times. His venom is, of course, related to his nonselection and he spits it out on the day before he goes and shoots 81 in the first round of the British Masters at The Belfry. Yeah, right, Colin.

Forget what you have read of Europe’s captain at Valhalla. Consider instead the assessment of the impressive rookie McDowell. “Faldo was well prepared. He had done his homework and he really gave us some good stuff to work with as well. Should he come in for criticism? No, not at all. I think every player, d o w n t o t h e l a s t m a n , thought he was a good captain. It was a privilege to play under him.”

Ah, but McDowell, he was only a player in the team. What would he know?