Line-up gaffe as Faldo shows his hand

THE piece of paper on the seventh tee looked for all the world like a list of European golfers and a potential foursomes line-up for tomorrow’s opening round of the 37th Ryder Cup. It was covered in a litany of the initials of Ryder Cup players, but owner Nick Faldo had a different explanation altogether.

“My son was watching my back and he says, ‘Dad, they can see you’. But it was just the lunch list,” the European captain reassured his audience at Valhalla yesterday. “It had the sandwich requests for the lads, just making sure who wants the tuna, who wants the beef, who wants the ham. So that’s all it was.”

But very few sandwiches carry initials like “S.G. and L.W.” and “P.H. and R.K.” and eventually Faldo had to own up. Instead, he insisted they represented the line-up for tomorrow’s final round of practice before the real thing gets under way on Friday morning. The trouble for Faldo, of course, is that, by this stage, few believe much of what he has to say because he seems to think this is all about mind games and putting one across on his opposite number, Paul Azinger, and the media. Sometimes, both play right into his hands. Yesterday, for instance, he was told by a journalist that Azinger was claiming the Europeans were using spies to watch the US team in practice. Not one to pass up on such a gilt-edged opportunity, Nick quipped: “My spies are so secret, I don’t even know who they are.”