Ballesteros decision backfires

Seve Ballesteros' surprise decision to play himself in the Seve Trophy did not look a good one after three holes.

Opponents Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter won all three as Ballesteros and Sergio Garcia struggled.

With the match switching from fourballs to greensomes and then after lunch to foursomes, each captain had to omit two players and it was generally expected that Ballesteros would watch his Continental Europe side try to reduce their 6½-3½ overnight deficit from the sidelines.

However, the 46-year-old now ranked 1,231st in the world left out Miguel Angel Jimenez and Ignacio Garrido instead from the morning session and put himself with the team's star man.

Greensomes is where both players drive and then choose the better one. So at the first, for example, it did not matter when Ballesteros missed the fairway, but it did when he went to Garcia's ball, hit it short of the green and then failed to hole the eight-foot par putt his partner left him.

They did par the next two holes, but Westwood and Poulter birdied both of them to take command.

Britain and Ireland were being made to work a lot harder in the other three games, though.

Padraig Harrington and Paul Lawrie won the first with a par four against Fredrik Jacobson and Niclas Fasth, but the Swedes eagled the long third to level and then took the lead at the 358-yard seventh.

Justin Rose and captain Colin Montgomerie shared the first five holes with Thomas Bjorn and Jose Maria Olazabal, but Montgomerie had to chip in on the fifth to keep it that way after Rose had only just got out of a bunker.

The Continent led in the other game, Brian Davis and Paul Casey running up a bogey six on the third to fall behind to Alex Cejka and Raphael Jacquelin, winners of their first two games together.