"With Lee Westwood two up after nine holes of Friday afternoon’s fourballs, who on earth thought it would be a good idea to tell him that he was going to be left out of the following morning foursomes. Unbelievable."

Yes, Chubby Chandler is Darren Clarke's agent and probably not too thrilled his client was left off the Ryder Cup team. But this shredding of Captain Nick Faldo appears on LeeWestwood.com...  Lets the inevitable drama begin!

I have been asked innumerable times for my thoughts on Nick Faldo’s captaincy and they have not changed after the event from what they were before.  To me, he was mediocre and failed to understand the duties of a captain.  He didn’t put the work in before, didn’t do anything to bring the team together and didn’t consult his senior players.   He also showed a complete lack of man-management skills.

With Lee Westwood two up after nine holes of Friday afternoon’s fourballs, who on earth thought it would be a good idea to tell him that he was going to be left out of the following morning foursomes.   Unbelievable.

I’m sure Lee was completely deflated particularly since he was told during his 27th consecutive match.  I’m sure it also affected his concentration while hitting his confidence levels for the next two days.  A captain really has to understand what makes players tick, but unfortunately Nick Faldo did not see this as a pre-requisite for the job.   He didn’t do anything in the build up to discover how his best players perform and under what circumstances they perform best. Unfortunately the Ryder Cup turned out to be all about Nick Faldo.

Update on 2008-09-29 03:49 by Geoff

Paul McGinley chimes in on Faldo, as does Mark Reason, author of the piece:

McGinley has no beef with Faldo, but he believes that Europe has to return to the formula that was so successful for the three winning captains under whom he played. McGinley says: "That 10-year window in history was our most successful period ever and the template for that success was pushed aside. By Nick doing it his own way, a lot of players probably didn't realise what was going on. There's an art to doing the solid, consistent, obvious things.

"Azinger was very clever. He looked at our template and he played it. He played similar pairings throughout. Stewart Cink and Chad Campbell were awful on the first day and he still paired them on the second day. He trusted them. "Azinger said 'I have confidence in you', and when people have confidence like that, they tend to perform. You have to ask the question why our top players didn't perform.'' 

And here's Reason's take:

Never mind all the tactical bloopers, just take the criticism over the dearth of assistant captains. You may think that is a trivial point. But at least two players to my knowledge remarked on the absence of European assistants during the singles.

When Oliver Wilson was taking on a rampant Boo Weekley, there was mean Ray Floyd, with his tight mouth and shaded eyes, looking on from the red buggy beside the seventh green. On the blue buggy was DJ Spoony.