This year’s Ryder Cup would be worth remembering. High from their victory the last time around, the team US which was lined up with star players lost to the rival European team on their soil in Rome.
For all the European players, this was a matter of much pride, including the veteran Nick Faldo who himself was a Ryder Cup warrior. In his latest interview, he ponders over where America blundered at the cup. That Team America played badly will be an over-simplication of things. Faldo breaks it down.
Nick Faldo shares his wisdom about the 2023 Ryder Cup
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Playing in the Ryder Cup is a dream of every golfer and for Nick Faldo, this dream became even sweeter when he became the captain of team for the year 2008. He appeared on the SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio’s “Gravy & The Sleeze” show on Wednesday where spoke about the latest edition of it. Talking about the big four European players, Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm, and Tommy Fleetwood, Faldo said that they were captain Luke Donald’s best defense team.
He says in the show, “The Big Four (European players) came in and you’ve got to get a huge bunch of points,” he said. “Then I thought it was very cool that our rookies, America don’t know a lot about our rookies, [Nicolai] Hojgaard and [Ludvig] Aberg and Bobby MacIntyre, they don’t know a lot about these guys and that can be very useful.”
Nick Faldo feels that the Americans not knowing much about European young names like Aberg and McIntyre worked in the latter’s favor. According to him, Donald’s picks served him well on the ground while Zach Johnson’s six wildcards were running hot and cold, or trying to find their games which added further to their misery.
Faldo too attended the game and was keeping a close watch and even got the Ryder Cup T-shirt. He has some words of advice to share with the Americans as well.
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Faldo is proud of how well Europe performed
Faldo said that if a player is not playing well in the Ryder Cup, then it impacts badly. The desire to perform for your team on an international level is a lot of pressure and we saw it this year. “Europe was extremely focused. You could see it in their eyes right on the first tee. They stood up there and looked down the fairway. And America, to be honest, I looked and thought, ‘These guys, they’ve got too much peripheral vision.
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“They’re just looking at everything.’ And Europe was very focused on the job at hand, what they had to do.” The victory of Europe sure was a sweet treat for six-time major champion Nick Faldo.
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