Executive Golf Magazine

A personal bugbear is the way modern sportsmen go out of their way in media interviews to talk up the opposition and give us every reason to believe that, despite the intense rivalry that’s supposed to exist between them, what we’re really witnessing is one great sporting love-in. The thing is we all know that life isn’t like that – and on the sports field it certainly shouldn’t be.

All of which has me rubbing my hands in anticipation of September’s Ryder Cup matches at Valhalla. Golfers, for all their decency and unparalleled integrity do often stand to be criticised for being a bit boring. Not many of them show emotion, hiding their feelings beneath branded visors or behind wrap-around shades.

Yet at Valhalla, at least, we know that the two central figures – neither of whom will fire a competitive golf shot all week – don’t care too much for one another.

The team captains are old foes. Paul Azinger, the United States captain, and his European counterpart, Nick Faldo, have crossed swords and nine irons on the sport’s two most competitive stages. In 1987, they went head-to-head in the Open Championship at Murifield where Azinger slipped shots at the last two holes to let Faldo claim his first major title. Locker room folklore has it that Faldo consoled his rival with the words, “Tough luck, old boy”.

It was a day that sparked a rivalry that has bubbled for two decades and which threatens to boil over in September. “I guess I’ve always felt a rivalry with him, probably more than he has with me,” Azinger said recently. “I’ve got to know him better now but it doesn’t change what happened and, come September at Valhalla, something will have to give.”

Faldo is the most successful British golfer ever, famed for his single-minded approach, and the record points scorer in Ryder Cup history. Yet Azinger can boast that at the three Ryder Cups where the pair went head-to-head he never lost to Faldo.

In recent years with his golfing powers on the wane, Faldo has turned to the commentary box. It’s a switch in roles that has also seen the 50-year-old Briton attempt to re-invent his public image. Azinger’s not taken in by it. “Some people have bought it. Some have not. But if you’re going to be a p***k and everyone hates you, why do you think that just because you’re trying to be cute and funny on air now that the same people are all going to start to like you.”

Powerful rhetoric – let the matches begin.

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