Does This Piece of Paper Reveal Faldo's Ryder Cup Masterplan?

Nick Faldo promised fresh and exciting innovations as captain of Europe's 2008 Ryder Cup team and yesterday he delivered, albeit inadvertently, when he revealed what appeared to be his line-up for Friday's opening foursomes against the United States.

The Englishman, who has taken evident pleasure in teasing everybody over his strategy for the match, was photographed with a piece of paper pairing Sergio García with Lee Westwood, and Padraig Harrington with Robert Karlsson, while Justin Rose, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell and Paul Casey were grouped together underneath. Three other members of the team - Oliver Wilson, Soren Hansen and Miguel Angel Jiménez - were listed underneath, while the name of Henrik Stenson was missing.

With the Swede long thought of as a central member of the European team, his absence from Faldo's list was a mystery last night, but there was little doubt about the names that were on it and the order in which they appeared.

Speculation has been rife that Westwood and García would be paired in the opening match of the tournament, not least because the US captain, Paul Azinger, has publicly stated his intention to start proceedings with the Kentucky-based pairing of Kenny Perry and JB Holmes in an effort to stir local fervor. Padraig Harrington, the winner of two major championships this year, and Karlsson, who won on the European tour last weekend, would make another strong pairing.

Rose and Poulter are close friends, while Casey and McDowell are arguably the best of the rest.

European followers would have looked at that line-up and been pleased at its quality and depth, although any pleasure felt would have been tempered by dismay that the man in charge was careless enough to reveal his thinking to his opposite number, the element of surprise being one of the few weapons available to Ryder Cup captains.

"It just had the lunch list. It had sandwich requests for the guys, just making sure who wants the tuna, who wants the beef, who wants the ham," he said, when confronted with his mistake. When pressed on the matter, however, he changed his story. "I haven't put numbers next to them yet, have I? We don't know what order they will go out, so some are safe."

And then he changed it again. "OK, I've been caught. I've learned a lesson."

By any standard it was not an impressive performance. With one day to go before the first ball is struck, Faldo has the option of rejigging his pairings, which have to be publicly declared this afternoon, but if he does that he will then be forced to go into tomorrow's foursomes with a line-up that was not his first choice.

Victory on Sunday afternoon will render such details meaningless but at the moment it is round one to the United States; a small victory, no doubt, but one that did confirm the feeling around Valhalla that Faldo has long been an accident waiting to happen.