Faldo and Azinger "worst Ryder Cup
captains in living memory"

FROM THE GUARDIAN.COM WEBSITE
By STAFF WRITER LAWRENCE DONEGAN
The Ryder Cup captains are united - in their brittle defensiveness and refusal to accept seemingly legitimate criticism
The path to ridicule has been worn smooth by those who pass judgment on Ryder Cup captains before a ball is struck. Just ask Thomas Bjorn, who described Ian Woosnam's leadership skills as barmy and pathetic in the run-up to the K Club in 2006 only to sit at home while the famously tongue-tied Welshman was revealed to be Churchill in disguise.
"Our relationship will never be the same again," the rightly offended Woosie said afterwards. Bjorn issued a profuse apology and went back to life on tour. That the Dane has never been the same player again is largely down to injury but there can be little doubt that he was deeply affected by the whole experience.
Yet if Bjorn is a living rebuke to those tempted into hasty judgment, he cannot shake the idea that there are some things that a scoreboard will never change.
One is that Nick Faldo and Paul Azinger will arguably go down as the worst Ryder Cup captains in recent memory.
The world loves a rematch, which explains why their appointments were so widely welcomed. Those who remember Azinger and Faldo going hard at it in their early-1990s heyday could think of nothing better to inject some excitement and, let's face it, competition into an event that has been drearily one-sided in recent years.
Such nostalgia is understandable but in the rush to embrace the past it was somehow forgotten that they would not be bringing their clubs to Kentucky, only their personalities and egos.
Alas for the dignity of the event, it didn't take long for these personalities and egos to reveal themselves. Azinger was first to show his hand, making some mildly indiscreet remarks about Faldo in a newspaper interview this summer.
So far, so amusing. But instead of owning up immediately when the remarks were reported, the US captain first accused the journalist of distorting his comments, only then to be confronted with a tape-recording confirming the accuracy of the original report.
Azinger used it as an excuse to decline invitations to speak to the European press. As he succinctly put it: "Never in a million f****** years." He has, however, given endless interviews to the US media, one of which appeared last week and saw him veer into the subject of golfers who invoke God.
"I don't have a problem with it. If a guy says 'I did it for Jesus' he will probably get criticised in this country. But not if he says 'I did it for Allah'. The Christian faith is constantly attacked in this country."
One could spend an age wondering what any of this nonsense has to do with the Ryder Cup but there is limited space and it would be wrong to leave the impression that the US captain has been alone in letting down the competition.
It is hard to believe that those at the head of the European tour have been happy about Faldo's antics over the past few months, from using the captaincy as a prop for his American TV career ("If he [Paul Casey] holes this putt he is in the team," he joked during one broadcast) to flagrant disregard for sponsors of the Johnnie Walker Championship by giving his two picks to players who didn't bother to turn up for what was meant to be the pivotal event in the Ryder Cup selection process.
If anything, the imminence of this week's contest has heightened the personality traits that make both men unsuited to Ryder Cup captaincy: their bristling defensiveness and refusal to accept seemingly legitimate criticism.
"I am very confident I won't damage my team," Faldo said sarcastically the other day when asked a perfectly reasonable question about his ability to subsume his own persona in the cause of the team, while Azinger went apoplectic when asked for his views on comments by Faldo suggesting the US skipper regretted his choice of vice-captains. "Did he really say that? I question whether he did ..."
As it turns out he did "say that" and his remarks are on tape. But such inconvenient facts will be forgotten should Azinger guide his team to glory. The same goes for Faldo and his many quirks. Such are the privileges of the winning captain, although as the victor takes his bow on Sunday night the thoughts of some will turn to poor old Bjorn, whose biggest problem in 2006 may not have been that he was wrong in his choice of adjectives, merely that he was two years ahead of his time.