Colin Montgomerie: I’ll Talk To Nick Faldo About Ryder Cup As You Can Sometimes Learn More From A Defeat

Submitted by: Marry John

COLIN MONTGOMERIE has revealed he’ll pick flop Ryder Cup Captain Sir Nick Faldo’s brains this summer to learn from his failure. The Scot was left with a bitter taste in his mouth in 2008 when Faldo first failed to pick him as one of his wild cards for Valhalla, despite his heroic record across EIGHT cups, then failed to find the guts to tell him personally. But Monty WILL sit down with the skipper who lost Europe the trophy for only the second time in seven attempts, for the sake of his team. Because the new captain, who has also pencilled in chats with Sam Torrance, Bernhard Langer and Ian Woosnam ahead of October’s Celtic Manor showdown, believes you can sometimes learn more from a loser than a winner. Speaking at Gleneagles this week in his role as chairman of the Johnnie Walker Championship – the final qualifying event for this year’s Ryder Cup – Monty told MailSport: “I WILL be talking to Nick. He’s over for the Open Championship as a commentator. “I’ll be talking to him, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam and Sam Torrance – the past four captains. “It’s only right to learn from their experiences. I thought Sam was brilliant, not because he was Scottish, simply because he was. “America sent over a much stronger team than we had in 2002 yet we won. How he got the four rookies through undefeated in the singles, how he made them believe they were part of it, that’s why we won. “Bernhard and Ian Woosnam had so-called easier tasks because Europe were becoming stronger. And then of course you can learn from defeat, sometimes more than you do if you won. “Learning from certain aspects of what Nick did, if he can sit down with me and we can talk openly and honestly about what he’d have done different in hindsight, we can learn from that for the sake of the European Tour.” Faldo blundered his way through to a disastrous five-point defeat to Paul Azinger’s Americans in Kentucky in 2008 – all the way from the opening ceremony to the closing ceremony. At one point the Englishman crudely stereotyped Padraig Harrington by saying he had been “hitting more balls than potatoes have been dug in his homeland”. He also didn’t know which part of Ireland Graeme McDowell came from and then he told the world to “bring their waterproofs” for the next Ryder Cup when the Welsh tourist board had been trying to promote Celtic Manor all week. And his decision to backload the singles draw with his star men on the Sunday proved the biggest disaster of the lot as he left Lee Westwood, Harrington and Ian Poulter all playing dead rubbers with the cup already lost. Even some of his off-course activities left the players baffled, like borrowing two drum kits from Iron Maiden legend Nicko McBrain for the team room. Monty, in his ever-acerbic style, said: “I have ideas about entertainment for the troops in the evening – but, ah, it won’t be drums… “There are 24 guys out there, not just 12. Much of the time the caddie is the only person the players can talk to. “It’s an important relationship and I’ll make sure they’re fully involved. So they will be part of it and we’ll have some fun. It’ll be enjoyable because if you enjoy what you do you’re usually good at it.” One thing Monty doesn’t have going for him this time out is the siege mentality that comes with being an underdog. He has seven of the world’s top 15, compared with the USA’s five right now, and he said: “I don’t have the advantage of playing up to the underdog role like some have had before me. “The rankings, the talent, being the home side, the fact we are undefeated here since 1993, I can’t deny we’re favourites and I don’t want to. I want to prove why we are and win it. “I don’t feel pressure. If I was sitting on a team less talented, maybe, but the talent we have is second to none. There’ll be no motivation required, they all want to be there and all of that takes the pressure away from me.”

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