Nick Faldo: the ego has landed

Whatever the result of golf's Ryder Cup, which started with the foursomes on Friday, there won't be any love lost between the single-minded European team captain Nick Faldo and the world's media - a mutual loathing that dates back to 1992 when Faldo won the Open and then thanked the press "from the heart of my bottom".

Now the winner of six major tournaments in the 1980s and 90s is enjoying the chance to revel in the spotlight again as non-playing captain. "I'm 11-time Ryder Cupper Nick Faldo," he announced at the opening ceremony in Kentucky, before launching into a series of wisecracks. According to golf correspondent Ian Chadband, "Here was Captain Europe at his most insufferable. His speech wasn't about his team or the cup; it was all about him, him, him."

Faldo, who had shed tears when he earlier met local resident Muhammad Ali, put on something of a Vaudeville act in his pre-match address. Introducing Graeme McDowell, one of his charges, he asked: "Where do you come from again? Ireland or Northern Ireland?" Faldo then advertised McDowell's romantic availability, and joked at the anonymity of two of his Scandinavian players, Soren Hansen and Henrik Stenson. Paul Azinger, the American team captain who had previously called Faldo a "prick", could only mutter "Oh, goodness gracious," as Faldo kept prattling.

Guardian sports writer Richard Williams commented: "For all his late-blooming bonhomie... Faldo cannot escape a past in which his great career was seen to be founded on an ironclad solipsism. Those who were around during his playing years find it hard to accept that his pursuit of Ryder Cup captaincy - with the £1m or so that it brings - was impelled by anything other than that same self-centredness."

In the London Evening Standard, Matthew Norman wrote: "When the Ryder Cup is over, Nick Faldo should check into a clinic for treatment for Mark Lawrenson syndrome, the disorder defined by my psychiatric dictionary as 'the delusion suffered by a legendary unamusing retired sportsman that he has the wit of Oscar Wilde'."