Tom English: Has Faldo let the cat out of the bag?

So Nick Faldo had been photographed holding a piece of paper with, possibly, his Friday morning pairings written on it.

Away by the 11th hole a snapper got a money shot for himself, a list of names that appeared to give away a secret If the scrawl of initials reveals the secret of Faldo's foursomes then Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood will be first off for Europe on Friday, followed Padraig Harrington and Robert Karlsson, Henrik Stenson and either Paul Casey or Graeme McDowell and Justin Rose with Ian Poulter.

Does any of this matter? In itself, not really. Faldo was a bit naive going out on a golf course populated by hundreds of photographers with sensitive information on full view, but it's not the crime of the century. Clumsy, yes. Stupid, unquestionably. But not catastrophic.

The real issue here is not Faldo facilitating a cat being let out of a bag but his response to it. It was lamentable. When questioned about the scrap of paper, the European captain failed dismally to handle the situation. Watching him squirm, listening to him attempting to explain away the names on the paper was embarrassing. It made you wonder, if Faldo is so spectacularly unable to handle a situation like this, how the hell is he going to deal with a real crisis if one comes along this week? If he can't talk his way out of trouble over a photograph what is he going to do if his team is trailing on Friday night and the pressure of all of Europe is bearing down on his shoulders?

"It just had the lunch list," he said of the piece of paper. "It had sandwich requests for the guys, just making sure who wants the tuna, what wants the beef, who wants the ham. So that's all it was, sandwich list."

Nobody believed him. We've seen the pairings, we said. "You've seen them? You've seen the pairings?" Yes, Captain, we've seen the pairings. Now was the time for him to kill this developing story stone dead. Think on your feet, Nick. Shoot it down. Bury this sucker before it gets worse.

But no. The question came from the floor: When you said it was your sandwich list, we've seen the photograph, we've seen the initials. "Well, you don't know what order they are in." Ah, so it wasn't the sandwich list, then?

From the floor: It's been on Sky television apparently, photographs of something alleged to be your notes.

Faldo: My handwriting. Well, we don't know who with. It's initials. Yeah, I put my team down in initials. And then which way I go, is my choice.

From the floor: Some of them do look like pairings.

Faldo: Really? That's worrying, isn't it."

The captain laughs at this point. Just about the most self-conscious laugh you'll ever hear.

Faldo: "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 that was on the 7th tee. And if the photographer was on the 13th or 14th, it all changed, so it's all different now."

Okay, so we now appear to be getting somewhere. They're Friday pairings but they're subject to change. They're fluid. Nothing written in stone for Friday just yet.

Well, not exactly. People are shifting uncomfortably in their seats now. They're looking at each other wondering what the hell is Faldo talking about, they're alarmed at how uncomfortable he looks, how much of a rabbit-in-the-headlights he has become. Faldo looks like he's waiting for a hole to open up and take him off to a better place. This is not a crisis but he's turning it into one.

From the floor: Just to return to your lunch list one more time, having looked at the pictures, it looks like you've got Garcia and Westwood and Harrington and Karlsson as two pairings. Can we make the assumption that those are your first two pairings on Friday morning?

Faldo: "Those are tomorrow's pairings, Thursday's pairings, practice round."

Pardon?

"Tomorrow's Thursday. I'm doing tomorrow's pairings."

So we started off with a sandwich list and then we kind of got 'yeah, they're Friday's pairings but you don't know which order they're going out in so at least that much remains a secret' and now he's flipped again. Those names are actually Thursday's names. So, captain, why didn't you say that in the first place?

Why?

Everybody suspects that those names are indeed the ones Faldo wants to go with on Friday morning. Once he was rumbled what would have been so wrong with saying boldly in, well, a Faldoesque way, that 'yes, boys, they're my pairings. We've nothing to hide here. Nothing to hide at all. We're going in tooled-up with our big hitters Friday morning and let's see what America can do about it."

Instead, he mumbled about sandwiches. Not having the ability to handle this one is not a huge deal in itself but what of more problematic and more relevant challenges ahead? Will he be as as cack-handed in confronting those as he was in dealing with this? It does not look good.

Many of us came here with the feeling that Europe will despite their captain and not because of him. Everything he did today merely confirms the reservations we had about him.