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The topic that holds most intrigue during a Ryder Cup is which pairings the captains will send out on Friday for the opening matches.
Telescopic lens have long been deployed on the skippers with the aim of garnering clues and the golfing paparazzi struck gold four years ago in Valhalla when European captain Nick Faldo was snapped holding his list of players. Faldo tried to explain it away as "a sandwich list" but the only pickle was the one in which the captain found himself.
His successor at Medinah this week, José Maria Olazabal, is much more canny.
"I’m not going to talk about pairings, seriously," the Spaniard said yesterday, when asked about a reprise of the Graeme McDowell/Rory McIlroy axis that won one, lost one and halved a match at Celtic Manor in 2010.
"You know, G-Mac has played with Rory before. They have done well, but I’m not going to talk about pairings obviously."
Obviously, José? Just a couple of hours beforehand, the aforementioned McDowell had abandoned Ryder Cup convention and come right out with the line-up for Friday’s four foursomes matches.
"The established partnerships are fairly obvious: Myself and Rory, Poulter and Rose, Donald and Garcia, perhaps a Westwood and Lawrie. You can pretty much predict our first eight players Friday morning. You don’t need me to tell you that. Will we be that predictable? Who knows," McDowell said.
"I can tell you today that the first four guys (in practice groups), Poulter, Rose, Westwood and Donald, and myself and Rory are in the second group with Lawrie and Garcia.
"So there’s your eight, the first two groups, fairly predictable. But it’s really going to come down to putting. You’ve got 24 great players. I don’t see any real stand out advantage for either team. It’s just going to boil down to who holes the most putts this week."
Maybe McDowell had overdosed on his morning coffee or it was all part of some elaborate mind game; the Ulsterman might just have been telling the truth. But no-one else confirmed same.
Asked to explain the make-up of his practice groups, the third of which featured Nicolas Colsaerts, Peter Hanson, Martin Kaymer and Francesco Molinari, Olazabal said: "Well, I’ve made these groups. We have quite a lot of players that have done well in the past, and then I’ve tried to mix a little bit of, not the same characters, but guys that I believe can complement each other and who understand each other really well. "We are trying to just figure out certain things still," he offered.
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