Nick Faldo retired from his role as lead analyst for CBS Sports’s PGA Tour coverage, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still a man of many opinions.
Speaking on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio’s “Gravy & The Sleeze” show Wednesday, Faldo, a former stalwart of Team Europe and team captain in 2008, touched on several topics including takeaways from last month’s Ryder Cup.
“The Big Four (European players) came in and you’ve got to get a huge bunch of points,” he said. “Then I thought it was very cool that our rookies, America doesn’t know a lot about our rookies, [Nicolai] Hojgaard and [Ludvig] Aberg and Bobby MacIntyre, they don’t know a lot about these guys and that can be very useful. So, which they obviously did, the captains can say, ‘Relax, you’ve all to gain this week. If you can just get me a point you’ve done a great job.’ Well, they did more than that. So we got that added bonus as well. And then we had to look at Zach’s picks, his six picks, I mean, all those guys are great guys, great golfers, but they were all running hot and cold, or trying to find their games and saying, you know, ‘I can turn it on for you, Captain.’
“But I’ve been there and got the T-shirt. When you’re not playing great at a Ryder Cup I can promise you it is the worst arena to be playing in because you are under so much pressure to do something for the rest of the team. And you won’t find it, and we saw all of that unravel. And Europe was extremely focused. You could literally see it in their eyes right on the first tee. They stood up there and looked down the fairway. And America, to be honest, I looked and thought, ‘These guys, they’ve got too much peripheral vision. They’re just looking at everything.’ And Europe was very focused on the job at hand, what they had to do.”
Faldo also addressed the differences he sees between the LIV Golf League and the PGA Tour.
“It is a different style of golf (LIV). And the Tour is the Tour, or the Tours, you know, and we would deem it as proper golf, 72 holes, 36-hole cut. All of that is all part of your learning experience. ‘Cause you’ve gotta strive, you know? Here’s the bottom line, you know, you’ve got to strive, you know, everything in life is a struggle, isn’t it? So you strive and from striving, you then achieve something,” he said. “So if you’ve achieved something, you then get satisfaction from doing that. And then from your satisfaction, you then create a memory. Well, if there’s nothing to strive for then there’s no memory. When I look back at my career, you don’t think of the dollar sign. You think, I went through a swing change for two years and then came out of it and finally winning, win my first major and what have you, and then became a pretty darn decent golfer for five years. That makes you proud of what you did. And that’s with me forever. I mean, that’s where I see a difference. Sure, I would’ve loved to earn tens of millions more. I’m not denying that. But there’s something about competing and putting yourself through the ringer, and then you feel proud of your achievements. … That’s why I think the Tour’s competitive golf will stand up because their tour is not the same competition. It really isn’t.”