SIR NICK FALDO: This is how I'd beat Scottie Scheffler at the Ryder Cup - listen up, Team Europe

Sir Nick Faldo is running through a hypothetical exercise. At first there’s a nod, then a smile, and eventually, after 20 minutes of analysis, caveats and input from his wife, there’s a conclusion.

‘The most fun he would have all day is the sausage sandwich between the ninth and 10th holes,’ he says, and we laugh at that one.

This being Faldo, you never truly know if he means some of it, all of it, or none. But he is better positioned than most to offer a view on Scottie Scheffler, which is extracted through a pair of questions: would a prime Faldo beat the best version of Scheffler in the Sunday singles at the Ryder Cup? And how would he do it?

‘That’s an interesting one,’ he says at the outset. ‘I want to think about it.’

And of course he does. We are sat at the Belfry, a short distance from where he aced the 14th against Paul Azinger in the 1993 match, contributing half a point to a haul of 25 across his 11 straight Cup appearances between 1977 and 1997.

On the grass, Faldo could appear robotic; in the Cup he was a machine, standing behind only Sergio Garcia in the all-time records, with wins in various formats over Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods.

Scheffler? He is yet to show his best in the Cup. But he is the most dominant force since Woods and arrives piping hot at Bethpage Black, this golfer who has mastered the ice-brained art of going tee to fairway to 15 feet. In style rather than personality, Scheffler is Faldo’s echo.

Naturally, Faldo, 68, likes the comparison. He also wants to set his parameters for any head-to-head evaluation.

‘Me and Scottie are from two completely different eras of equipment, you’ve got to remember that,’ he says. ‘If he comes back to me, with a persimmon driver that goes 250 yards, not 350 yards, and use blades and a Balata golf ball, we could have had a game. I’d like that.’

With a decent sense of timing, Faldo’s wife, Lindsay, enters the room around this point, and after a brief recap of the question, asks one of her own: ‘Would it be the same equipment?’

There is the faintest impression this theoretical match-up may have been raised before at home.

‘I’d fancy that game,’ Faldo says. ‘Yeah, that would be a good game. Close.’

Faldo was always known for his sense of certainty in those peak years, not that his persona worked for everyone. Azinger, for one, found him to be a ‘p****’; no one is known to have said that publicly about Scheffler.

‘When I was good, I didn't fear anybody, so I’d have really fancied playing Scottie,’ Faldo adds. ‘He is brilliant. I saw him on YouTube hitting balls and predicting the yardage in flight – he would call something like, “210 yards” and it would land at 209.6. At my best, I could do that.

‘If I was able to get him to Wentworth, say the 1992 version of myself, we would be very evenly matched. It would be close.

‘Wentworth would be the place. When I won the World Match Play there in ’92, I called myself the "Demolition Man". I think I was 45 under par across all my matches, won the final against Jeff Sluman 8&7, so I'd like to have played Scottie when I was playing like that.

‘Just tell him, come to Wentworth in '92, and sorry, mate, I would have done you! But my word, Scottie, what a player he is, right?’

What follows shapes into a guide for whomever among Luke Donald’s team faces Scheffler at Bethpage Black. Most will hope it is Rory McIlroy for an old-school duel.

Faldo continues: ‘In my day we didn't have any stats. The only stat I had in my head was proximity to the hole, which effectively was a 15-foot circle in my imagination and I called that a birdie chance.

‘On a good day, I'd have that a dozen times in a round, and I think it’s similar for Scottie. We both keep the ball in play, not many mistakes tee to green, cool heads, pure focus and to beat him, a lot of it would come from what happens in those 15 feet. You might need to beat him on those chances inside 15 feet. Hard to do when he is putting so well.

‘Point two, on a tough course like that, the second toughest in the US, I would be saying to myself, “If the guy's going to beat me, let him beat me with birdies”. I'm not going to give him any easy points on a hole or two by making mistakes. If you make any against a guy like Scottie at his best, it is going to be very, very hard. I think that's a big rule – control yourself.

‘Number three, you've got to be able to respond to his birdies and quickly. There's going to be lots of instances where you’ll need to halve holes with birdies and if you fall a couple behind him more than most opponents, then goodnight. Be brave and don’t wait.

‘Obviously that is far easier to say than do. But you must be able to go through the gears exactly when you need to.’

Controlling what he needed to do and raising his game at the opportune moment was the Faldo gift – he won The Open at Muirfield in 1987 with 18 straight pars in the final round. At the same course in 1992, he found two birdies in the final four holes for the same outcome. Scheffler’s second Masters win, in 2024, was a similar story of delivering a birdie almost immediately after each move from the chasing pack.

‘At my best, I could switch it up when I needed to,’ Faldo says. ‘It was the best feeling, telling yourself you needed to make something happen, and then being able to do it. I could physically feel it happen – need a birdie and then the shot followed.

‘Scottie can do that so, so well. People will sometimes say it is boring watching him shoot par after par, but it isn’t – it is control. And then when he needs the birdies, they come. It isn’t an accident.’

Needless to say, matchplay is a different dynamic to what we see year-round and the hand-to-hand combat isn’t for everyone. Faldo played in the era of Seve Ballesteros, whose habit of clearing his throat on an opponent’s backswing has been documented in the retelling of past Cups. The idea of throwing Scheffler off his game is inconceivable to Faldo.

‘His mental strength is exceptional,’ Faldo says. ‘He has it better than I did. I was taught if you hit a bad shot, you can have a little rant and rave, fine, but once you walk past an imaginary line five yards in front of you, it has to be forgotten. Scottie seems to be better than anyone at doing that.

‘I've seen him hit a lovely shot, spin off the green into the pond, and he just turns to his caddie, shrugs. He probably just talks about baseball, and off he goes. I'm sure I would stew on something a bit more.

‘I’m not sure there’s anything you can do to throw him off. Some players want to have a chat, and with Scottie, you can maybe have a conversation, fine, and if you don’t, it won’t bother him in the slightest. He just carries on doing his thing and couldn't care less.’

Faldo enters a tangent to revisit Bryson DeChambeau’s grumbles at Augusta earlier this year, when McIlroy didn’t talk to him for the duration of their final round. ‘That was a crazy line from Bryson, wasn't it?’ he says.

‘I didn’t blank anyone intentionally in my day, but I wasn’t there to ask how the kids were doing. You can be cordial but I was there to look after myself, to be focused. I played with Jack (Nicklaus) at Augusta once and he didn’t say a word to me until the 12th and he is the gentleman of all gentlemen. He then didn’t say anything else until the 18th. It’s about being head down, blinkers on, and I love how focused Scottie is.’

Like most of us, Faldo wants to see the best of Scheffler tested by the best of McIlroy, especially in the hothouse of a Cup match in New York.

‘That would be a tough one to call,’ Faldo says. ‘It would be really tight. Two great players. Would Scottie’s consistency get to Rory? I don't know, but so much in matchplay comes down to determination and will. I’d love to see them play - and imagine it was early in the order, one of those results that would do so much to lift the team, taking down the other’s target man. Wow.’

As for the wider match, Faldo fancies Europe’s chances, even though the past five editions have been won by landslides for the home team.

‘I don't think Europe will fear the challenge,’ he says. ‘I think America's got a couple who are a little off, you know, like Xander (Schauffele). And a few of their names aren’t the sort who make you think, “Blimey, I wouldn’t want to face him”.

‘You might have someone like Russell Henley, who is a heck of a player, but… in my day you played Jack and went "gulp" on the first tee. I think Europe have a really good chance.’

Inevitably, the conversation returns to the topic of the Americans demanding money to play. You can likely guess Faldo’s view.

‘If they need that to feel more motivated, that's their choice, but we would pay to get in the team,’ he says. ‘I don't know why they need it. We used to get a couple of grand pocket money for the week and we didn't want it. If you don't think playing for a point is the most valuable thing on the day or that match, well, you've got a problem.

‘Do you think Seve, Ole (Jose Maria Olazabal), me, Woosie (Ian Woosnam) and Bernhard Langer needed any extra motivation when we walked out that door? We were oozing it. It was elation or gut-wrenching based only on winning or losing a point for your frigging team. It was everything.’

He still knows how to pull off the shots that matter, does Faldo. Whether he could have done it in the Sunday singles against Scheffler is entirely moot, but a fun one to think about. As he leaves the room, it returns to his mind.

‘Wentworth,’ he says. ‘There’s a little road just past the 14th – that would be a good place for him to have a car ready to go back to the clubhouse!’