Golf: Norman's opportunity to exploit Faldo's foibles: The world No 1 needs to raise his game for the Johnnie Walker Classic. Tim Glover reports from Phuket

NICK FALDO stood on the sixth tee of the Blue Canyon Golf and Country Club yesterday and you did not need to be a disciple of David Leadbetter to understand that all was not well with his game. Faldo hit his first drive left into the palm trees; he put down another ball and whacked that into the jungle and when he hit a third the result was the same. Fanny Sunesson, his caddie, could be in for a long hard week.

On the tee with Faldo was Steve Wakulsky, an American who runs Leadbetter's teaching academy in Bangkok. Wakulsky was working on the Englishman's swing, a mechanism that last year did not operate with metronomic efficiency. He began the season with a victory in the Johnnie Walker Classic in Singapore but failed to win any of the four major championships.

'I was always looking for something,' Faldo said. 'Things were never quite right. My left shoulder was too low and I have not got my swing to where I want it. Last year I was trying a few different things.' This week Faldo is defending the Johnnie Walker Classic which is being played at a country club course on Thailand's biggest island, Phuket, described by tourist officials as the 'pearl of Andaman'.

The tournament has a prize-fund of pounds 600,000 and has attracted a particularly strong field including Greg Norman, Nick Price, Bernhard Langer, Fred Couples and Ian Woosnam. Faldo has been No 1 in the Sony world rankings for 81 successive weeks following his victory in the Open at Muirfield in July 1992. Now he is vulnerable.

If Norman wins he will displace Faldo even if Faldo finishes second. Similarly, Norman would regain the No 1 spot if he finishes second and Faldo is outside the top six. 'I don't want that to happen,' Faldo said, 'but it's not going to be an easy week. Players like Norman and Price have already done well this season and they have a slight advantage.'

Faldo has not played competitively since the world championship in Jamaica last December when he was receiving treatment for tendinitis in his arms. He took his family skiing in Switzerland and conditions here are somewhat different. Although it is winter the temperature - Phuket has a year-round tropical climate - is in the nineties.