James Lawton: Fresh legs confirm Faldo's instincts

It may have been the height of fashion to sneer at the personality, and some of the thought processes, of Nick Faldo here these last few days but it appears that no one got round to mentioning this to Oliver Wilson. Wilson, the28-year-old from Mansfield who still waits for his first tournament win, probably wouldn't have listened, however.

Indeed, if anyone had presented to him the Faldo case file of eccentricity since he set foot in Kentucky at the start of the week – the tearful reaction to meeting Muhammad Ali, the frequently clumsy humour and, finally, the bizarre decisions which left the European bankers Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia out of the action yesterday morning he would surely have put it to one side.

Wilson would then, no doubt, have announced that he was going out to play against the new American dream partnership of Phil Mickelson and Anthony Kim not for an extremely controversial Ryder Cup captain but the man who had been his greatest inspiration since he was a boy. A few hours later hero worship had been replaced by the mutual respect of two proven professionals. Faldo shook the golf world when he left out Garcia and Westwood, but the impact scarcely compared with the extraordinary 2 and 1 victory over a Mickelson and Kim who were leading by four after just six holes.

Faldo, suddenly, was alive along with a team that was supposed to be seething with disbelief, and worse, over his treatment of Westwood and Garcia. The killing moment, for American hubris and those Faldo critics who said that his reputation was falling apart, piece by large piece with almost every utterance came with Wilson's victory and the fact that Faldo was plainly right to believe that Europe's perennial heroes were in need of a rest.

When Westwood returned to the action in the afternoon four-ball in the company of Soren Hansen the old certainties of his game were not strong enough to preserve an epic unbeaten run when the good old boys Boo Weekley and JB Holmes provided the opposition. Garcia, too, was less than his usual dominant self while playing bravely and with occasional brilliance with Paul Casey to make a half with Ben Curtis and Steve Stricker.

Earlier, though, Faldo's previously exposed and desperately vulnerable position had grown stronger to a remarkable degree. After some fastidious care by Swedish playing partner Henrik Stenson in the tough early going, Wilson had moved into such an assured mood his final, match-winning stroke would have been worthy of one of Faldo's major-winning campaigns. He sank a 25-foot putt on the 17th green that left Mickelson and Kim broken figures so soon after emerging as the men most likely to end Europe's winning run – and fill some of the chasm left by the absence of Tiger Woods. More than that, he reminded so many that if Faldo has often appeared to be living in his own world here as he drives around the course in a buggy occupied solely by family members like son Matthew and daughter Natalie, and makes jokes that tend to provoke glazed eyes rather than peels of laughter, he may just still have a superb instinct for the nuances of Ryder Cup trench warfare.

The foursome collision between world number two Mickelson and Kim, the tough 23-year-old who many feel will be the heir apparent when the Tiger's thoughts finally turn towards retirement, was supposed to mark the nadir of Faldo's misadventure here. "This is a horrible mismatch," declared one critic and among a chorus of scepticism were former Ryder Cup captains Bernard Gallagher and Tony Jacklin and Woods' former coach Butch Harmon.

Horrible mismatch? It was a brief theory but the rather more viable one that suddenly blazed into life was that instead it might have provided the moment where the Europeans decided that they indeed still had the character and the self-belief and the talent to stretch out again their run of three straight victories. Wilson's ferocious determination, Faldo was able to say, had been cooking nicely while he sat out the first day that for him had turned out to be brilliant conditioning for the best day of his golfing life.

"It was brilliant the way Stenson looked after Ollie in the early going and then what happened was quite brilliant. It confirmed my belief that a Ryder Cup match is a long road – and that there are lots of twists and turns along the way. This one is just getting started." Faldo's new buoyancy no doubt also had much to do with the continued brilliance of his controversial protégé Ian Poulter.

This was a considerable shock to the Kentucky psyche, one which had been put on full war footing by captain Paul Azinger when he imparted some of his insights on golf etiquette to a group of Louisville "fans" on the eve of battle. His view that cheering the missed putt of a European golfer was perfectly acceptable behaviour promised an orgy of jingoism yesterday but the problem was that even a rookie like Wilson was in the mood to announce resistance to rabble power.

Said Wilson: "It was amazing out there, quite awesome even though the crowd was not as loud as a I thought it would be. I was very proud when the winning putt went down – and I was particularly pleased that Nick Faldo was there to see it.

"Ever since I was a lad he has been my hero."

Few hero-worshippers ever walked on to the stage of real life, and real high-level sport, with quite such brilliant effect.

Faldo, a figure of ridicule up until a late-rising sun burned away the haze and Oliver Wilson and Ian Poulter made the point that maybe Europe's greatest ever golfer still knew a little about the game, wore his relief like a second sunrise.

He said: "They had their day yesterday and now here we are, full of life and fight... golf's amazing, isn't it?"

It is almost as extraordinary as the vagaries of life that can turn a hero into a fool, and then, just maybe, turn him back again.

Interesting? Click here to explore further