Perfect pairings

By Tom Fordyce

Twelve good men - but which to pick together?

Langer's pairings picks could decide the destiny of the Cup

It is the most important decision Ryder Cup captains Bernhard Langer and Hal Sutton will have to make.

On both Friday and Saturday, the battle begins with four fourballs and continues with four foursomes.

Get the pairings right, and you go into Sunday's singles with the trophy in your sights.

Get it wrong, and the contest can be as good as over.

Which combinations work best? There are more theories than there are possible pairings.

Do you aim to blend experience and youth, go with the compatriot combo or seek sparks by selecting opposites?

First things first. The pressure on that first tee will be immense. Can each man help the other survive?

At Brookline in 1999, Lee Westwood and Darren Clarke prepared to tee off against Tiger Woods and David Duval - intimidating enough - and then looked round to see Michael Jordan and George Bush Snr watching from the front row of the gallery.

POSSIBLE FRIDAY FOURBALLS Clarke & Westwood v Mickelson & Toms Garcia & Jimenez v Woods & Love Montgomerie & Harrington v Furyk & Cink Casey & Donald v DiMarco & Campbell

Westwood and Clarke, old pals, took strength from each other and conjured up a brilliant one-shot win.

The pair knew each other's game inside out, which also allowed them to spot little flaws as the round progresses and made it easier to offer advice on club selection and reading putts.

All of which will make it very tempting for Langer to pair them together again - except it is never quite as easy as that.

Two years ago at The Belfry, Sam Torrance gambled on Sergio Garcia's natural ebullience pulling Westwood out of his slump in form, despite the fact that the two were very different characters - Westwood as chilled as Cheech and Chong and Garcia as excitable as a one-year-old puppy.

Again, it worked. They won three out of a possible four points. So should Langer keep that partnership going instead?

Maybe, but then there is the option of creating another Super Spaniards pairing to match the most productive combination in Europe's history - Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.

Olazabal and Ballesteros - the near-perfect pairing

In 15 matches, those two took 13 wins and halved matches twice. Could Garcia be matched with Miguel Angel Jimenez to produce the same Iberian inspiration?

It could work. But so could putting Garcia together with a player utterly different to himself.

Remember Seve and David Gilford at Oak Hill in 1995? Before the fourball with Brad Faxon and Peter Jacobsen, Ballesteros marched up to Gilford, the quiet man of the team, and barked, "You are the greatest player in the world!"

No matter that the rankings told a different story - on that day, Gilford played like the world's number one, and the pair romped to a 4&3 victory.

Opposites attract

Hal Sutton supposedly has a theory that players perform at their best when playing alongside someone very different to themselves.

Why? Because it keeps them out of the comfort zone, and makes them want to show their partner what they can do.

As Sutton's key men are Phil Mickelson, Tiger, Davis Love, Jim Furyk and David Toms, expect to see some of the lesser lights in the US team given the chance to shine with them.

Langer too may be tempted to put Colin Montgomerie - experienced, unfashionable, ageing - with Ian Poulter, the man who is to golf what Liberace was to grand pianos.

Sure, it might simply double the amount of heckling that each might expect. But it could also be one of the unlikely success stories of the first two days.

Players with contrasting on-course abilities also make strong pairings.

Paul Casey and Luke Donald won all their matches together at the 1999 Walker Cup. Their styles also mesh perfectly for the foursomes, where players take alternate shots with the same ball.

Donald's key weapon is his accurate iron play, Casey's is his length off the tee. See where this is going?

The long par fours at Oakland Hills are even-numbered - the eighth, 10th, 14th and 18th - as are both par fives, the second and the 12th.

The four par threes - third, ninth, 13th and 17th - are odd-numbered.

With Donald sixth on the PGA Tour stats for birdies at par threes expect him to tee off on the odd-numbered holes, while the longer Casey tackles the even-numbered holes.

But then the famously meticulous Langer won't have needed me to point that out.

Academy: Design a new hole for our golf game