In Good Nick

So what special characteristics define a Faldo course?
“What I pride myself on is that really aren’t any,” he says. “We literally go from the desert to the jungle to the mountains to the forest or onto the beach so it’s real fun. You try to put your own individual stamp on what you feel fits the environment best.”
He’s equally proud of the Faldo Series which was launched in 1996 as a youth circuit to help develop European players but is now going global with a Grand Final last year in Brazil plus a thriving Asian version. His successful graduates include European Tour players Nick Dougherty, Ollie Fisher and Rory McIlroy, as well as Taiwanese star Yani Tseng, who earned LPGA Tour Rookie of the Year honours in 2008 thanks largely to her brilliant performance in capturing the McDonald’s LPGA Championship, her first Major.
“We’re touching on 4,000 competitors now so we’re trying to set some new goals and see what we can reach in the next three to five years,” he says. “I was told as a kid that one in 10,000 has the dream and goes onto to make it as a professional. If can we improve that to three in 10,000, well, we’ve done a good job.”
This was the third meaningful interview – spaced roughly a decade apart - that I’d done with Faldo. The first was at Wentworth in the late 1980s when he was in the middle of that purple patch where he won a Tiger-like five Majors in five years – he had a stunning eighteen top-10 Major finishes between 1987 and 1996 - and was the most feared player either side of the Atlantic.