In Good Nick

The second meeting was just after the Millennium at Georgia’s second tournament, the Bell South Classic, a week before the 2000 Masters when Faldo was playing on the PGA Tour. At that time, he told me that he was able to concentrate more on golf again after sorting things out in his personal life in the wake of a notorious incident a couple of years earlier that saw former girlfriend Brenna Cepelak smash his Porsche 959 with a 9-iron, inflicting £10,000 damage.
He’s always provided plenty of fodder for the tabloids – sadly, his third marriage to Swiss public relations agent Valerie Bercher ended after he filed for divorce in 2006 – but Faldo remains a proud, if sometimes distant, father of four.
In December, he played in a father and son event for the first time, teaming up with 19-year-old Matthew to finish joint-seventh at the Dell Webb Challenge in Florida (The Normans were 10th and the Nicklauses 15th). His only son is a student at the University of the West of England in Bristol and has no plans to follow his father’s career path. Matthew and his sisters Natalie, 21, and Georgia, 15, are from his second marriage to Gill Bennett. His youngest daughter, Emma, is from his relationship with Valerie Bercher.
“Emma, the little five-year-old, has me completely hooked,” he confesses. “‘Daddy, I need a new dress for the Ryder Cup,’ she tells me from the back of the car. ‘Daddy, I love you’. And I look in the mirror and she’s not even looking at me. She’s working me for 20 minutes. And sure enough we end up in the dress shop and buy her a dress. Then I get told off by the big girls for being too soft, but I love it.”