Nick Price

Getting some support on the ground at Muirfield Village, maybe an avalanche of Canadian fans, would be pretty exciting and important to your team's chances?

The Ryder Cup has gone off on a tangent; you would never have thought in the past that it would get to be so heavily supported. I remember back in 1999 at Brookline, the American fans going off at Monty [Colin Montgomerie] and giving him plenty. I thought some of that was tacky but then some of the Americans going over to Europe have been on the receiving end of some really bad, uncalled for comments from the Europeans fans too.

It’s fine to get passionate about something but you don’t have to get personal. I think the American fans are full of respect and admiration for the international players that play over there full-time because there are so many of them. A lot of my team will likely come from players who play on the US Tour, so I think we’ll have plenty of support.

I remember seeing Greg Norman waving his arms at Royal Melbourne at one point trying to get the crowds to make more noise. Australians must be too polite!

[Laughing] I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Aussie say that Australians are too polite! Seriously though, there will be a lot of people who live in the US, from Australia, South Africa and Asia who will be behind us. A lot of people have already come out of the woodwork to ask about tickets and have been letting me know they will be there.

I think we’ll be well represented at Muirfield Village, I really do. I think there will be a lot coming down from Canada and from across the US and overseas.

In 2011, Norman's team went in with high hopes but were maybe a little shy on experience; and the experienced guys that were there weren't in peak form. Els, Goosen and Allenby weren’t setting the world on fire and KT Kim, Baddeley, Day and even Charl Schwartzel were rookies. How do you see the balance of your own team?

The way I see it, there are two things that work against us and I’ve been trying to figure them out. The first thing is that the US Team for next year is not going to be a whole lot different from the one we just saw at the Ryder Cup. That’s a good thing because we know they’re beatable; they just got beaten by Europe so they’re not infallible.

The difficult thing for us is they will know their pairings better than we will know our pairings, who will play with who, so that’s a huge issue. There’s no doubt they’ll have Keegan Bradley and Phil Mickelson together, for example, the way they played at the Ryder Cup. We don’t really know who will play with who but that’s one of the things I need to try to work out over the next four or five months.

I like it when players come to me and say "I want to play with so and so", but sometimes you don’t want two buddies playing together. Sometimes you want the guys feeling a little nervous playing with each other because it keeps them on their toes. There are so many different permutations to this and these are the things I need to figure out.