Wentworth rises to the feisty Fall of Faldo

Sideline Cut/Keith It was a headlight procession that made its way along the back roads to Wentworth for the conclusion of the longest ever round of golf early yesterday.

Wentworth is in a part of England that until this week I thought only existed in the fiction of Frank Richards and Richmal Compton. It really is all ginger ale and meringues and jolly good walks through brambles and briars.

I am staying in Eton, which is about 10 miles of fantastically tree-hooded country lanes away from the famous course. It's an eye opener, Eton, and you have to remind yourself that it is only a half-hour drive from central London, with its furious nightlife and homelessness and opulence.

Eton feels as if it exists in a different century. There is the sense that whatever crime impinges on the bliss of the good people of Eton is solved by the local affable, pipe-smoking constable. It is impossible to see what crime you could commit there anyhow, unless breaking into authentic teddy bear shops is your thing.

The place is big on those spooky porcelain dolls dressed like victorian children. It is seriously committed to antique book stalls, early nights and relentless prettiness. Oh, and politeness. It is a haven of old-fashioned curtesy. All the neighbouring villages, from Datchet to Windsor, are similar. There are an endless number of those great English country pubs, with smoking fires and wry locals, like the one visited by the tourists in the opening scenes of An American Werewolf in London.

Windsor is where Nick Faldo lives. It sort of suits him. Most of those who turned up for the 8.15 a.m. death dance on the 17th hole did so in the hope of seeing the local legend starting the day on a note of old English glory.

The morning was in utter contrast to Thursday's conditions of bright, crisp sunshine and dry foliage in which Faldo and his likeable opponent, Michael Campbell, became inseparable, all square after the regulation 36 holes and still locked in combat after six thrilling holes of sudden death. The pause came when the players agreed the dusk had become too prohibitive; but when they met up again yesterday morning, the landscape had changed from New England fall to Old England squall.

Surrey was soaking and early radio reports told of heavy traffic into London and the spectators came with a dizzying array of weather gear and binoculars and mobile stools, which seem to be the fetish of all serious golf fans.

For some reason I was kind of hoping Faldo would win. It was a surprise to me because like many people, one of the few episodes of professional golf that ever truly enthralled me was Greg Norman's collapse in the 1996 US Masters and I had never forgiven Faldo for being the architect of the Australian's humiliation.

It was pure bias of course, but it seemed there was something mean-spirited about Faldo's scientific and detached pursuit of Norman, even as the Australian's verve and belief deserted him so stunningly and unforgettably. That Major victory all but spelled finis on the common portrayal of Faldo as an emotional sort of fish, a man who was just an extension of the machinery he used so devastatingly.

A friend once saw Faldo fly in to play a round of a links in Donegal for some reason, back when he was king of his sport. The Englishman was friendly in a distant way and incredibly well-groomed and impressive; it was like seeing a super hero in the flesh. My friend, who doesn't get out much, said Faldo seemed like the very embodiment of power and affluence.

So those were my thoughts on Faldo as I watched him in the flesh for the first time, fighting for survival against Campbell on Thursday. After the last three or four holes, I felt differently about the guy. He is, of course, still a much better golfer than certainly I will ever be able to comprehend; but it is generally agreed that his days as the feared lion of the golf plains are behind him.

England has a strange relationship with its sporting heros. It was interesting to be here in a week when the written press were burying David Seaman alive. It will take a series of errors by the next long-term England goalkeeper for a revised and fair account of Seaman's qualities to be presented.

Nick Faldo exists in golf's black hole of anonymous respectability right now, just above T H Levet on the Volvo Order of Merit. Having partly crucified him during his initial fall from greatness, his home press largely leaves him alone. He is as yesterday as Thatcher. He can't be playing the game for money any more and isn't a contender for the camera lights which means at Wentworth on Thursday he was playing purely for the sake of the game.

And whatever about the diminishing quality of his golfing repertoire, Faldo is still true to the austere and unbreakable spirit that once made him the best in the world.

So he took Campbell, one of the more personable of the latest gang of emergent golf brats, to an epic battle of wills that brought them all back to Wentworth at an ungodly hour.

Everybody was freezing and the atmosphere was hushed as if people were gathering for a sacred rite and the woods around the 17th were audibly dripping. Distant planes roared to and from Heathrow and the railway line hurried hundreds of commuters towards offices they were probably dreading.

Many must have been reading about Faldo's promised awakening even as the man himself limbered up for his play-off hole in the very verdant field that they rushed by.

He lost of course, did Faldo, and he was cheerful about it all afterwards. He was humble and probably a more than a bit pleased to be associated with the making of history, albeit a history established in defeat.

The thing he said that I liked best was about how Thursday's epic round had left his legs with more lumps than his mother's porridge. It was a remark with origins purely in his area. Homely and quintessentially English and a throwback to about 1955. It wasn't hip or flash, it wasn't anything like Tiger would ever say.

But it was what Faldo, exiting the tournament, along with company that will never soar to the heights he once took for granted, had to say about himself. I was glad I saw him on the downward spiral of his sporting life, which is rarely a good time to see the true legends of their sporting field.

But with certain masters, be they as fiery as John McEnroe or as glacial as Faldo, you need to see them fighting against the big fade in order to get a true perspective on their achievements and a proper measure of their enduring character and in order to see that the Englishman wasn't the cold-hearted undertaker of my imagination at all.