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Here's what he had to say:

In , you want steady players who hit it down the middle and find a lot of fairways and greens. Foursomes is really about par golf, you don't need any fireworks.

But in you want guys who get a lot of birdies. You're going to need to be about seven or eight under par to win, especially around a course like this, which is in perfect condition.

So a good combination is a steady guy and a birdie-maker. He might also make a lot of bogeys, too, but that's OK.

For instance, you would think Kenny Perry and JB Holmes would be an ideal combination in fourballs but not necessarily in foursomes. Perry is very steady, while Holmes is massively long off the tee but can also get into trouble.

As a general rule, when making your choices it's best to put together people who like each other, practise together and enjoy each other's company.

, when he was captain, only asked one thing of his players. He got them to write one name of someone they didn't want to play with. It could just be a personality thing.

One of the big mistakes US captain Hal Sutton made in 2004, and I'm not keen on criticising anyone, is pairing Tiger Woods and together. They are really competitive with each other and didn't gel and that set down a marker for a very poor performance that year from the whole American team.

When I paired my players it was easy to pick Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal. They are countrymen, wanted to play together and are excitable together.

When I captained Nick Faldo, he always wanted to play with Colin Montgomerie because Monty was always down the middle and that meant Faldo could go for it.

In terms of temperament, you can have a firebrand and a placid guy together and sometimes that's a good combination. There's a famous story of Fred Couples and Raymond Floyd playing together in 1989. Couples is very laid back and easy-going, while Floyd was tough and a hustler on the golf course.

Apparently Fred said to one of our players, who he was quite friendly with, "Oh good shot there." Floyd shouted over, "Fred, you can say good shot another time. Not in the Ryder Cup."

It will be interesting to see if Faldo pairs with . That would be a great fourball combination and looks like potentially a lot of birdies between those two.

Don't worry about their recent tussles in majors. They have great respect for each other.

Most of the time it's good to go with strength. The US used to play Nicklaus and Tom Watson together. They played four matches and won four points.

Sometimes you have to split your strength but it takes a brave captain to do that.

was very good at it. I wasn't very good at it and I wish I had been better.

Sometimes I think I shouldn't have persisted with Faldo and Montgomerie, even though they were a winning combination. They were so on top of their games in 1993 that it might have been better to split them up so that instead of winning one point, we won two. But Nick insisted on playing with Colin and I respected his wishes.

One time you may have to split up winning combinations for the benefit of the rest of the team is if you're trying to get other guys a game before the singles.

I told all the teams I captained that they would play before the singles, unless they came to me and said they didn't want to, or I had seen something in practice. It's only fair - they played their way into the team.

That way it kept them on their toes. If someone doesn't play the first day, they know they will be playing sometime the next day so they stay practising and don't relax too much. I just felt I owed it to them - you can't expect them to do a big job for you on the Sunday if you haven't had the confidence to play them before that.

You're not generally trying to second guess the opposition order early on. You're really only thinking about your own team at this stage.

But you want somebody who is going to put down a marker for the rest of the team, and my man was Montgomerie.

When it gets to singles play it's a different matter and it really depends on your position going into Sunday.

If you're in the lead you might think about trying to win the match right away and put all your best players up front, or you might keep some back in case it goes wrong. If you're behind you again may have to put your best players out first to get your points back before it runs away from you. But the other captain will be thinking along the same lines.

So it will be a fascinating tactical battle on Saturday evening. is a real streetwise-type captain as opposed to Faldo who is very meticulous in his preparation.

Hopefully the matches will be close until then and it will be intriguing to see how they decide on their singles line-up.