No allowances for Nick Faldo either. He got his running order wrong on Sunday. It'll be written on his tombstone. Should have had more strength up top, shouldn't have kept all the form guys at the bottom. Nuances again. They're going to be lost in time. Not many people complained about Sergio Garcia leading the Europeans out on Sunday. He'd shown something resembling his best form on Saturday afternoon – six-under better ball with Paul Casey, four of the birdies coming from Garcia – so why not let him go first, why not see if the responsibility would spark the return of the matador of previous years?

It didn't. Anthony Kim killed him. Kim was seven under for 14 holes. Not a lot you can do about seven under for 14 holes now is there? From the next three matches, Europe won two and halved the other. Not bad. Good enough form to stage a comeback for sure, if it could be sustained. It couldn't. If only Faldo hadn't "back-loaded" his order comes the cry. Colin Montgomerie was at it the other day. Graeme McDowell, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Padraig Harrington were left playing dead rubbers. A terrible error of captaincy. Really?

Say we could do it all again today and promote them up the list. So we put the electrifying Poulter into match five instead of Henrik Stenson. He's now playing Kenny Perry. Poulter was five under in his match on Sunday, Perry was seven under. It's still an American win.

Then we lift the excellent rookie Graeme McDowell into sixth spot in place of Wilson. The Portrush man is now playing Weekley. McDowell was five under for 17 holes on Sunday, Weekley's eight under for 16 holes wins the day. No change there either. Now we have Harrington up the order, from out of his anchor role and into seventh instead of Soren Hansen. Harrington's playing JB Holmes and for a player of Harrington's class he doesn't really have that much to beat. Holmes is two under for 17 holes. Respectable. And the Open and PGA champion? Five over. Yep, five over.

In this revised running order, America are just one point from victory and Europe's slim hopes now rest with Stenson, Wilson, Hansen and Miguel Angel Jimenez. There is no hope. Stenson was three under, Wilson four under, Hansen and Jimenez both level par. None of them would have been a match for Ben Curtis's five under in match 11 so, any way you cut it, America were going to win this Ryder Cup.

They were too good. In the Friday afternoon fourballs, Westwood and Hansen were eight-under better ball and could only halve their match with the equally impressive Weekley and Holmes. Also in the Friday afternoon fourballs, Harrington and McDowell were eight under and were beaten by Phil Mickelson and Kim on 10 under. In the Saturday fourballs, Stenson and Robert Karlsson were nine-under better ball and only got a half with Mickelson and Hunter Mahan. Two years ago at the K Club, eight and nine under would have won Europe a point with something to spare. Not this time, though. We underestimated the captaincy of Azinger last week and we didn't bank on the likes of Mahan going unbeaten, the likes of Weekley becoming a cult hero, the likes of Chad Campbell playing largely substandard golf (that's being polite) and yet winning two matches. How could we know about Campbell? Not even Campbell knows how he did it.

Faldo made blunders but whether he was Captain Cock-Up or not, I'm not sure. Faldo was guilty of many things at Valhalla. Guilty of narcissism on an almighty scale; guilty of buffoonery in advising the world to bring their waterproofs to Celtic Manor in 2010 while half of Wales was in Kentucky promoting the event; guilty of crassness in reaching for an image to describe Harrington's dedication and coming up with something to do with a potato, guilty of blind ignorance when asking McDowell whether he's from Ireland or Northern Ireland; guilty of getting Hansen's name wrong in the opening ceremony, guilty of all-sorts of embarrassing ineptitude in front of the microphone.

He was guilty of tactical blunders as well. The Friday foursomes combo of Stenson and Paul Casey never looked a good idea, both of them too similar and too erratic for foursomes play. They got beaten 3&2 by Mahan and Justin Leonard. Bad error, that one.

Saturday, though, was the contentious day. Garcia and Westwood benched for morning play. Garcia had asked to be rested. There was talk of him being on antibiotics which rang true because the Garcia of Friday was not himself, thoroughly subdued and not breathing any of his usual fire. Westwood's omission was harder to explain. Here's where Faldo brought the critics on to himself. He never bothered explaining. Just left it hanging there, open to speculation. It was crazy, unthinking management. And it was unjustified. Westwood was keen to play and should have played. Faldo's talk of him having blisters was risible. Westwood had six birdies on his own in the Friday afternoon fourballs and did much to keep the Holmes and Weekley team from winning a full point. The match was halved, just as Westwood's foursome match had been in the morning.

Benching a guy who had just equalled Arnold Palmer's record of 12 consecutive Ryder Cup matches without defeat was barmy. The fact that Europe managed to win the session that Westwood missed doesn't lessen the lunacy. Harrington played that Saturday morning session and he shouldn't have. He said himself he shouldn't have. Having played 36 holes on Friday, he was utterly spent. One look at him doing his press interviews on the putting green would have convinced you that the guy was good for nothing but his bed. Harrington and Karlsson got beaten 3&1 on Saturday morning and it was no surprise.

So Faldo made tactical blunders, sure, but were they the difference between winning and losing? It's a stretch to say they were. The way Faldo has behaved towards the European press his whole playing career and since he became Ryder Cup captain he was never going to get any favours. Can't have expected any unless he was monumentally thick. So it's all been laid at his door alone. But isn't it possible, just possible, that the reason the Americans won was not because of Faldo's tomfoolery but because they played better?

The stats support that view. The stats from two years ago at the K Club are interesting also. This was a savaging, remember? That's all we remember, the mortification of America. It's harder to recall that on the first day in Kildare, six of the eight matches went all the way to the 18th green and that Europe only ended up on the wrong side of one of them. At Valhalla there were close matches, too, and this time America edged the majority of them. It gave them momentum just as it gave Europe momentum two years ago.



Without momentum at the K Club, American confidence drifted away. In Ireland, five Americans were over par for their singles matches. Some of them surrendered. Some of the Europeans surrendered at Valhalla – Harrington for sure – but mostly they were just out-played. For all Faldo's idiotic japery, the bottom line is that America, the 12 men many of us derided as a motley crew a week earlier, were simply inspired.