LOUISVILLE, Ky. – If you know how to drive a golf cart, take lunch orders and color-coordinate clothing, you, too, can be a Ryder Cup captain!

Is there a more overrated job in sports? A captain's work is done after making the pairings and then waving the guys on their way. A really ambitious boss might sneak around and cut the laces on his opponents' golf shoes or super-glue one of their drivers to the head cover. But that's about it.

A captain doesn't make substitutions on the fly, decide when to bunt or which defense to call, or even what changes are needed to cope when a player is sent off or locked up in the penalty box. He's about as useful as the broken tee left behind once the first ball is in the air.

What about motivating his players on the course?

With the opening match less than 24 hours away, someone asked Euro captain Nick Faldo – whose 11 appearances and 25 points won are Ryder Cup records– whether he could recall his captains telling him anything important during a match.

“I can't think right now,” he replied. “I've got enough spinning in my head.”

Please.

Faldo has had more than three years to prepare and his U.S. counterpart, Paul Azinger, two. Ten of the 12 players on Faldo's squad, and eight of Azinger's dozen, were chosen by a qualifying system. Other than selecting the outfits his players – and their wives – will wear, he has to call the caterer and make sure the team room is stocked with the right brands of beer and candy bars.

Most people believe Seve Ballesteros was one of the best, not to mention the most hands-on, captains ever. In 1997, the Spaniard turned up so many times in so many different spots around the Valderrama Golf Club that people started wondering whether he'd been cloned.

On the first green, when Tiger Woods looked up from a 6-foot putt to give his side a 1-up lead, there, with arms folded and a skeptical look on his face, stood Seve. In the 18th fairway, when Swede Jesper Parnevik fussed over an approach shot to seal his match, who should turn up for a long consult but Seve.

Afterward, Parnevik described their chat this way: “He just said, 'That's a nice lie there.'”

On the other hand, most people believe Englishman Mark James was the worst. He was captain in 1999, when the U.S. squad notched its only win in the last half-dozen cups.

Because the Europeans traditionally have fewer bona fide superstars and even fewer overheated egos, they generally trot all 12 of their players out early and often. But James ignored his predecessors' philosophy and sat three of his seven rookies until the final-day singles matches. The strategy backfired when the Americans steamrolled the trio en route to a 6-0 lead and the greatest comeback in Ryder Cup history.

That match was also Europe's last without Faldo as a player, and his 11-year wait for the captaincy was testament to how little-liked the Englishman was by many of his playing peers. Like Azinger, though, Faldo segued into the broadcast booth and eventually mellowed out.

But he ruffled some feathers by using one of his captain's picks on countryman Ian Poulter instead of Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland, a popular warhorse whose strong personality might have clashed with Faldo's. Since the only meaningful task a captain performs is picking a lineup, that one decision could come back to haunt him.

The only controversy that percolated to the surface, meanwhile, revolved around a picture taken Wednesday by an enterprising photographer perched on a hill by the 12th tee. Using a zoom lens, he snapped the open page of a notebook Faldo carried around during the Europeans' practice session and on which he'd scribbled initials that appeared to be his team's pairings.

“It just had the lunch list,” Faldo said Wednesday, when asked about it. “It had sandwich requests for the guys, just making sure who wants tuna, who wants the beef, who wants the ham. That's all it was.”

Not exactly. Though the order of the pairings Faldo announced Thursday was different from the version in his notebook, players were paired exactly as he had scribbled them.

“Yeah,” he conceded Thursday.

That made you wonder what he did to occupy the 24 hours in between. A moment later, Faldo was asked whether any of his golfers will play the maximum five matches, another favorite European tactic.

“I have to put it on my sandwich list so you can read it sometime,” he said. “If you see five cheeses next to a name, then he's going to be ... four tunas means four matches, chicken is three matches, OK, and lettuce is two.”

Faldo waited for the laughter to die down, then added, “Let us begin.”

After which he probably went back to his room and with little left to do, took a nap.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org