Norman surprised by Fowler

Greg Norman insists he was not at all shocked to see US captain Corey Pavin pick Tiger Woods for his Ryder Cup team, although he admits the inclusion of Rickie Fowler came as a surprise.

Pavin announced his four wildcards for next month's match at Celtic Manor on Tuesday and opted for Woods, Fowler, Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink.

Some people has questioned the wisdom of picking Woods following his erratic season, but Norman believes the world number one remained an obvious choice.

Asked if he was surprised about the inclusion of Woods, Norman told Sky Sports News: "No, not at all. I expected it, how could you not put him on the team?

"For one reason really, if you had a six-footer on the 18th green on Sunday afternoon for the USA to win the Ryder Cup, who would you pick? It would be Tiger Woods, he's made more six footers to win championships than any other player on that team.

"The other thing too is that Tiger is starting to play better; two weeks ago he said 'don't pick me, don't put me on the Ryder Cup team I'm not playing well enough', yesterday he says 'I want to be on the Ryder Cup team', so he knows exactly where he is.

"He's a competitor, he wants to play for his country. If he wasn't picked it would have been a shock.

"You can't second guess Corey Pavin, he's made his choices and the right choice about Tiger Woods as far as I'm concerned and the team will rally round everybody. It's going to be an exciting Ryder Cup."

However, the Australian legend was caught slightly on the hop by Pavin's decision to include rookie Fowler, 21, acknowledging he thought 2009 US Open champion Lucas Glover was a leading contender.

Surprise

"Of all of those four, I'd say Rickie Fowler would be the strangest one," he continued.

"Lucas Glover is a US Open champion, strong player, physically strong, extremely good putter. Rickie is young, he's coming to a foreign country, he's coming to foreign soil.

"I can understand it on the European team, six rookies playing in their own back yard is a little bit easier to deal with than taking six rookies from Europe and putting then into America playing the Ryder Cup for the first time.

"Rickie Fowler is now going to come over here and I don't know how much golf he's played here - he's certainly never played Celtic Manor.

"He may not have played a lot of golf in that part of Britain, it's different grasses, different environments, different feel, so that one of all of them probably surprised me a little bit."

Norman himself went head-to-head with America in team competition when he captained the Rest of the World at last year's Presidents Cup in America.

In that event, Woods partnered Steve Stricker and took five points from five matches and Norman expects the same combination at Celtic Manor.

Bacing Stricker to partner Woods

"I think that one's very easy, I think Corey Pavin will go back and look what happened at the Presidents Cup (last year) at Harding Park, Tiger Woods went 5 and 0, he won every match and who he was partnered with was Steve Stricker.

"They've got great balance, they won every match they played together. Steve is a good balance for Tiger, he's very consistent, a great putter and a great support guy.

"Tiger has the ability to go out there and manhandle a hole in several different ways and sometimes it can go awry on him, but that's when you've got a consistent player like Steve Stricker.

"I would think Corey Pavin has probably looked at that combination. Steve Stricker is probably the most consistent player on that team of all of the other 11 players. You need that balance, you can't be throwing a power player with a power player, you need to balance out a power player."

Contrasting characters

Norman admits he will be intrigued to see who comes out on top in the battle of the captains, stating from personal experience that Pavin and European counterpart Colin Montgomerie are very different characters.

"I know them both very well, I played golf with them for 25, 30 years and they're like chalk and cheese," he said.

"Monty will tell you the way it is and sometimes you don't want to hear what he has to say because you're probably not in favour of it.

"But they're both passionate about their team, they're both passionate about their desire to win the Ryder Cup for their team members.

"Corey? Just watch the way he plays the game of golf. He manoeuvres the ball around a lot, he understands, he's a tactician in many ways - he's won on many long golf courses and he's a very short hitter.

"So you can see the difference; Corey's very analytical attitude and his approach to the four he was going to pick and Monty, creating a little bit of controversy over here by not picking the number nine player in the world and picking Padraig Harrington and leaving Paul Casey and Justin Rose off.

"So there's a little bit of a dynamic difference in the philosophy of how the two of them went about it."

Advantage Europe

However, Norman feels it will be Europe celebrating next month, claiming home advantage should help them regain the trophy they lost at Valhalla two years ago.

"I think Europe will win, I like their team," he added. "I think their team have done a fantastic job this year playing the game leading up to the Ryder Cup.

"They've played consistently well and they're winners.

"I like the young guns in there, the kids who haven't played before on this team. Martin Kaymer, probably one of the most underrated players in the world as far as I'm concerned, I've been a huge proponent of his for a long time.

"So I favour the Europeans... and they're playing in their backyard too which must be a big advantage for them.

"The American team, apart from Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson have been a little up and down all season.

"You need to go into a competition like this feeling that you've got eight to ten of your top players pretty much in stride and right now they're top two players are not in stride. Phil seems like he's struggling a little bit, one great round and then it sort of flattens out.

"But the difference with the Ryder Cup is that is mano a mano, one man against one man, or team against team, it's not one guy playing 153 other guys in a tournament. But I do give the nod to the Europeans."