Monty: The best team will win on this course

As the home captain, Montgomerie was entitled to set up the course however he saw fit to suit the strengths of his players or negate those of their American opponents.

But the 47-year-old Scot instead insisted he had set the course up to allow the best team to win as Europe attempt to regain the trophy lost two years ago at Valhalla.

"On this occasion, I haven't played around with the golf course at all," Montgomerie said. "This golf course is set up in a very, very fair manner to allow the best team to win.

"I don't think it was right to set the course up in any other way than to what it's been designed for. It's a great, great golf course and it's in super condition."

Asked if the course was set up as for a standard European Tour event, Montgomerie added: "Hence to our advantage, if it is a European Tour set-up. I was hardly going to set up to a

US Tour set-up.

"It is a very fair test of golf and something that our European Tour players will be used to in the pace of greens. The rough is graded very fairly. A good shot will be rewarded and a bad shot will be penalised and that I think is the game of golf and that is what it should be.

"We are due for some breeze over Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I see, average of about 10 to 15 miles an hour, which I think the course set-up will favour. I think it's not too tough, and yet it's tough enough.

"I think sometimes you can get yourself in a muddle by thinking that this is going to favour one team, and then the wind direction changes or something happens and of course it favours the other.

"I feel the course is very fair. I'm very happy with the set-up."

In April this year it was revealed that 500,000 had been spent on alterations to the course – which only opened in 2008 – with many of the bunkers deepened, the rough made consistently thicker than it was for the Wales Open and the greens firmer and less receptive to spin.

Speaking at the time, Jim McKenzie, Celtic Manor's director of golf courses, said: "All along Colin has insisted that he was not interested in gaining a home advantage.

"If Europe do regain the Ryder Cup he wants it to be because they have played the better golf and not because the course has been tricked up."

Asked if he was surprised by Montgomerie's decision, US captain Corey Pavin said: "I think what he was saying is you set it up to European Tour standards, and that's the advantage that he's describing.

"I think Colin needs to do what he thinks is best for the European team to have the best chance to win. That's his job as captain. I think that's what he feels he's done, and setting up the golf course fairly, in the way the European Tour sets it up, it is what he thinks best.

"I'm glad it's set up fairly because I think that's the way the matches are meant to be played, in fairness and in great sportsmanship, and I think that's what Colin is striving to do here."

Both captains have told their players to focus on the match and forget about using Twitter or other social networking websites to air their thoughts.

Montgomerie said yesterday that the recent controversy involving England cricket star Kevin Pietersen had prompted the move by himself and opposite number Pavin.

Pietersen was fined for reacting angrily to being left out of the one day and Twenty20 squads and later issued an apology for his language.

Montgomerie said yesterday: "I've just asked my team not to and they have said 'Okay – that's fine, we'll start again tweetering or twittering – having never done it (himself) – on Monday, October 4. Kevin Pietersen's error changed my view as to that."

United States captain Pavin, who arrived with his side in Cardiff in mid-morning after an overnight flight from Atlanta, commented: "I think we talked about it as a team and we thought it best not to do it.

"We need to focus on playing and working on preparations and getting ready to play the Ryder Cup."

The two sides start official practice on the Twenty Ten course – specially built for the match – this morning at 8.30.

Tiger Woods, who needed a captain's pick for the first time, is expected to fall into line and not go out before the rest as is his normal routine at tournaments.

Woods was criticised at The Belfry in 2002 for doing his own thing.

Because of the course lay-out Europe will start on the 11th hole so that both sides can get going at the same time and not run into each other.

There will be much read, of course, into who plays with whom. Montgomerie revealed last week that his team already knows his plans for Friday's opening fourballs and that the four left out of that session will play in the afternoon foursomes.

Pavin said: "I have a very good idea of what we're going to do. We've talked about it quite a bit and the players have an idea of the direction that I'm going to go, but there's no reason for me, as far as I'm concerned, to discuss it too much until actually I write the pairings down on paper and turn them in."

For all the positive words coming out about Lee Westwood's recovery from his torn calf muscle – he last played on August 6 – there will be fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong in practice.

Until the opening ceremony an injured or ill player can be replaced, but with Paul Casey mountain biking in Canada he does not appear to be in the ideal standby position.

"Can't be me," said Montgomerie. "I can't say who it would be. I would have to go back to my vice captains and we would discuss the situation."