Philip Reid finds an impatient Tiger Woods insisting he is a good team player despite his record.

Tiger Woods, as even the dogs in the street know, likes to get his work done early. In any normal tournament week, he likes to tee off at the crack of dawn. He likes to have his practice completed before the mobs descend. He likes to do it his way, rather than have to conform to the constraints of, well, the Ryder Cup. He hates not being in control.

Yesterday, the first day of practice for this year's rescheduled Ryder Cup, he stood in the middle of the third fairway on the Brabazon course at The Belfry. And he waited, and waited. Up ahead on the green, the last of the European players were slowly, and methodically, going through their practice regime. When Woods saw Bernhard Langer spend an amount of time lining up a putt, he turned to the other US players who were with him. "What do you want to do?" asked Woods of his team-mates. "Will we skip ahead?"

Mark Calcavecchia, Stewart Cink and Paul Azinger all concurred; and the group made their way from the third fairway to the eighth hole, moving ahead of all the European players. When they'd completed their round later, the quartet went back to the third and also played the holes that they had missed out on.

The little incident highlighted just why Woods dislikes not having control of his own preparations, just as he has for every other event in which he plays. Yet, later, Woods, who also said he was joking when he remarked at Mount Juliet last week that he would prefer to win the $1 million top prize in the American Express World Championship rather than win the Ryder Cup - "I was just trying to be funny," he insisted - was as diplomatic as a United Nations peacekeeper in trying to defuse any potential problem with their decision to skip the Europeans. This time, there was to be no unexpected slip of the tongue.

He remarked: "They can play at whatever pace they want, and we play at our pace. All we wanted to do was to play at our pace. We play at a faster pace (than the Europeans), plain and simple. We don't chip around as much. I saw Bernhard and the guys lining up putts - we definitely don't do that, especially on a Tuesday.

"For me, I just like to take a look at the golf course, get a feel for it and I am out of there. I'd much rather get my rest. We hopped over and played on. There was no ill intent."

Indeed, yesterday starting the guessing game about who would play with who come Friday. Curtis Strange sent out Woods with Calcavecchia - "If it happens, that we do play on Friday, it would be a lot of fun," said Woods - while Azinger played with Cink. Elsewhere, David Duval was paired with Davis Love; Phil Mickelson with David Toms; Jim Furyk with Scott Hoch, and Hal Sutton with Scott Verplank.

In the European corner, Thomas Bjorn was paired with Darren Clarke; Colin Montgomerie with Lee Westwood; Niclas Fasth with Padraig Harrington; Pierre Fulke with Phillip Price; Sergio Garcia with Bernhard Langer, and Paul McGinley with Jesper Parnevik. The reality is that these trial-and-error pairings indicate absolutely nothing, and are more of a team-bonding exercise.

In the past, there have been questions posed over Woods's ability to bond with the rest of the team. His Ryder Cup record, by his standards, is a poor one: 3½ out of a possible 10 points. In every other aspect of his golf game, the strike rate is so much better.

"I wish it was better. That means I would have contributed more points to my team. But I haven't done that. It's just one of those things," claimed Woods.

"I've played well and I've gotten beaten and I've played poorly and won matches," he added. "In matchplay, in 18 holes, anything can happen. It's not a 72-holes event where usually a transition wins. In the Ryder Cup, things happen, and it is a lot of fun."

But it also means he doesn't have the same amount of control over his own destiny than he would in a regular tournament, or even in a major. The chance of an upset, for someone to beat him, is increased. Firstly, it's only over 18 holes, or less; and, secondly, for the first two days, he is relying on someone else.

Woods, though, insisted he is a good team player.

"I'm not the type of rah-rah guy that's going to give great speeches before I play. That's no my personality. I'm going to be the guy that's going out and compete, and everyone on the team knows that I will give it 100 per cent. I've done that in each and every tournament I've ever played. That's what I might bring to the table. That no matter how bleak it may be, in my matches I might be seven down, but they know I'm going to keep fighting no matter what. Hopefully, that will help," he said.

Indeed, the world's number one believes that matchplay is so much different from strokeplay, where the object is simply to get the ball into the hole in as low a number as you can, that he has had to learn how to play this format.

"You are not just born for it. I think there is a certain attitude you've got to have in matchplay. You have to be able to step up there and answer whatever your opponent does. If he hits one stiff, you have to step up and hit inside of him. If he makes a putt, you have to bury it on top of him. If you're outside of him, you have to make that putt first. You have to know the critical moments in a match, when it is starting to turn, and how you can turn it to your side. These are the things that come with experience."

In terms of a Ryder Cup, Woods is more experienced than he has ever been.

This is his third Ryder Cup. It's about time he started making the numbers add up; time to change his strike rate from 35 per cent to a higher percentage. It's time for him to take control.