He has the fortunate, though just as tricky, task of selecting from a group in which all combinations look good.

The five likely contenders for wild card spots before the US PGA were Darren Clarke, Colin Montgomerie, Nick Dougherty, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia.

There is every chance that Garcia and Poulter will have barged their way into the top 10 by Sunday, possibly bringing the two they replaced plus Oliver Wilson into the reckoning.

Should Garcia and Poulter do so - and on major form it would take a fool to bet against them - Faldo's job will be made that much easier. The resurgent Clark and Dougherty, a product of Faldo's youth academy, seems the obvious chose of those left. But Faldo will need to be sure of his reasons. If Monty has a good PGA and Dougherty doesn't, yet the veteran is snubbed, Faldo will have to prove he did not act out of favoritism.

It is no secret that Faldo doesn't like Montgomerie, nor that the feeling is mutual, but the captain must recognise that Montgomerie has been the Ryder Cup force over the past decade that Faldo himself was a decade or so before that.

There are those in the blogosphere voicing concern that Nick Faldo will "do a Mark James". To refresh the memory, James was the captain who picked Andrew Coltart over Faldo as a wild card, only to leave the Scot out until the final day singles.

Faldo would certainly not have left himself out of that team.

He might not see it this way, but leaving Monty out now for Dougherty would be a very similar sort of decision to that made by James all those years ago.

Dougherty is Faldo's banana skin. For all of his talent, it will be very hard to justify his selection against players like Paul Casey, Clarke and Montgomerie.

Strangely enough, the least controversial choice of all would be to pick Monty. But Faldo's ego, or his affinity for one of his own, could yet interfere, with Monty the likely victim.