Two weeks ago the 43-year-old finished third in the Alfred Dunhill championship in South Africa. The two players ahead of him were Adam Scott and Justin Rose, both only 20.

Now, with 45-year-old Norman added to the cast, Faldo would love to have seen himself paired with Australian Scott and Norman with Rose, thereby setting up two Ashes duels.

‘‘They’ve gone for the obvious (Rose and Scott are also paired) and while it will be good to play with Greg again, I think it would have been great to see if we could beat the two whipper-snappers,’’ he said. ‘‘We both want to try.’’

Both Faldo and Norman insist that their minds will not be going back to St Andrews 1990 or Augusta 1996 their two most memorable confrontations when they tee off together again.

‘‘With any player, if there is a good rivalry, you are going to try hard to beat their score,’’ added Faldo. ‘‘But the most important thing is coping with the course and on this one there’s enough to think about.’’

Norman, who will always be remembered for the way he was crushed by nine shots by Faldo on the Old Course 11 years ago and even more so for the way he saw a six-stroke lead crumble to a five-shot defeat at the Masters, agrees.

‘‘This is not a trip down memory lane for us,’’ he said. ‘‘You can never go back and say you want to beat somebody because of such and such. The moment is now.

‘‘I’m here to try to win this title and I think I can. I feel much better about myself and my game and I am very keen to play at the moment.

‘‘I’ve given myself another two years of going at it before I scale down. I’m 46 in a couple of weeks and by 48 I can’t see myself devoting the same amount of time to playing the game as I am now.’’

Faldo’s energies are also starting to go more into course design, but he wants to have another push for the Ryder Cup this season and his start to the year in Johannesburg has inevitably boosted his confidence.

Third spot represented his highest finish since he was joint runner-up in the 1997 Volvo PGA championship and he said: ‘‘It was a nice feeling to be back in there and staying in there.

‘‘I didn’t lose the tournament, the other guys just played better. To shoot no worse than 68 all week was very satisfying.

‘‘But I still give myself only an outside shot of making the team because I don’t expect to play enough events and also my world ranking at the moment keeps me out of the world championships, where there are so many points up for grabs.

‘‘It does not seem quite right to me that Justin has just gone second. He’s won only half what Pierre Fulke did for reaching the final of the world match play championship.’’

Rose, a late arrival in Western Australia after his weekend exploits, is delighted that he has been able to phone home with such glad tidings about his golf at a time when his father Ken is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for leukaemia.

‘‘It’s shown me that golf is not the most important thing,’’ said the Hampshire youngster, whose pro career got off to such a nightmare start with 21 successive missed cuts following his fourth-placed finish in the 1998 Open.