George Kimball Golf
The mythical designation – “Best Golfer Never to have Won a Major” – is less a title than a lifetime achievement award earned through years of exemplary frustration. It is one of those dubious honours to which nobody exactly aspires and, once won, can be shed in one of two ways, one vastly preferable to the other.
And while you would not say that Colin Montgomerie, who will be 36 later this month, has disappeared from golf’s radar screen – he comes to this week’s US Open as one of the hottest players on the planet, having won two of the three European Tour events he entered last month – he would appear to have been overtaken in the BGNWM stakes. Las Vegas bookmakers rate Montgomerie’s chances of winning one of this year’s three remaining Majors at seven to one. The American David Duval is two to one to accomplish the same feat. And, his wins in the Benson & Hedges and Volvo PGA Championship notwithstanding, Monty is listed at 20 to one to win at Pinehurst in North Carolina this week.
Such odds, however, look a little generous, for the US Open should be the event Montgomerie is most likely to win. Although he grew up playing the links of Royal Troon, where his father was the club secretary, the Scotsman’s game was honed in his formative years as a collegian at Houston Baptist. US Open courses, which place a premium on driving accuracy and pinpoint target golf, are suited to Monty’s game.
His record of near misses – third at Pebble Beach in 1992, loser in a three-way play-off to Ernie Els in 1994, and a close second, to Els again, in a four-horse race at the Congressional two years ago – would seemingly predict eventual success, but there is a growing feeling, particularly among those who earn their living laying odds on golf, that the factors which proved Montgomerie’s undoing in the past will continue to haunt him in the future.
His love-hate relationship with American galleries, for instance. Monty wasn’t the first European golfer to be taunted with cries of “Go home!” as he stood over a putt in the US Open, but he was the first who seemed eager to respond.
Prior to the 1997 US Open, I had backed Montgomerie, and presented a convincing case why he should have been made the favourite. He rewarded my prescience by firing an opening-round 65, and seemed for all the world on track to get the monkey off his back once and for all.
Then, on the Friday, Monty allowed himself to be dragged into a bantering match with green- side hecklers. When he missed one putt, the crowd broke into applause. When he missed another, a voice from the gallery bellowed: “Go, USA!” Monty turned and muttered, “Save it for the Ryder Cup,” which only fuelled further repetitions.
He shot 76 that day, by seven strokes his worst round of the week, and it cost him the championship. It got even worse last year in San Francisco. During the final round at the Olympic Club, Montgomerie’s approach to the sixth green was accompanied by a loud cry of “Get in the bunker!”. And a little later, as the Scotsman walked from the eighth green to the 9th tee, another spectator screamed: “Go home, Monty!”
Undoubtedly, some of this is the residue of spill over jingoism for what has become a biannual transatlantic war, but it would be a mistake to blame it all on that mentality.
Nor, indeed, do Americans have a monopoly on this behaviour. I can recall Nick Faldo and Paul Azinger coming down the stretch at Muirfield in 1987. When Faldo, a shot to the good, hit the 18th green with his second and Azinger’s approach found a green-side bunker, the Open crowd exploded with spontaneous and delighted applause.
Montgomerie harbours a sometimes unfortunate penchant for forthrightly speaking his mind, and prior to the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama, he allowed himself to be quoted as saying, among other things, that he thought Brad Faxon’s impending divorce might be mentally unsettling, that the Sotogrande course would not suit Tiger Woods, and that he would love to find himself in a duel with Tiger on the final day.
More recently, Monty may have ruffled a few feathers on the other side of the Atlantic. After Mark James finished second to him at Wentworth and then speculated over the possibility of playing his way into the Ryder Cup team, Monty rather undiplomatically suggested that James would have to relinquish his captaincy if he did.
Then there is “the look”. Every athlete has his manner of showing displeasure, but no one can look quite as unhappy as Montgomerie. The look tends to make Monty a lightning rod, inviting verbal abuse from the hecklers. It seldom lasts long, though.
After his bitter loss at Congressional two years ago, when on the final day a missed putt from five feet on the 17th cost him a share of the lead, Montgomerie wandered off to a roped-off area and shed tears of frustration.
The Els factor also enters into this equation. The notion that Montgomerie has developed a mental block about US Opens does not wash, but he has every reason for having a mental block about Els. Throughout history, even the great golfers have had their personal nemeses.
Ben Hogan could beat everyone but his boyhood friend Byron Nelson, and Sam Snead could beat everyone but Hogan. More recently, Faldo had Greg Norman’s number, and there seems to be a similar pattern with the Els-Montgomerie rivalry.
At the very least, when Monty looks back at his near misses, the suspicion is the visage of the South African will present itself in his mind with an uncomfortable familiarity.
Not only did Els beat him in the 1994 play- off and in 1997 when they finished first and second in Bethesda, but his image pops up in other frustrating memories. When Monty lost the 1995 PGA in a play-off to Steve Elkington at Riviera, for instance, Els was lurking in joint third. Nonetheless, the two have formed something of a mutual admiration society.
“Ernie is so laid-back it’s frightening,” says Montgomerie of his rival.
“Colin is playing great at the moment, probably the best he’s ever played. He’s just lapping the field,” said Els after Wentworth last month. “The US Open is probably the only edge I have over him at the moment, and the way he is playing now, he will probably win a major.”
And, finally, there is this year’s venue. Darren Clarke has compared Pinehurst No 2 to Sunningdale and Wentworth, which does not do it justice. The 1999 US Open course was designed by the one-time Royal Dornoch greenkeeper Donald Ross.
>From tee to green it will play like a typical US Open track, with a premium on accuracy over length off the tee and toughened up with heavy rough around the greens. But the crowned greens will make last year’s maddening puzzles at the Olympic Club seem like child’s play. How Monty’s putter holds up may have even more to do with his chances than how many fairways he hits.
“I’ve been very close a few times, and I just love the US Open,” he says. “I’d love to win it and I believe I can win it. I believe this year I’m going there with as much confidence as I can.”
Perhaps. But should Montgomerie and Els find themselves paired together on the final day, again, you wouldn’t much fancy Monty’s chances at all.
ENDS
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