BERNARD Gallacher, who captained Europe to victory in the Ryder Cup match at Oak Hill in 1995, yesterday insisted Colin Montgomerie's return to form had made a persuasive case to Nick Faldo for handing the Scot a wild card at Valhalla in September.
While there was domestic progress for Montgomerie to savour when he regained the honour of being ranked Scotland's leading golfer, Gallacher also believes his compatriot should make a ninth consecutive appearance against the USA.
"I believe that N
ick will pick Colin if he's in the top 20, maybe even the top 25," said Gallacher. "Nick just needs a reasonable excuse to pick him, because he'll take account of what Colin has done in the past. Having said that, everyone should realise Colin has reached an age (45) when we can't expect the same consistency from him as in the past."
Gallacher, who recalled giving wild cards to Faldo when he needed them, added: "Colin is still going to have good weeks like the one in France, when he contends or wins. But things have changed in Colin's life with a new wife and larger family. He can't only give his attention to golf. Colin is doing exactly what I expect him to do at this stage of his career and that's have good weeks."
Thanks to that encouraging performance over Le Golf National, where he finished second behind Spain's Pablo Larrazabal on Sunday, Montgomerie leapt from 104th in the world golf rankings to 77th. With Alastair Forsyth, who replaced him as top Scot at the end of May, dropping to 94th, Monty is once again the most successful player from the home of golf.
After dropping out of the world's top 100 for the first time in 18 years, it's taken the 45-year-old from Troon under a month to breathe new life into his season and resuscitate ambitions of competing at the highest level.
As well as making gains in the world rankings, the Scot is up to 14th in Europe's Order of Merit and 13th in the European points list for the Ryder Cup. Faldo's team to face the Americans at Valhalla in September will consist of the top five from the World points list – currently Lee Westwood, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Robert Karlsson, Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia – and the leading five, not already qualified, from the European list.
Martin Kaymer, Henrik Stenson, Oliver Wilson, Soren Hansen and Nick Dougherty are the men presently in pole position. In order to displace Dougherty – Graham McDowell, Soren Kjeldsen and Steve Webster also still have to be overtaken – Monty needs to add around 200,000 points to his tally.
While making Faldo's team on his own merits is again a possibility for the Scot, his performance in France, as Gallacher noted, gave the captain some justification for considering handing a wild card to the Ryder Cup stalwart. There hasn't been a staging of the biennial match between Europe and the USA without a Scottish player since the 1937 contest at Southport and Ainsdale. Monty's return to form, if he can maintain the standard which saw him card scores of 69, 68, 68 and 68 at the French Open, may yet continue that streak.
The good news for Monty is that by returning to the world's top 100 he's again exempt for the US PGA championship at Oakland Hills, where he performed creditably during the 2004 Ryder Cup. The Scot is also a fan of Birkdale and relished the refurbished test when he recently played the links.
The defending champion at the European Open this week, Montgomerie, who won at the K Club last year, is looking forward to the challenge of the London club in Kent with a set of new irons in his bag he feels restores consistency to his shot-making.
"I played well in Munich two weeks ago and then last week (in Paris] was back to the way that I used to play and win tournaments – through lack of mistakes," he said.
"It wasn't the amount of putts that I holed in the Nineties, it was the amount of mistakes I didn't make. That's good, that's the way I like to play golf. The swing feels good. I have a new set of irons which have really helped."
The full article contains 724 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
