COLIN MONTGOMERIE must have magnets in his golf bag for we get drawn towards him time and again at these major championships, whether we've intended to or not. On Friday afternoon, a little after 1pm, we took a look at the leaderboard at the US PGA at Oakland Hills and immediately thought of Monty, even though he was nowhere near the thing.
We saw the names of JB Holmes and Charlie Wi, we saw David Toms and Ken Duke, we noted the emergence of Nicholas Thompson, Briny Baird and Paul Goydos and sighed heavily. Briny, Whiney. In the moment, we dreamed of the rotund Scot. In our search for
the kind of drama that has been sadly lacking on this brutal track this week, we turned to one of the few men in the field guaranteed to provide it. We went looking for Monty.
We found him a little after 1.30pm, sizing up a putt on the elevated green of the second hole, a par-5 that Monty had got to within eight feet of in four. This is when it started to get a little weird, when the warning signs of impending doom, of a historically poor round and the death of any lingering hope of a Ryder Cup pick began to show itself.
Weird and trippy, actually. He crouched down sizing up his putt and behind him in the distance a seagull came into view. The improbably low-flying bird headed due north, as if Monty was the tower bringing it into land. Monty crouched over the putt, oblivious to the spectacle behind him. The seagull got closer and closer and closer still, bee-lining for the back of Monty's head.
In the few seconds it took to play out we had some choices to make; (a) alert Monty (b) alert the seagull (c) alert neither and let them fight it out between themselves. In the end, the bird whistled past Monty's ear. It was just about the only break he got all day.
His descent had a sizeable and vocal audience. On the par-3 third a lady in pink with a foghorn for a voice acted as commentator at greenside. "What a shot!" she hollered as Aaron Baddeley, one of Monty's playing partners, stiffed it out of the sand. "Woah, yeah!" she shrieked as Jim Furyk put it to three feet out of the rough. "Gee whizz, ain't that a kick in the ass," she thundered as Monty blasted it 25ft past the hole from the fringe.
One of the problems with Monty nowadays is that he doesn't have the ability to save himself in situations like this, he doesn't have the birdies in him to counter the bogeys. He recorded two birdies and only seven in four rounds at the WGC at Firestone last week. Those kind of numbers are not going to impress Nick Faldo much when it comes to making his two captain's picks for the European Ryder Cup team.
Monty took 37 putts on Friday. Of the 155 players in the field, Monty ranked 155th in putting stats for his second round and 152nd overall. Integral to any winning Ryder Cup team is its ability to make putts under pressure. Monty can't do it any more.
We've criticised him many times in these pages but he has been Scotland's flag-bearer for an awfully long time and the game here owes him a debt. Without him, Scottish golf would have been a desolate place for the last 15 years or so. The prospect of him sliding away into oblivion is a scary one.
Monty still talks himself up ahead of these championships, as he must, but since his near-miss at Winged Foot two years ago he has not been mapped at the top level. On Friday we seemed to get final confirmation that as a competitive force, Monty is gone. There was an air of finality about it all. Resignation hung in the air.
Anybody holding out hope that Monty is still in the thoughts of the Ryder Cup captain really should have been out there on Friday as he sank into the mire. After going from sand to sand on the fourth hole for another bogey he cleared away some cameramen at the back of the green, but that was it as far as strops went. He went down quietly after that.
As much as the poor golf, his acceptance of it was the sad thing. In essence, he gave up.
The tale of woe became historic in the end.
When it went wrong, it was spectacular in a depressing kind of way.
5th hole: Over-shoots the green and ends up in a hideous spot, chips to 20ft, misses putt. Bogey, +9
6th hole: Drive goes left, approach gets chunked into the sand, barely gets it out, three putts. Double bogey, +11
7th hole: Awful second into murderous rough. Bogey, +12
8th hole: Three putts. Bogey, +13
9th hole: Three putts. Bogey, +14
10th hole: Takes about three seconds over a bunker shot. Hits an unbelievably poor first putt followed by two more. Double bogey, +16
11th hole: Hacks it out of the rough almost without breaking stride. Bogey, +17
12th hole: Three putts. Par, +17
13th hole: Three putts. Bogey, +18
14th hole: Hits tree off tee. Three putts. Bogey, +19
17th hole: Bunker off the tee. Bogey, +20.
The irony of ironies, of course, is that he had precisely the same putt on the 18th green for an 84 as he had to secure the Ryder Cup in 2004. The question now is not whether he can play in that event again but whether we'll see him much in the majors from now on. His world and European ranking is slip-sliding away and if it plummets much further the elite championships will go on without him.
To his credit, he stood and answered questions afterwards. A couple of times he snapped – "make that your last laugh, ok?" he said to a confused American reporter whose crime was merely to smile at some self-mocking humour from Monty himself.
Where did it leave his Ryder Cup chances? Well, he didn't really want to go there, but in many ways there was no need to. Best thing Faldo can do now is ring up his old pal and offer him a place in the set-up, as an assistant.
Will the offer be made? Would he accept even it if was? Hard to say, but it should happen. Monty has lots to offer this team, but not as a player. It's time to turn over a new page on his Ryder Cup story. Faldo should help the process – and help himself – by picking up the phone.
•
Read Tom English's final day reports from the US PGA online at scotsman.com/golf The full article contains 1149 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
