WHEN THE Ryder Cup starts at Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky, in 12 days' time, the team from this side of the Pond will be without a Scot for the first time since 1937. It will be the first Ryder Cup since 1989 to be held without Colin Montgomerie, for so long a talisman for the Europeans. For the colossus of the European Tour, who has gone some way to making up for his failure to win a Major by a series of stellar performances in golf's biennial transatlantic bunfight, failing to get
Just how acutely he has been affected by his omission from the team became clear at Muirfield this week when he likened picking up a voicemail from Faldo last Sunday to the day when he was told his mother Elizabeth had just died after a short battle
with lung cancer in 1991. Listening to Faldo explain that he wouldn't be in the team "was like losing my mum", he says.
"When someone is terminally ill and expected (to die] and then suddenly the phone call comes through from my dad then it's a shock. This was nothing similar to that obviously, but at the same time it has that same feeling. When there is half a chance and it doesn't happen then it is difficult."
Montgomerie finds himself in a difficult position. For all his efforts at diplomacy, he clearly feels that both he and Darren Clarke, and to a lesser extent Carl Pettersson, have been left out of the team not because they are not the best men for the job, but because they are "big characters" whose faces don't fit with his old nemesis, Faldo. He knows about the cosy chats and texting sessions between Faldo and Ian Poulter, and feels he's been stitched up. He is, in short, angry. And his anger management has never been a patch on his course management.
Normally, when Monty is riled, the world soon knows about it. But while he wants to rant and rail like Thomas Bjorn did when he was left out of the 2006 team by Ian Woosnam and called the Welshman "pathetic", he knows he can't. His desperation to be at Celtic Manor in 2010 is palpable and he makes no secret of his burning desire to captain Europe when the Ryder Cup comes to Gleneagles in 2014, peppering his chat with references to "when I'm hopefully in this role (of team captain] in the future". He knows that the captaincy on his home turf is his for the taking, and that only a spectacular display of petulance – aka a Monty Strop – could hole his leadership aspirations below the waterline.
Yet keeping his counsel does not come naturally to a disappointed Montgomerie, especially when he looks at a team sheet that includes names like Graeme McDowell, Soren Hansen and Oliver Wilson. It is, however, the wildcard inclusion of Poulter alongside Paul Casey that most rankles, especially as the English clothes horse has been playing like a donkey for most of the year. In fact, virtually his only decent performance this year was at the Open in Birkdale, where he finished second.
A lack of form didn't stop Poulter from failing to show up at last week's Johnnie Walker Championship to secure the top-five place that would have made him an automatic pick, nor did it stop him from saying he knew Faldo "would do the right thing" when it came to the picks.
Montgomerie has been way off his best this year, but it was only at The Open, he says, when the realisation that he might not make Faldo's Ryder Cup team really began to dawn on him. "I had a weak Sunday at the British Open and the competition were beginning to play better," he says. "Paul (Casey] came up and shot 69 and 70 and finished seventh, Poulter did even better than that. I felt it was getting away from me and that I had to start performing quickly. I didn't throw in any good scores in those two tournaments in America, so when it came to the Open I began to feel a little worried, especially as (Padraig] Harrington wasn't (an automatic pick] coming to the Open. You always look at the list after the Open."
Monty looked and didn't like what he saw. There has always been a suspicion that Faldo sees this Ryder Cup as his Ryder Cup, that his wildcards would go to players who would never challenge his authority in the locker room, that they would be young and English. And so it turned out. You sense that if Darren Clarke had got in ahead of Poulter then there would have been no complaints from the Scot, but the fact that the Londoner got the nod merely confirmed Monty's thinly-veiled suspicion that Faldo had perpetrated a brazen stitch-up.
Crucially, believes Montgomerie, Europe's position as overwhelming favourites gave Faldo the room for manoeuvre that will result in Clarke, Montgomerie and Pettersson watching proceedings at Valhalla from their respective living rooms. "Faldo would have chosen differently if Europe weren't such overwhelming favourites," he believes. "He would have gone for an experienced pair had Europe been underdogs and myself and Darren have 13 Ryder Cups between us, considerably more than the two he's chosen. Nick had the freedom to do whatever he wanted because we're all pretty close (in standard]."
He is less sure that nationality played a role in Faldo's picks, however. While he concedes that "a few people have remarked on the fact that the two picks are English coming from an English captain", he adds: "I don't think you can read anything into that – or at least I hope not."
Either way, he says the team will be the weaker for his and Clarke's absence. Robert Karlsson, a rookie last time, said that Montgomerie and Clarke pulled him through. This year, pressure will be piled on the remaining European senior citizens. "Without Darren and I there, I think (Lee] Westwood and Harrington have to stand up to the plate now and take on myself and Darren's role within the locker room. There will certainly be less characters and less of the on-course captaincy that I've taken on in the last two Ryder Cups."
Yet for all of his disappointment at Faldo's decision and the way it was relayed to him, Montgomerie accepts that his play this year simply hasn't been good enough. His work around the green – and particularly his putting on Sundays – has at times been conspicuously weak. His failure to get up and down has seen him "turning 68s into 71s and 71s into 74s".
Montgomerie retains a fervent belief that he has an ability to shake himself out of his torpor and produce a game that is good enough to grace the Ryder Cup on demand, although we'll have to wait for at least another two years to see if that is justifiable self-confidence or simply a champion railing against the dying of the light. Yet there's no doubt Montgomerie is already looking beyond a decision he sees as "a blip" in a Ryder Cup career of almost unblemished achievement.
"I always felt that, if selected, I would rise to the challenge," he says. "I've done it before and I can do it again. 2004 was an occasion like that (where he came into the Ryder Cup playing badly]. I was a bit worried about it. I came there having got my selection from Bernhard Langer and went to the Ryder Cup as a pick. It's a different feeling when you go there as a pick than as a qualified member because you feel you have to perform even better to justify yourself, there is a different pressure on you in that position.
"I wasn't performing well – in fact Bernhard gave me a lesson, he coached me through the thing a wee bit. In the morning Padraig (Harrington] and I were really struggling against (Tiger] Woods and (Phil] Mickelson and we beat them, so yes, I do change. There's a certain way I have found to cope with the pressures and to perform to my best. Some of my best golf has been played in the Ryder Cup: the singles against Scott Hoch in 2002 was the best that I can do.
"This is just one these things; the opportunity's not there this time. Hopefully, God willing, it will be next time."
The full article contains 1423 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
