Colin Montgomerie is nothing if not positive, as he and Alastair Forsyth set about defending Scotland’s title in this week’s Omega Mission Hills World Cup.
“I’ve hit rock bottom and I can’t get much worse – at least, that’s what I’m telling myself,” explained the Scot, who lies 118th in the Sony world rankings.
This season Montgomerie, 45, has made only three top 10 finishes. He suspects that things might have been less traumatic had 2008 not been a Ryder Cup season, but missing the match for the first time in 16 years tore at his golfing soul.
“The words Ryder Cup got in the way,” he said. “July and August were a disaster as I put pressure on myself to get into the side – and it was a huge and lingering blow to my self-esteem when I didn’t.”
There was never a worse day than the Friday of the US PGA Championship at Oakland Hills. Having opened with a 76, he followed up with an 84.
It equalled the 84 he had on the Saturday of the 2002 Open at Muirfield. “At least the weather was bad at Muirfield,” he recalled. “For the PGA, there was nothing wrong with the conditions. My golf, though, was so bad that it was beyond getting annoyed about. The score added up in a hurry and in the end I did well to close with a par.”
The round over, he went back to his hotel and thought, ‘What the hell’s this all about? What am I doing?’
He wondered if it was time to stop but, one by one, the assorted reasons why he wants to keep going for as long as he is exempt came back to him.
The first thing on his mind is to do as he did in 2005 and claw his way back up the world rankings.
He is also intent on breaking Des Smyth’s record as the oldest winner on Tour. The Irishman was 48 and 34 days when he won the 2001 Madeira Island Open. At the same time, he wants to get more points “than you know whom” in the Ryder Cup. The player in question is Nick Faldo, this year’s captain.
But Montgomerie was quick to explain: “It’s not because of who is ahead of me. It’s just that if you’re No 2, you want to be No 1.”
As he and Forsyth set out on today’s opening four balls, Montgomerie plans to build on the sliver of hope afforded by his performance at last week’s Hong Kong Open, where he had four rounds in the sixties. After that, he will celebrate Christmas with his new wife, Gaynor, and their seven children before returning to the practice ground to prepare for the 2009 season.
He will be working on the kind of improved shoulder turn which will allow him to rediscover some of his old length and accuracy.
“There have been times this year when I’ve been one of the shortest hitters and one of the least straight,” he confessed. “You can get away with one or other of these things, but not both.” Especially in this era when, as he says, the game is belonging ever more to those who belt the ball 300 yards and more.
Finally, in early January, Montgomerie will head for the trio of Middle East tournaments in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Dubai, where he wants to get some 64s and 65s on the board “to prove that I’m back.”
Apart from proving as much to himself, he wants to impress players such as Rory McIlroy and Martin Kaymer, youngsters who, he suspects, will be making the 2014 Ryder Cup side he hopes to captain at Gleneagles.
He said: “At the moment they will be thinking ‘Monty was a force’. Well, I want to get back to the point where I can still be up alongside them and beating them.”
So why does he continue to be so extraordinarily competitive?
He is not entirely sure. All he can tell you is that he has met only one player in the last 20 years who is as ambitious, if not more so, than he is himself. Namely, Tiger Woods.
Nick Faldo would seem to have left people baffled with last week’s suggestion that he would like to have another crack at the Ryder Cup captaincy following Europe’s recent loss at Valhalla.
It was on the day prior to the Hong Kong Open that Faldo said he was missing the buzz and missing his men. “We all got along well,” he said. At the time of the match, he had described his team as a 36-strong affair taking in the 12 players, their partners and their caddies.
Some of those “team” members who were on duty in Hong Kong have suggested that he was showing no signs of missing them. He barely acknowledged a couple of the caddies, and did not have too much time for Miguel Angel Jimenez either. Apparently, Jimenez was the recipient of a “Hello!” followed by the briefest of enquiries as to his health. “Nick was in a world of his own,” said Jimenez.
Ian Poulter, who is as close to Faldo as anyone, thinks that Jose Maria Olazabal is the best-placed to get the job in 2010 – and that Olazabal would almost certainly opt for Jimenez as a vice-captain.
Poulter has not spoken to Faldo about his request to be re-appointed. “I’ve only seen a brief mention of it in the papers,” he said. “On the one hand, I can understand why Nick might want another crack at it but, on the other, you have to wonder if, having lost out, he would really want to put himself in the same situation again.”
Though Paul Azinger seems likely to be appointed the US captain for a second time, the feeling on the European Tour is that the modern captaincy should be a one year affair. As Colin Montgomerie has reiterated, there are currently too many good candidates looking to do the job for a first time. After Olazabal, Sandy Lyle is probably the next in line.
Rory McIlroy, the Northern Ireland teenager, lost out to Taiwan’s Lin Wen-tang in a dramatic climax to the Hong Kong Open.
Lin birdied the second playoff hole to edge out McIlroy and Francesco Molinari to become the event’s first Asian winner in a decade.
The three players had finished the co-sanctioned tournament on 15 under and Italy’s Molinari was the first to be eliminated on the opening extra hole when he could manage only a par-four on the 18th before a packed gallery.
Lin appeared to blow his chances on the same hole when he pulled a drive into the rough.
However, he nailed an audacious 150-yard wedge shot through a tiny gap in the trees to land his approach to within six feet of the pin and made a birdie to force a second-hole playoff with Northern Ireland’s McIlroy.
“At first I didn’t know what to do…but I told myself to do my best to hit this shot towards the green and maybe God helped me, because I made it,” Lin said.
On the next hole, the 18th again, McIlroy scuffed his drive into the left rough, while Lin drove straight down the fairway and chipped to within inches of the cup to set up his biggest victory.
The last Asian to win the Hong Kong Open was South Korea’s Kang Wook-soon in 1998.
Lin had earlier squandered a chance to win the tournament in regulation play, missing a short birdie putt on the 18th after a brilliant approach left him a few feet short of the cup.
The 34-year-old, who turned professional in 1996, is one of the island’s top golfers with three Asian Tour victories under his belt.
Overnight leader Oliver Wilson again failed to live up to his promise and clinch a first professional win, the Briton fading over the back nine to finish a disappointing sixth.
Wilson, who has finished second eight times, started strongly with a birdie on the first hole but his putting let him down as he notched up a string of 11 pars and three late bogeys.
Germany’s Bernhard Langer, who was a contender to become the European Tour’s oldest champion at 51, failed to maintain his sizzling earlier form, finishing three shots off the pace at 12 under overall.
Thailand’s Chawalit Plaphol and Spain’s Pablo Larrazabal finished at 13 under, while the Asian Tour’s top golfer Jeev Milkha Singh of India was 11 under.
The 19-year-old McIlroy gave a taste of his potential with some inspired golf and showed maturity beyond his years against a field packed with experienced professionals.
“As long as I can keep putting myself in these positions and feeling the nerves and the adrenaline, I’ll know I’m doing things right,” McIlroy said.
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Carly Booth, the defending champion in the girls’ section of this weekend’s Daily Telegraph Junior Championship in Abu Dhabi, could scarcely have made more telling use of her golfing talents.
The 16-year-old Scot has any number of great results on her golfing CV, starting with a rich assortment of Scottish age-group titles and the 2007 European Junior championship.
On the team front, she has represented GB and Ireland in the latest Curtis Cup – and Europe in the Junior Ryder Cup. Though the latter, which was played in association with the Ryder Cup itself, resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Americans, Booth saved Europe from a whitewash in the 12 singles when she gleaned a half point.
Most recently, Booth has captured the Scottish ‘Champion of Champions’ and won a golf scholarship to Glenalmond, the Scottish public school which has been featuring on BBC 2’s Pride and Privilege.
It all started 10 or so years ago when Booth was a tot who would copy her oldest brother, Wallace, in everything he did. When Wallace started golf, so did she and, before too long, their father, Wally, was building his offspring a course in the fields behind their Comrie home.
Booth Snr, who won a silver medal for wrestling at the 1966 Commonwealth Games, did not play golf but his sporting know-how was such that he could see the virtue in designing greens of no more than 10 feet across. That way, Wallace and Carly would develop sharp iron-play without having to think about it.
He was not wrong and when Sandy Lyle, who won a pro-am with Carly when she was no more than 11, first cast his eye over Booth Snr’s creation, he said he could finally understand how Carly’s short game was so strong.
It is not just in having a course outside the back door that Carly is thrice blessed. In Wallace, she has a regular playing companion good enough to have featured in Scotland’s winning trio at this year’s Eisenhower Trophy. Wallace is aiming his game at the 2009 Walker Cup prior to turning professional.
Carly’s other brother, Paul, is one more successful competitor. A teenager with Down’s syndrome, Paul will be representing Tayside in next year’s powerlifting championships at the Special Olympics in Leicester.
At Glenalmond, Carly’s mission is to balance the ledger by setting some ‘A’ levels alongside her golfing credentials. She has opted for Business Studies, English, PE and Art.
She struggles a little with her Business Studies and, when it comes to English, it has been suggested that she would benefit from reading rather more than merely the latest set of greens. However, as befits one who was pictured standing on one hand on St Andrews’ 18th green during the Curtis Cup, she excels at gymnastics.
She is also a whiz at art and is currently designing a hat as part of an A level project. She loves fashion and where, on the golf course, she comes across as a thoroughly modern Miss, she slips no less enthusiastically into a school uniform which consists of a timeless ankle-length blue skirt topped by a tweed jacket with velvet collar.
Back in the 1800s, she could have taken to the fairways in such an outfit with no questions asked. Mind you, she would very quickly have been in trouble for her brand of long-hitting golf in that the women of those days were expected to limit their drives to between 70 and 80 yards.
“It is not because we doubt a lady’s power to make a longer drive,” advised Lord Moncrieff, “but because that cannot be done without raising the club above the shoulder.”
Despite coming under heavy criticism for leading Europe to their first defeat in nine years to the USA at Valhalla in September Nick Faldo would relish the opportunity to captain Europe in the Ryder Cup again should the chance arise.
Europe lost by five points at Valhalla with Faldo shouldering much of the blame for the defeat for a number of his decisions before and during the event as well as being pilloried in the British media for his leadership style.
The ill-will towards one of Britain’s most successful golfers ever makes it unlikely the 51-year-old will captain Europe at Celtic Manor in 2010 with Jose Maria Olazabal, Sandy Lyle and Ian Woosnam the favourites to take the role.
But Faldo, who is playing in his first European Tour event in a year at the UBS Hong Kong Open this week, insisted he enjoyed the whole experience and would gladly seize the chance to right a few of the wrongs from his first experience as team captain.
“I really enjoyed it,” he said. “I loved the experience and I thought the team atmosphere was great. We all got on great and I loved that buzz.
“A month after I thought ‘wow, I miss the guys’. I hadn’t been in that situation for 11 years since my last Ryder Cup.
“It is such a special event and if something happens further down the road I will certainly think about.”
Colin Montgomerie, who is also playing in Hong Kong this week, opposed the idea of Faldo returning and instead backed fellow Scot Lyle for the captaincy.
“I think it is a one-hit deal and I think it should remain that way,” he said.
“I have nothing against anyone trying to do it twice but I just think it should be a one-deal and that is your go.
“It would be a shame if Sandy (Lyle) did miss out. I would personally like to see him involved.”
SINGAPORE, Nov 12 (Reuters) - British Open runner-up Ian Poulter has pulled out of the Singapore Open after being unable to replace the driver he had stolen at the HSBC Champions Tournament in Shanghai which ended on Monday.
“I am really gutted,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I have been thinking about it for four hours and I have decided to withdraw because my new driver will not arrive on time.
“It is disappointing because I did not come all this way not to play. But with so many world ranking points at stake, if I played badly (by using a different driver) I may have lost ground.”
The tournament starts on Thursday but world number 25 Poulter would have been unable to secure a replacement driver until Friday.
India’s Anirban Lahiri will take the Englishman’s place in the field for the $5 million event at Sentosa Golf Club, the richest national open on the Asian Tour.
Three-time Major winner to sign a third contract with Wilson Golf
CHICAGO, October 22, 2008 - Wilson Golf, the Chicago-based company whose irons have captured more Major titles than any other manufacturer, today announced that it has reached an agreement to re-sign reigning Open and US PGA champion Padraig Harrington. The multi-year contract was approved just one week after Harrington was named 2008 PGA Player of the Year, and quells speculation that Harrington was considering competing offers.
The terms of the new contract, which will be signed in Dublin, Ireland, today set a record for Wilson Golf and ensure that the popular Irishman will carry the distinctive red and white Wilson Staff bag as he seeks to complete a Grand Slam of Majors in 2009, starting with the US Masters next April.
“I’m absolutely delighted to have finalized an agreement with Wilson for a third time in my career and have great confidence that my Wilson Staff clubs can help me achieve more success in the years ahead,” said Harrington, who first signed with Wilson in 1998. Since then he has moved from 78th to 4th in the Official World Rankings - winning 23 tournaments and amassing over $25 million in prize-money.
“Wilson is more than just a brand name - it’s a unique mixture of golfing heritage and modern R&D expertise that combines to produce outstanding clubs,” he added. “I love being part of a tradition that includes the likes of Snead and Sarazen. There’s no doubt in my mind that Wilson Staff clubs give me a genuine edge over my rivals for the top prizes in the game and I’m sure that they have been a major factor in my success to date.”
“We’re very proud that Padraig is a part of the Wilson portfolio of professional athletes,” said Chris Considine, President of Wilson Sporting Goods. “We partner with athletes that embody the same competitive spirit and determination as exemplified in the Wilson brand, and we’ve found these qualities in global players like Roger Federer, Venus and Serena Williams and Tom Brady. Padraig showed this past year that he more than belongs in this elite company.”
“This is a great day for Wilson Golf and our Wilson Staff brand,” said Tim Clarke, General Manager of Wilson Golf. “Padraig is a tremendous competitor who works harder than anyone to accomplish his goals. To retain Padraig, in light of the many competitive options that came his way after this past year, gives everyone associated with the company as well as our customers a tremendous boost and confidence in the future.”
As he has throughout his tenure as a Wilson Staff Advisory member, Padraig will continue to contribute to the development of Wilson Staff clubs. His latest contributions include the new Tw9 wedges and Smooth driver, both of which currently are in his competitive bag. Details of these and other Wilson Staff products can be found by clicking here.
After a season in which golf’s world number one Tiger Woods won a major championship on one leg, it’s hard to care about the megabucks Shanghai Champions event.
Autumn has become the Mardi Gras of sport. Every day there is a new excess. Last weekend, the All Blacks and Australia played a nakedly commercial rugby match in Hong Kong, while the West Indies and England squabbled over Sir Allen Stanford’s cricket millions.
This weekend, a band of golfing millionaires are playing for a prize of over £500,000 in Shanghai. Next week, the tennis players will be feeding at the Oriental trough. But does anyone care?
The viewing figures for the Stanford match were pathetic. The match between Australia and New Zealand reportedly generated £5 million in ticket sales, but how many of you tuned in to the coverage? And as for the HSBC Champions – it is little more than a business proposition. The local golf fans are attending in numbers, they just happen to be very small ones.
The golf season just past has been one of the greatest in history. But did we all shed a tear when Ross Fisher chipped into the water in Shanghai 12 months ago? Did we all run around the sofa in celebration when Adam Scott shot a final-round 61 to win the Commercialbank Qatar Masters or did the goldfish leap out of its bowl when Tiger Woods holed a chip in Dubai?
Not a chance. At such times most people were getting on with the stuff of Sundays. It was only when the major championships lit up our screens or when Nick Faldo was being minced at the Ryder Cup, that people put down their shears and rushed indoors. For all the money and the glitz on offer in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, we still value tradition above all else.
The year 2008 was wonderful. It all started at the Masters. It has to, because that is when the golfing season really starts. There are a few sad fanatics like me who will tune in to a February matchplay event in the middle of an Arizona desert. But most normal human beings recognise that spring and the golf season begin amid the pink azaleas and crystal bunkers of Augusta.
Maybe 2008 was not a vintage Masters. The British contingent came and went as usual and the final day lacked the thrill of uncertainty. Maybe the roars did not come but, to the purist, Trevor Immelman’s victory was a deeply satisfying reward for old-fashioned values like straight driving and piercing iron-play. Of course, Immelman’s win cannot compete with Woods’s victory at the US Open in June. What can? It is surely the single greatest sporting achievement of all time. The man could barely stand. His left knee was like tangled spaghetti. His tibia was fractured in two places. Yet Woods beat the world’s best standing on one leg.
Even the supporting cast was a story. Lee Westwood overcame sickness to finish a shot shy of the play-off. And then there was Rocco Mediate, the smiling Italian-American everyman, like Joe the Plumber with a golf bag. Rocco very nearly did it. But in the end he had to yield to what Seve – never far from our thoughts – would have called ‘destino’. I still don’t really believe what Woods did, and I was there.
The following month’s major at Birkdale was lashed by violent winds and from out of the sandstorm emerged Greg Norman. As he walked up to the 18th green, in the lead of the Open at the age of 53, Norman received a standing ovation. Faldo was there in a suede jacket. So was the new bride, Chris Evert. It was another miracle.
Only it was Saturday. Norman couldn’t survive another 24 hours and he was hunted down by Padraig Harrington, like an Irish Captain Ahab. Before the Open there were fears that Harrington would not be able to defend his title because of an injured wrist. But he not only defended it, he won it from a charging Ian Poulter. A month later Harrington would prove that he had the second-strongest mind in golf and the most manic eyes when he saw off Sergio Garcia in a thrilling finish to the PGA.
What a season and the Ryder Cup was still to come. It was some match. Ian Poulter blazed with intensity, but Faldo spoke and acted like a holiday tour rep. Paul Azinger whipped up the home crowd. JB Holmes took it to the edge, Boo Weekley whipped his imaginary horse down the slope of the first tee and Anthony Kim was so pumped up he didn’t even know his match was over.
Kim is playing his first tournament as a European Tour member in Shanghai this week and must be wondering what it is all about. Friday’s play was washed out due to rain. The second round of the HSBC Champions was then played on Saturday, with four of Europe’s beaten Ryder Cup team shooting up to the top of the leaderboard.
Well, look around you Anthony. It’s about money. Shanghai is a city of weird contradictions. There are Dickensian slums, neon McDonald’s and opulent hotels. As the recession hit between the wars Noel Coward wrote Private Lives in one of Shanghai’s swankiest hotels. History seems to be repeating itself.
It’s just that these days it is the likes of Phil Mickelson and Roger Federer who are the ocean people living in luxury on the edges of a broken empire.
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Sergio Garcia is the new world No 2 to Tiger Woods.
The 28-year-old Spaniard overtook Phil Mickelson at Sheshan earlier this morning when he made a 12-foot birdie putt to defeat England’s Oliver Wilson at the second extra hole in a play-off at the HSBC Champions.
Wilson, also 28, was on his own at 14 under par after 17 holes when Garcia, in the party in front, holed from six feet for a birdie at the par-five 18th to join him at the top of the leader board.
At that, the Englishman needed a closing birdie of his own if he were to win. He was on course after his first two shots but, when he left his approach 25 yards short of the flag, thoughts turned to how he needed to get down in two not to lose.
To his credit, he holed a second putt of 10 feet to stay alive, only to lose out to his more experienced opponent two holes later.
Woods, as he continues to recuperate, would have noticed at once that he now has Garcia at his heels. The American has always enjoyed keeping this once somewhat cocky Spaniard in his place and he will be itching to do the same again on his return.
“We don’t need to be close,” Garcia said of his relationship with Woods in Golf Digest recently.
“I don’t think it’s necessary for us to be buddies. But not being close friends doesn’t mean you are enemies. You have friends and then you have ‘friends’, people who are like family.”
However, Garcia could not have been more respectful towards Woods when he was asked today if he thought he might now reach the No 1 spot.
“It probably depends on how much time Tiger takes off and if I keep playing well,” he began.
“It’s possible, mainly because he is injured, but we know that as soon as he comes out, he’s going to play well again and be tough. He has what it takes to get away from us a little bit.”
Garcia added: “When we talk about Tiger, we are looking at the kind of player that you don’t see very often in history, if there’s ever been one like him at all. But it’s exciting to be in the same area. You know when you play with him that you will beat him sometimes but most of the time you’re going to get beat.
“It will be good learning experience to be close to a player who has driven everyone to a new high level. The only thing I can do is to keep doing what I’m doing.”
Improving his putting is what made the main difference to Garcia’s play in the last 12 months. Woods is justly famed for making the putts that matter and today Garcia made two of them – the one which lifted him into the play-off and the other his winning 12-footer.
Garcia felt for Wilson, who was understandably flat after what was his fifth second place this year and his eighth all told. “Oliver’s playing great and it’s going to happen soon,” he said.
Though Wilson knows all about the 30 and more second places which helped to make Harrington the great champion he is today, he was not ready to enjoy the positives from a week in which he looked the part among the world’s best.
“I used to be pleased to finish second but it’s just getting to the stage where second is not good enough,” he said. “It’s about time I took my chance.”
By now, though, he will surely be priding himself on the way he did not let Garcia take the title at the 72nd. Also, his thoughts will surely turn to his cheque for £338,275 and his great start to the £20 million Race to Dubai.
In the Year of the Rat, someone made off with Ian Poulter’s driver in the HSBC Champions - and there was more bad news when Anthony Kim was disqualified.
On a happier note, England’s Oliver Wilson, who is still chasing his first win, was in the lead at 12 under par when bad light stopped play in the fourth round.
On what is now the tournament’s fifth day, Wilson returns to a three-footer on his third or 57th green which could take him two ahead of Ogilvy and three clear of Sergio Garcia and Phil Mickelson.
There were posters all around offering a reward for Poulter’s Cobra driver. The thief, whose back view was captured on camera, whipped the club from outside the players’ lounge before heading for the professional’s shop where he had a few swings.
Heaven knows what kind of punishment might attach to pinching a driver in these parts. But whatever it might be, it would surely pale into insignificance as against what Poulter has in mind for the fellow should they happen to meet.
Poulter used a back-up driver he did not much like in his third round 74, though you would have to assume that he liked it rather better when three birdies at the start of Round No 4 took him to four under.
Kim’s disqualification had its origins in what happened on the walk to the eighth tee. He was “tapping” his driver on the path when he inadvertently knocked the club-face against a sprinkler-head. Only after he had hit an oddly wayward drive and a still more alarming provisional did he realise he could have done the club a mischief.
At the ninth, he spoke to a rules official who very soon confirmed that he had broken Rule 4-3 b in damaging a club “other than in the normal course of play.” Because he had used the implement in its damaged state, the disqualification was automatic. “I’m shocked,” said the player, who was presumably wondering what he should do with his healthy whack of appearance money.
Because Kim was four over par after seven, there were those who suggested that his “tapping” of the club could have amounted to something a little more violent. Against that, there were plenty to confirm that thin-faced drivers damage easily.
Wilson has not done anything since the Ryder Cup, mostly because he was thrown by the scale of the event. However, he will tell you that he has been a different man since those Saturday morning foursomes when he and Henrik Stenson combined to beat Mickelson and Kim.
“I feel there is nothing I can’t do in golf,” he warned.
November 2008
November 27th, 2008 
