What will Colin Montgomerie be like as Europe’s captain in the forthcoming Ryder Cup is a question often asked these days and the answer is becoming clearer with each passing week. We have a better idea early in 2010 than we had late in 2009 as to how he will operate when he leads Europe in an attempt to regain the Ryder Cup from the US in October.
Montgomerie showed his meticulous nature when he took the trouble to attend the Vivendi Trophy with Seve Ballesteros in Paris last September, despite only having a peripheral role.
In Thailand earlier this month, when player captain of the victorious Europe team in the Royal Trophy against Asia, he was inclusive and democratic, stressing repeatedly how Europe was a 16-man team, not one of eight players each with their caddies. All 16 were required to attend two dinners. As a result “...We all left Thailand with a sense of camaraderie and team spirit that is so often non existent in the traditionally selfish game of golf,” Colin Byrne, Alexander Noren’s caddie, noted in the Irish Times.
Montgomerie knew that captaining a team he was playing in was going to be difficult and that is how it turned out.
“Leaderboards can only tell you so much” he said. “They can’t offer insights into the dynamics of how a certain match is being played out. It underlines the need [in the Ryder Cup] for at least three very good assistant captains, possibly four, for when I have to leave one match to keep an eye on another one.”
Advertisement
Montgomerie would not be everyone’s idea of being “one of the boys” but he can make jokes and did so and was the butt of them as well. “Remember boys, there are seven of you and I only have three wild cards” ” he said to his men in one team meeting. In another he said: “It is useful to see seven of my potential clients [in the Ryder Cup team] at close quarters”, to which Henrik Stenson shot back: “Monty, we’re watching you too.”
He even managed to hole a 20-foot putt on the last green and thus continue his record of not having lost a singles in either Ryder or Royal Trophy competition.
And then he saw Stenson, put in a position in the order to bring home the bacon, do just that, holing a knee-trembling six-footer also for a half to prevent the contest being decided by a sudden death playoff.
“I hope it’s not as close as that in the Ryder Cup,” Montgomerie said. “But Henrik Stenson was put at number eight for a reason. He looks a certainty for Celtic Manor and the way he closed out both of his games on the last two days - when, by his own admission, he was not at his best - tells you a lot about his grit and his character. It has never been a problem for me to find something extra when I have been wearing European colours, as I was here. It’s fair to say I saw the same never-say-die spirit in Henrik, and it is what I want from all my players. That can make the difference between winning and losing Ryder Cups.”
Mark James was Captain Humorous at Brookline in 1999, Sam Torrance Captain Marvellous at The Belfry three years later. Bernhard Langer, was exceptional at Oakland Hills, Woosnam was outstanding at the K Club. So far Monty is Captain Meticulous. He has scarcely put a foot wrong. Mind you, there is still plenty of time for him to do so.
Advertisement
Wie enjoys a trip to the White House
Michelle Wie’s gilded life continues. Having played an important part in the victory by the US in the Solheim Cup team last summer and won her first professional tournament, the American prodigy spent Tuesday visiting the White House with her Solheim Cup teammates. She shook hands with President Obama and put a lei, best described as a Hawaian garland, over Obama’s shoulders. Like a couple of old gossips they exchanged news about the private, pre-university school in Hawaii both had attended. Obama has proved to be one of the most active of all golf-playing Presidents. It is not known whether or not he booked a game or even took a few tips from Wie.
Mickelson picks up slack as Woods continues to lie low
News of one famous golfer’s recent divorce has highlighted the divorce status of another. As it was revealed that Greg Norman and Chris Evert had got divorced in December 2009, 18 months after their $500,000 wedding on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, so the question was: what is happening to Tiger Woods and his marriage to the former Elin Nordegren?
No money changed hands between Norman and Evert, apparently, which is probably just as well since Norman is said to have had to pay Laura, his first wife, $100m, in order to divorce her and marry Evert and he is stumping up this money in instalments.
Advertisement
One website in the US is reporting that Woods is in a clinic in Arizona, while one British newspaper reports he is in a clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa. With every day that passes the fact that Woods has not been seen or photographed for nearly six weeks becomes even more remarkable. Where is he? What is he doing? What has happened to the divorce plans? Has Elin hired a lawyer to work on divorce proceedings or not? Is he having treatment? When will he return to golf?
Wherever golfers gather, Woods is a topic of discussion. It was so at a lunch in London at which IMG, Woods’s management company, launched “Golfing World”, what they modestly described as an exciting new golf television programming concept that would air around the world at the start of next month.
After Michel Masquelier, the president of IMG Media, had outlined the format of a programme that will air for 90 minutes from Monday to Friday each week for 48 weeks of the year in as many as 25 countries around the world, he was asked the inevitable Tiger Woods question. “When Woods reappears will Golfing World get an immediate interview with him and cover the story?”
Disappointingly, the answer was no. “Don’t hold your breath for Tiger Woods in the first edition” Guy Kinnings, Montgomerie’s manager and the man in charge of IMG golf outside the US, said drily. Pushed to say whether he knew where Woods was or what IMG’s star client was doing, Kinnings replied: “I don’t know.” If Kinnings doesn’t know where Woods is or when he will return, what chance have the rest of us?
There was some good news for golf fans in the US this week though with the announcement that Phil Mickelson is going to play five events in a row starting in San Diego at the end of this month. The significance of this is that it seems as though Mickelson is taking up some of the slack of Woods’s absence. He would not normally play so many in succession.
Advertisement
Mickelson is leaner than he has been for years after spending more time in the gym, putting better than ever thanks to some tips from Dave Stockton last year, and, by all accounts, rarin’ to go.
But golf is coming to something when the news that the best left-hander in the world and the second-best known lefty after President Obama is intending to play more early season golf than he normally does is used to compensate for the absence of Woods.
First all-electronic golf magazine gets mixed reviews
Global Golf Post duly appeared on Monday, the first all-electronic golf magazine in the world. (Golfweek has produced an electronic version since 2002 that is distributed to subscribers each Tuesday a day or so before they receive their hard copies of the magazine. GGP is the only all-electronic golf magazine.)
I found it to be quite long (29 pages) and a bit of a handful to open and read and I would have liked to have tumbled across a few more unexpected pieces. The interview with Peter Dawson filled that category but another one or two would have been welcome. GGP has to find an identity of its own, clearly different from Golfweek and Golf World.
Advertisement
Here are some comments about the first GGP from other golf journalists. “I come back to what I said originally about digital magazines” one wrote in an e-mail. “Most people who go on line are going to go straight to a website and get their information quickly and move on, rather than plough through a digital magazine that’s almost 30 pages long.”
Several pointed out that though there was a report of the season-opening tournament in Hawaii, the story was pulled together from wire service copy. No one from GGP was there. “It seemed to me to be filled with lots of wire rewrites, stuff people already have seen on various websites. Maybe that’s why it’s free” someone else noted.
Another colleague made the same point in a different way. “Having the game story for the SBS Championship played in Hawaii written by Mike Purkey in Virginia sort of takes the “Global” out of Global Golf Post, no?”.
One journalist, experienced in the ways of weekly magazines, had some sympathy. New magazine, small staff, uncertain about costs etc, he said, continuing: “It’s expensive to send folks out to cover tournaments. But to me you cannot cover this game with any true authenticity sitting behind a desk ... you have to be out there in the trenches, and talking to players to get a true pulse.”
I liked the tone of the reporting of events - serious and thoughtful but not glib - and I liked the number of words in the magazine, though one colleague thought it was too text heavy. I understand that amateur golf from Europe will get regular coverage in upcoming issues. Is there enough distinction between the columnists in that first edition, I wondered? If I were to mark GGP out of ten I would give its debut issue a 7 - and wish it every good luck for the future. I hope it succeeds.
Avalanche of complaints over the bad weather
It is one of the most famous of London’s gentlemen’s clubs where political coups have been plotted for centuries by members and guests eating oysters, liver and bacon and Scotch Woodcock and drinking claret. But one day this week, as Britain endured the worst cold spell for years, there was only one topic of conversation. “The weather. It’s hopeless,” one man reported as he greeted a visitor. “They’re all moaning about not being able to play golf.”