Colin Montgomerie says he will retire after his next tournament

twilight zone

PICTURE the scene. The 72nd green at Valderrama in Spain a fortnight today, and Colin Montgomerie needs to hole a 10ft putt to win the Volvo Masters. The ball rolls crisply and unerringly towards the cup before dropping in to give the 39-year-old Scot his first European Tour victory since August 5, 2001.

The victory is hugely significant, and not just because it is Montgomerie's first for 15 months, the longest he has had to wait for a tournament win since 1993. The triumph also puts to the acid test a remark which has intrigued Monty-watchers since he uttered it last week.

"I would like to win and then go," he said. "I could do it, you know, I could win one of the bigger European Tour events and call it a day. At least, I'd like to think I could."

Well, on this continent at least, they don't come much bigger than the end-of-season Volvo Masters, which Monty has won once before, again in 1993. A win at Valderrama would put him fourth in the Volvo order of merit, a not ignominious position from which to take a graceful departure from tournament golf.

Monty and newsprint have become inseparable since the burly golfer's finest hour at The Belfry four weeks ago when his four and a half points inspired Europe to victory over America in the Ryder Cup. The frenzy will increase with the launch of his autobiography, The Real Monty, in London tomorrow.

Judging by excerpts already published, the last couple of years have been even more harrowing for the player than most of us suspected. The realisation, at the 2000 Open Championship in St Andrews, that his marriage to Eimear could no longer withstand the strain of his compulsive competitiveness, led to lonely nights of tears and 3am walks round the streets near his Chelsea hotel.

"To say that I was shattered is an understatement," he wrote. "I felt that everything I had done, everything I had achieved, just fell through the floor. I cried a lot behind that (hotel) door, it was a bad, bad time. I felt a failure, immediately. And I felt that my whole life had just come to a complete grinding halt."

Had the marriage ended in divorce, instead of being revived the following January, Montgomerie says he'd have given up golf because he would have been unable to cope. The reconciliation has been permanent, but Monty has had to reappraise his life and priorities.

If, in his 40th year, he wins at Valderrama in a fortnight and announces his retirement - a prospect about as likely as him flying past my office window naked - where would that leave his place in golfing history?

He is already the highest earning player the European Tour has known. His (pounds) 9,479,636 winnings are a staggering (pounds) 3m ahead of the second most successful player, Bernhard Langer. They are also more than double those of the 10th highest earner, Nick Faldo. But if purses continue to get larger , this is not a list that Monty will head indefinitely.

In terms of tournaments won on the European Tour, Monty has been prolific, but nowhere near as prolific as Seve Ballesteros or Langer. Between 1989 and 2001, Monty clutched the winner's cheque 26 times in official tournaments. Ballesteros, by comparison, won 50 times between 1976 and 1995. Although the Spaniard's span was considerably longer, he started out as a professional at a much earlier age, while the experience of the last 15 months would suggest Monty's momentum towards more titles has started to slow down. Already in fifth place, if he does continue playing he could hope to catch or overtake Faldo (30 tournaments) and Ian Woosnam (29). But second-placed Langer (41) is, like Ballesteros, out of reach.

Montgomerie, on the other hand, could retire in a fortnight and sleep easy at night in the belief that his record seven successive orders of merit will never be bettered. He will also have a place, alongside the likes of Faldo, Ballesteros and Langer, as one of the European Ryder Cup greats.

When it comes to the most important judgment of the lot, winning the Majors, Monty will brood darkly on the missed opportunities of the 1990s, when he was at one stage the second best golfer in the world.

But, ultimately, this is surely too harsh a judgment. Who would deny that the Holland football sides of the 1970s weren't among the greatest of all time even though no Dutch hands ever clutched the Jules Rimet trophy?

Monty, when he is judged in history, will be regarded as a golfer of outsize character and personality who was pretty damn unlucky not to win at least one of the prizes he so desperately craves.

In an age of sporting uniformity, Colin Montgomerie - either of them - will not easily be forgotten.

Amid the acres of print which have been devoted to Monty in the last four weeks, the funniest, most revealing, insight into his character came when he was interviewed about playing snakes and ladders with his three small children. Yes, snakes and ladders. Parents, in my experience, split into polarised camps when they play games with their kids. The first group (the namby-pambies) contrive to let their little darlings come out on top. The second group, of which I confess I am a member, tries to win as a matter of principle.

Monty, being Monty, is also in the second camp but takes the concept a step further. In a Daily Telegraph interview he was asked why he got so upset if Olivia (9), Venetia (6) or Cameron (4) managed to get the better of him. He tried, very unconvincingly, to deny the charge.

"I didn't throw a wobbly over losing at snakes and ladders," he told the interviewer. "I could have done. I could have done. I mean, I would be pleased for the kids if they won, but I would be disappointed with myself, that is true. But I didn't ever completely lose the plot because I lost at snakes and ladders. I am bad, but I am not that bad. I would just think, 'I hope I win at snakes and ladders the next time'. It sounds awful to say it, but I do try to beat them. It is the competitiveness, it is inbred in me."

This insight into his family life, and his confession that he has to be in control of events (to the extent that he once sat for 14 hours in the cockpit of a plane carrying him back from Singapore, staring at the controls), reveals The Real Monty. But with his 40th birthday looming next June, he now has to decide whether he wants to be a golfer in decline or start the first chapter of the new book of his life.

Montgomerie has already conceded that very few, if any, golfers improve in their forties. He is also aware that his time in the sport has coincided with a significant shift towards younger, more athletic, players.

Will he have the judgment to know when the final putt should be sunk?

The full Monty European Tour wins (26) 1989 Portuguese Open 1991 Scandanavian Masters 1993 Heineken Dutch Open, Volvo Masters 1994 Peugeot Open de Espana, Murphy's English Open, Volvo German Open 1995 Volvo German Open, Trophee Lancome 1996 Dubai Desert Classic, Murphy's Irish Open, Canon European Masters 1997 Compaq European Grand Prix, Murphy's Irish Open 1998 Volvo PGA Championship.

One-2-One British Masters, Linde German Masters 1999 Benson & Hedges International, Volvo PGA Championship, Standard Life Loch Lomond, Volvo Scandanavian Masters, BMW International Open 2000 Novotel Perrier Open de France, Volvo PGA Championship 2001 Murphy's Irish Open, Volvo Scandanavian Masters 2002 None, but Volvo Masters still to be played Other wins (6) 1996 Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge 1997 Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, King Hassan Trophy 1999 Cisco World Match Play Championship 2000 Skins Game 2001 Ericsson Masters Order of merit positions 1987: 164; 1988: 52; 1989: 25; 1990: 14; 1991: 4; 1992: 3; 1993: 1; 1994: 1; 1995: 1; 1996: 1; 1997: 1; 1998: 1; 1999: 1; 2000: 6; 2001: 5; 2002: 5 (Volvo Masters to be played).

Teams Ryder Cup: 1991, 93, 95 (winners), 97 (winners), 99, 2002 (winners) Alfred Dunhill Cup: 1988, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95 (winners), 96, 97, 98, 2000 World Cup: 1988, 91, 92, 93, 97 (individual winner), 98, 99

Copyright 2002
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