Montgomerie looking forward to Woods match

Colin Montgomerie, the dominant Ryder Cup player of the last 10 years, will clash with the game's foremost talent in a mouth-watering opening to the 35th match at Oakland Hills on Friday.

Tiger Woods, for five years the world number one until earlier this month, and U.S. Masters champion Phil Mickelson tee off the opening fourballs for the United States against Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington of Europe.

U.S. captain Hal Sutton has chosen a high-risk strategy by pairing his two top-ranked players -- Woods is ranked second in the world and Mickelson fourth -- together.

Montgomerie, who won four-and-a-half points in Europe's win in the last match in 2002 at the Belfry, was bursting with anticipation when asked about the match.

"We have a job to do and I have a great partner -- a fantastic partner -- and whoever we were playing we were going to be confident," he told reporters.

"We can win that game and if we do it will have a dramatic effect on the day. It would be huge to see that we can cope with their top two.

"Everybody involved in that group, the four players, the four caddies will have the hair on the back of their neck standing up tomorrow morning.

"But we are going to have dinner together tonight with this view -- that we can beat them. We will go to bed with that view and we will wake up tomorrow morning with that view."

The other pairings set Davis Love and Chad Campbell against Europeans Darren Clarke and Miguel Angel Jimenez, Chris Riley and Stewart Cink against Paul McGinley and Luke Donald and David Toms and Jim Furyk against Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood.

After the fourballs, in which each player hits his own ball and the lowest score counts, there will be four afternoon foursomes in which the pairings share a ball and hit alternate shots.

The action tees off at 0810 local time (1210 GMT).