Monty confident about dreaded "third week in July"

Colin Montgomerie can face the Open at Carnoustie during his dreaded "third week in July" in confident mood after his emphatic victory at Loch Lomond on Saturday.

The Open championship has been an unhappy hunting ground for Montgomerie. He missed the halfway cut at Royal Birkdale last year for the fifth time in seven years.

"I always seem to save my worst golf for the third week in July," he lamented.

But the 36-year-old Scot now has his first individual victory in Scotland to go with his part in the Dunhill Cup-winning team event at St Andrews in 1995.

The remorseless efficiency of his closing seven-under-par 64, containing nine birdies in 12 holes from the fifth to the 16th, produced an emotional triumph, his 20th in Europe.

Montgomerie said he wanted to savour the victory before shifting his thoughts to Carnoustie.

"I'll have to be level-headed and careful and calm down and start over again. I'll have to be confident and sensible at the same time."

He is ready for the narrow fairways and heavy rough he will encounter on a layout where many are predicting the title will be won with an over-par score.

Carnoustie is staging the Open for the first time since Tom Watson won the first of his five titles in 1975 so Montgomerie has not played a major here.

But he did play the Scottish Open on the east coast course in 1995 and 1996 with mixed results.

His opening 64 in 1995 gave him a share of the course record as he took third place. Then in 1996 he shot a final round of 81 in a stiff wind to tie for 16th place.

This time he wants to transport the fans from Loch Lomond to cheer him on.

"This is very special for me, coming from this side of Scotland myself," said Montgomerie after his win. He was born in Glasgow and spent his boyhood at Troon on the west coast.

"They are superb and knowledgeable crowds. Most of them are golfers and the support I had today was unbelievable.

"I'd love to transport them to the east coast, although I'm sure I'll get a lot of support over there, too. I look forward to that."

Montgomerie's last round at Loch Lomond was every bit as satisfying as the other great finishing rounds of his career, the 10-under-par 62 in the Irish Open at Druids Glen in 1996 and the 64 as he took the PGA title at Wentworth last year.

He started and finished with bogey fives, both after bunkered approaches.

"But to have nine birdies in 12 holes around a course of this quality against a field of this quality, knowing what I had to do with how well (Lee) Westwood and the others were playing...it was important for me to be seen coming through with another birdie every 10 minutes."

Eventually, he wore down the opposition. Westwood double bogeyed the 10th to drop out of the lead and could not recover. Spanish teenager Sergio Garcia, who had opened the tournament with a 62, might have seized advantage of Montgomerie's closing bogey by forcing a playoff.

But he bogeyed the 16th and the last to finish in a three-way tie for second place with Swedes Mats Lanner and Michael Jonzon, three strokes off the lead.

Except for one 25-foot birdie putt, Montgomerie's birdies came on short putts after superb iron play, five of them from a putt of three feet or less.

"My distance on the iron shots was superb. At the 15th I had 155 yards to go and I hit it 155 yards with an eight iron.

"At the 16th I'll stand there a long,long time before I hit an iron shot as good as that. I had 203 yards and I hit a five iron 203. That's the key for me."

Having knocked one monkey off his back by winning an individual event in Scotland, Montgomerie will tackle the other bigger one this week. He has yet to win a major title.

Reuters