Sports Calendar

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Alas, barring a fine win at the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles this week, it will be a minor miracle if Colin Montgomerie grabs one of the two Ryder Cup wild cards. Of those players in contention for Nick Fadlo's two picks, Ian Poulter, Darren Clarke, Paul Casey and Paul McGinley all seem to have stronger cases than Monty.

If "The Burly Scot" (copyright golf writers worldwide) doesn't make Faldo's team, Europe may be the stronger for it, given Monty's poor form. But without him, let there be no doubt, this Ryder Cup will be a less colourful pageant.

What other European golfer of the past 40 years has provided us with such a gamut of skill, fun, outrage, emotion, and sheer brattishness? There is none to compare with Montgomerie, and my life around golf tournaments has been much the better for it. Seve Ballesteros, obviously, had a carnival of emotions which accompanied his game, but even he didn't have the marvellous, inconsistent spurts of temper, kindness and charm which makes life with Monty so beautiful.

Every golf writer under the sun has his own particular canon of Monty Moments. Mine are as varied as the rest, having covered him for years and written up his adventures in, first, Scotland on Sunday and then The Herald, two of Scotland's principal newspapers. In reporting, when you are as localised as that - covering a Scot for the Scots - things can become mighty stifling and prickly around the subject.

So we came to one particular Masters at Augusta in the mid-to-late 1990s, by which time Monty was well familiar with some of my compassionless reporting of him. Like a lot of people, I always got on well with Alastair McLean, Monty's likeable caddie of the time, and Alastair and I were standing by the clubhouse after a particularly torrid round for Monty out on the course, with Alastair holding a cold beer in his hands.

Suddenly, whom do we spot 10 yards away coming clumping towards us but the bold Monty himself, carrying two beers: one for him and one for Alastair. I caught the look in Monty's eye right away and the dilemma was faintly hilarious for all of us: with Alastair already quaffing, and me having no beer to hand, and Monty carying two beers, there was nothing else for it.

"Oh God, okay, here you go then, Graham!" he said, letting slip a beaming smile. Right there and then I thought, whatever else you get up to, Monty, you're a good man at heart. There was also a certain divine retribution about me then having to spend the next ten minutes trading excruciating small-talk with someone whom I had often lacerated in print, and who had just bought me a beer.

I'm highly looking forward to this year's Ryder Cup, for all sorts of reasons. I suspect, though, for a lot of people, The Burly Scot will be sorely missed.

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Hero Of The Week:

Being a golf fanatic, and living in Scotland, my hero of the week, not for the first time, is God, for laying out such a sumptuous topography in my country which makes playing golf so magical and enthralling. Everyone the world over knows of St Andrews, Muirfield, Troon, etc, but do they know of such gems as Lamlash on Arran, West Kilbride, Kingussie, Crail, Edzell, Tobermory or Grantown-on-Spey, to name a random few of the spate of memorable (and relatively cheap) Scottish golf courses?

In my office hangs a sign bearing the inscription "The Lord Knoweth Them That Are His", (taken from Paul's second letter to Timothy, chapter 2, verse 19) and, perversely, I often relate these words to my own good fortune, specifically in relation to golf.

The Week In 60 Seconds

The future possibility of golf at the Olympics shot through my mind in the 60 seconds or so that it took Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, to simper on Monday about a Scottish Olympic squad, come the glory day of full-blown independence. In 2012, were such a scenario to unfold, we'd have blokes like Monty and Paul Lawrie leading the charge of the Saltire. Why, you're quite right, 'Eck' Salmond...bring it on, guys!