Graphic: the demons that lie in wait

It is the summer of 1987, the lead-up to The Open at Muirfield. Colin Montgomerie, a recent graduate in law and business management of Houston Baptist University in Texas, is driving his mother’s Honda Prelude to a job interview with a difference. He has arranged to meet Peter German and Ian Todd of IMG, the sports and entertainment management behemoth, on the 10th tee on the Ailsa course, Turnberry.

Montgomerie has been a successful amateur golfer. A few weeks from now, he will win the Scottish championship and in September 1987 will compete in the Walker Cup. Yet he has never believed he will compete in the pros, nor has he been encouraged to do so by his father, James.

Driving down the Ayrshire coast from the family home in Troon, 24-year-old Montgomerie is thinking about managing golfers, not becoming one. He never finds out what the IMG guys were doing on the front nine. Maybe they had bigger fish to fry in the days before the most important week of their year. Be in no doubt, though, from the moment he strikes the ball towards the old lighthouse, to the raised eyebrows that greet his final putt, Montgomerie has their undivided attention.

“I scored 29 on the back nine, not even thinking what I was doing. I was on a job interview, watching my Ps and Qs, watching what I was saying,” says Montgomerie, 22 years and an entire career later. “They turned round and said, ‘You’re not going to work for us, we’re going to work for you’. That changed my whole career plan from being a client manager to actually playing the game.”

Montgomerie went home to tell his father that he had a job, just not the one they had in mind when he left that morning. “I came from a very conservative, non-risk background,” he says. “My dad would always go and watch amateur golf, not pro golf, that was the era. I was okay, but never thought I was good enough to compete . We said we’d give it two years, then we’d see. So dad funded me for those two years and I’d won within that period, at the Portuguese Open in ’89, my second year on Tour.”

Montgomerie is at Loch Lomond for the Barclays Scottish Open, a course and a competition that he has a strong connection with. He was a winner here a decade ago, and married Gaynor Knowles on these banks last year. Yet he is speaking more of Turnberry, a venue with a unique place in his mind.

Montgomerie’s mother, Elizabeth, who died of lung cancer in 1991, was a member at Turnberry. That Honda he was driving on his way to tearing up the back nine was sold to George Brown, the greens superintendent at the Ailsa course. “I used to go and play the Arran course, before the Kintyre course came along,” recalls Montgomerie. “It was a bit of a lesser course because I was too young to play on the Ailsa course.”

Montgomerie now has closer ties to Turnberry than to any other course, even Troon, where his father was secretary. His name is on the academy building that was opened there in 2000 and sometimes he talks about the club and its staff like a member, one of the 150 who played a medal round over the Ailsa course recently and lost a total of 480 balls in the rough that flanks the fairways like muggers in the shadows of an alleyway.

At a press conference last Wednesday before the Scottish Open, he threw out a question from an American journalist who suggested Turnberry was softer than other links challenges on the Royal and Ancient roster. Montgomerie predicts a fierce and dramatic struggle that will promote Turnberry on that list.

“It is now ranked No 1 in Britain,” he says, “but we haven’t been here for 15 years. Tiger Woods hasn’t played it. He wasn’t around in ’94.”

The last time The Open returned to the venue of Watson and Nicklaus’s Duel in the Sun, Montgomerie was a dominant force on the European Tour, into his run of seven consecutive Orders of Merit. A poor first round of 72 kept him from contention, but he came in eighth and no Scot has bettered that at a Turnberry Open.

Maybe that is another reason to regret the holiday the R&A took from Turnberry. Perhaps if Montgomerie had another shot at it over the Ailsa course when he was still a contender, who knows? Yet despite the optimism that he took from a fine Saturday in Paris last weekend, when a 65 put him briefly into the frame at the Open de France, the 71 that followed is a more accurate marker of his current standing.

To think we were so close to never knowing him, that it all came down to nine holes at Turnberry. The fire in Montgomerie makes you doubt whether he could have stayed on the fringes; whether he could have managed golfers who did not have his talent. He still believes he can win and he still has something to prove.

Monty at The Open

1990 tied 48th
1991 tied 26th
1992 missed cut
1993 missed cut
1994 tied 8th
1995 missed cut
1996 missed cut
1997 tied 24th
1998 missed cut
1999 tied 15th
2000 tied 26th
2001 tied 13th
2002 82nd
2003 withdrew
2004 tied 25th
2005 2nd
2006 missed cut
2007 missed cut
2008 tied 58th