Captain Monty Open To Having Lunch With People He Never Would Have Dined With Before

Mike Aitken reports on just how desperate European Captain Colin Montgomerie is to win.

"I feel in the past that there has been only a select few told things on a need-to-know basis but I want this to be an open campaign," he explained. "I will do it through e-mails to the players and talk to them in players' lounges. At lunch, maybe I'll sit at tables I wouldn't otherwise have sat at and say 'listen lads, this is what's happening'.

Lunching with the little people he never would have wasted his time with.  Now that is determination!

Monty Does Everything But Call Faldo A Blundering Idiot

As quoted by Bernie Mcguire...

The Scot said: "I wasn't in Valhalla but my optimum number is more than last time.

"I will have Olly there with me and other suitable candidates. I have a great understanding and respect for Olly.

"I will have plenty of backroom staff. I think it's very important you have enough help out there.

There's an awful lot going on and I cannot be in two places at once.

"But my goal is to try to gain 14 and a half points."

Monty also revealed his shame for last September's team.

And he insists the disappointment on the faces of the losing players is something he is determined not to see again.

He said: "I watched on TV what was going on. Knowing the players as I did, especially the Harrington and Westwood situation at the end of the matches, I felt ashamed for them to be left at the end there.

"They should have been involved at an earlier stage but I saw enough of what was going on.

"I didn't see the practice days which is important to a team unit. I only saw the match days and when you are so far behind after the first day it's a large hurdle to climb.

"From that very first day it was difficult to see smiles on anyone's faces and I would expect that.

"That was a first-day defeat we hadn't seen for some time. We just need that early momentum as it is very difficult nowadays to pull anything back in a Ryder Cup."

Monty Already Greatest Captain In History Of Ryder Cup **

The British Press is doing what it does best...building him up before they inevitably slap him around. Enjoy it Monty, because you know this won't last.

Mike Aitken in The Scotsman:

But Monty's credentials as one of Europe's greatest Ryder Cup players, along with an intimate knowledge of the men he will lead at Celtic Manor, swung the decision in his favour. Following in the footsteps of compatriots George Duncan, Johnny Fallon, Eric Brown, Bernard Gallacher and Sam Torrance, Montgomerie, who lives in Perthshire, had hoped to be honoured with the captaincy at Gleneagles in 2014.

Mark Reason in the Telegraph:

Many in the game believe that Montgomerie will be just as good a Ryder Cup leader as he has been a player. Peter McEvoy, arguably British golf's greatest captain yet, played with him as an amateur at Walker Cups and Eisenhower Trophys in the Eighties and believes that the Scot has everything it takes.

He said: "His enthusiasm and box office appeal will be very good for the Ryder Cup commercially. Monty will never be out of the newspapers. He loves it. But he's also got a really strong winning instinct.

"People always say that Monty should have won a major, but lacked the killer instinct. I think they've got it the wrong way round. I think he has been held back by a one-dimensional game, but has a hugely winning attitude that he will bring to the Ryder Cup captaincy. He will do what it takes. I can't see a negative."

Nope, me neither.

William Johnson reports that Monty has at least one assistant who will put up with him help him stay in touch with today's players.

Indeed, Montgomerie was so impressed by reports of how influential Olazabal had been in Valhalla last September that he has already offered the Spaniard an assistant's role next year. Olazabal has accepted.

Lawrence Donegan is the only one who sounds cautiously optimistic:

Watching Montgomerie handle his newly acquired status as the most popular man on tour, as well as the dynamics of his personal relations with other players – the good, the bad and ugly – will be one of the more fascinating parlour games of the next 18 months...

Update on 2009-01-29 16:34 by Geoff

**More of the lovefest. Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail:

Few will say the committee got it wrong. Here were 15 good men who weighed one alleged indiscretion - when Monty was accused of moving a ball to a more advantageous position after a weather break during a tournament in Indonesia - against the welter of evidence of Monty's good deeds and rightly decided it was time to forgive and move on.

John Hopkins, who also thought Nick Faldo was doing a great job (for a while), in the Times:

Colin Montgomerie will be a good captain of the Europe team at Celtic Manor and he might even be a very good one. He will know the players better than some of his predecessors because he will have been playing alongside them in the days and weeks leading up to the event. This obviously did not apply to Nick Faldo at Valhalla last September.

Monty Takes Euro Captaincy Stakes By Two Lengths

And Jose Maria is not named 2012 captain, so we get to do this all over again in two years!

Update on 2009-01-28 17:35 by Geoff

Alistair Tait on the press conference:

One of the ironies of this announcement was the presence of former European Tour player Gary Evans in the room as the announcement was made. Evans was most vocal in criticizing Monty for what is now known as “Jakartagate.”

Of course that incident will hardly surface over the next 18 months. The European Tour may be bad at many things, but the one thing it excels at is pulling together in the Ryder Cup.

Sergio Refuses To Confirm He's Penciled In As 2029 Ryder Cup Captain

Okay, that's not entirely true but believe it or not, some are already eyeing his possible tenure as the absurd 2010 captaincy debate comes to a head with Wednesday's planned announcement.

Bill Elliott writing for The Guardian:

Ewan Murray, the former Tour player who now is lead commentator for Sky Sports golf, is not alone when he articulates the thought that the Tournament Players Committee is making a mountain out of a molehill by prevaricating on the choice of captain.

"Especially when every­one can see how clear-cut it is, or should be," said Murray. "Monty can't do it in the States because the punters over there would just be into him from the start while Ollie would be ideal for America. The fact is that Gleneagles in five years' time might well be too late for Colin. He'd be too old really so surely it has to be now. Look, it's a different European Tour now. Players are younger, potential Ryder Cup men like Rory McIlroy, Danny Willett and Oliver Wilson, for example, are late teens and very early twenties. They need a connection. The Tour is lucky because there is a logical sequence of potential captains through to 2029. I went through this list with a senior official on the flight over and we ended up filling every spot and ­ending with Sergio García in '29 by which time Sergio will be 49."

I think these people are taking their captaincy talk just a bit far, no?

Mark Garrod weighs the possibilities for both candidates and also lists the endorsement quotes for all of the candidates, including Dennis Kucinich Ian Woosnam.

...the Scot is the one widely expected to be named Ryder Cup captain for next year's match in Wales. Nobody was even guessing such a scenario just a couple of weeks ago.

Both men had expressed their desire to play next year and, if they had stuck to their guns on that, it was almost a given that Olazabal would be in charge in Chicago in 2012, while Montgomerie would lead Europe on home soil at Gleneagles in 2014 and 2010 might have gone to either Sandy Lyle or Ian Woosnam. But they have not stuck to their guns.

Lawrence Donegan reminds us that when you lock grown men in a room and call them a committee, just about anyone has a chance to be named captain.

George O'Grady, the chief executive of the European tour, thought carefully when asked to describe the tenor of debate during a meeting in Abu Dhabi of players and officials – a body formally known as the tournament players committee – two weeks ago to discuss the captaincy of Europe's Ryder Cup side for next year's contest against the United States in Wales.

"Statesmanlike," he said eventually. Two weeks later, not a lot can be said with certainty about the Abu Dhabi meeting but it is safe to say this: it was far from ­statesmanlike. One of those in attendance, a former Ryder Cup player, was overheard the day after telling colleagues it was a shouting match, while another described the experience of sitting in a basement room of a hotel, albeit the seven-star Emirates Palace hotel, for three hours debating the whys and wherefores of the 2010 Ryder Cup captaincy as "exhausting".

Mike Aitken makes a convincing case that the death of Sandy Lyle's bid rests on Nick Faldo's shoulders. Just one more reason the Masters Champions Dinner should be televised.

Karl McGinty believes we have Paul McGinley to thank...assuming Monty gets picked.

Steve Elling and Scott Michaux debate the logic behind each leading candidate.

And Tony Jimenez says it'll be a joint announcement with Monty and Ollie getting the next two jobs.

On Vote Eve, Monty Scores Lee Westwood's Superfluous Endorsement

And he's laying it on kind of thick, no?

“Colin is known for the way he has played in Ryder Cup. He would stand on the first tee – and seeing he is there with his fantastic cup record . . . it would feel like being one up to start with,” Westwood said.

Torrance Praises Committee's Selection Of...Uh, Sam, You Might Want To Wait

The former Captain heaped praise on the committee in this John Huggan column. Only problem is, the same committee may very well just choose to go with someone other than Monty in 2010.

"I like this move by the (European Tour Tournament] committee," declares Torrance. "It shows real forward thinking. They haven't bowed down to any kind of outside pressure. And Monty is the right man for the job. The Ryder Cup is so important to our tour, we just have to get the right man. It raises the profile of the tour and all the players. Nobody would know who the hell I am if it wasn't for the Ryder Cup.

"I think we – and by we I mean Europe – made a mistake when the job was recently given to people who probably deserved it on their records but who weren't the right kind of person. Not this time though. Monty will give it everything."

If he gets the chance.

About this whole age thing. John Hopkins notes as others have that both candidates "are comfortably within the correct age range and both would be in touch with current players, which was felt to be a weakness of Nick Faldo, the last captain of Europe, at Valhalla, Louisville, last September."

Jeff Rude correctly points out that this notion may be overrated.

Nick Faldo (Louisville 2008) has been submitted as Exhibit A of an old guy being out of touch. But as Europe was racking up Ryder Cup victories in the 1980s and ’90s, I don’t recall anyone calling Tony Jacklin or Bernhard Gallagher too old and out of touch. Or Ian Woosnam in ’06, for that matter.

Short losing streak. Short memories.