Montgomerie Is Consistent: Always Angry

SAN FRANCISCO —  The thing about Colin Montgomerie is, his disposition would have to be improved to be considered merely irascible. “Cantankerous” comes to mind. You might say he has the outlook on life that’s a cross between a pit bull and a traffic cop whose corns hurt. His name should be “Colic” Montgomerie.

Tommy Bolt lives. Only, with the burr of the Scottish Highlands in his speech, not the twang of the Louisiana bayous.

He glares at the golf course as if it owed him money. He never met a par four he could trust. He takes a bagful of enemies into play with him because he never saw a one-iron he could trust either.

He treats a golf course as if it were a pickpocket or armed, or both.

That’s a very good way to approach a U.S. Open course. It’s no friend of the player. Its role is to lure him into double bogeys, if it can. So Montgomerie, so to speak, keeps his hand on his wallet when he walks onto an Open course. He’s in enemy territory, without smoke signals--and he plays like it.

They used to call him “Mrs. Doubtfire” in the days when his silhouette had a lot in common with the Robin Williams character. He has shed some poundage, but that didn’t include the chip on his shoulder.

Putting for a living is apt to sour anyone’s outlook on life, but Montgomerie manages to make the game look like defusing buried bombs.

You ask Montgomerie what it will take to win the U.S. Open up here this week, and he will fix you with a glower and retort, “A lower score than everybody else” with a look that seems to add “you dummy!”

But Montgomerie is more than capable of sweet-talking the golf course, if not the media. Romancing it almost.

You get a measure of how well he plays this game when you know the assembled press here voted him most-likely-to-succeed this week, the one who’ll probably win.

When you know that Montgomerie has never won in this country, that’s an impressive accolade.

There are even those who consider him the best player in the world today.

He doesn’t come over here to take part in Office Depot Opens or Quad City Classics. Montgomerie waits till the stakes are high and the pressure higher. Otherwise, he stays over in the Old Country, where he has won 15 European tour titles in his career.

The American pros wish he would stay there. Montgomerie is often the man to beat when he gets over here. He has played in six U.S. Opens. He finished third in his first, at Pebble Beach in 1992, but had scored so well, Jack Nicklaus had declared him the winner (until Tom Kite swept past). In 1994, he was tied for the lead at 72 holes but lost the playoff to Ernie Els.

Last year, he finished second again, losing to Els by one stroke.

In 1995, he set the tournament record (267) in the PGA Championship at Riviera. Unfortunately for him, so did Steve Elkington. And Montgomerie lost the playoff to Elkington.

So, this surly Scot can play. When he comes on the course he doesn’t get a police escort. Jay Leno isn’t after him for “The Tonight Show.”

But the Queen knows who he is. Montgomerie is an M.B.E. (Member of the British Empire). It’s one step from there to knighthood, to becoming Sir Colin Montgomerie.

The Queen’s Own is holding his own against the best the colonies can throw against him this week.

Montgomerie threw a highly respectable 70 at this unforgiving course Thursday. Cornwallis should have done that well. George III.

Walking off this track with a par is like taking Valley Forge. Olympic is as impregnable as Bunker Hill.

Montgomerie is playing his way into the peerage by scattering the competition. Ranked No. 5 in the world (behind Els, Tiger Woods, Davis Love III and Greg Norman), he led the European tour in stroke average (68.85) and was fifth in greens in regulation, eighth in driving distance.

He earned $578,991 on the U.S. tour last season, playing in only nine events. He has earned $272,000 so far this year in five events.

Brits fare about as well in a U.S. Open as they did in the War of 1812. Since 1927, when Tommy Armour won it, only one British Isles player (Tony Jacklin in 1970) has won it.

It’s not only the course Colin Montgomerie finds hostile, it’s the crowds. He sees very few Union Jacks or even Scottish battle ribands in the audience, and he frequently finds it necessary to chastise them for their rude behavior with some of his own.

That doesn’t bother big Monty. He performs best in an attitude of mutual distrust. He takes the position he’s not selling insurance out there. He’s simply trying to post a lower score than everyone else. On a day when the average score at this Open promised to be 75 or so, he has made a good beginning. On a day when the defending champion (Els) had a three-putt and Woods had a four-putt, prudence would seem to indicate you defend yourself against this course, not attack it, on greens that were slicker than lake ice.

So, if it’s not sacrilegious, Her Majesty’s emissary can borrow a phrase from that other scratch player, John Paul Jones, and announce, “I have not yet begun to fight.”

But even if he wins, don’t expect Montgomerie to glow. When asked why he had done so well in the “majors” over here in the past, Monty fixed the questioner with a glare. “Well, I am obviously quite talented, you know, and quite good at my job, you know. In case you haven’t noticed.”

We noticed. This Open might be a Full Monty.