Not that it makes the course unique exactly, but Oakmont and Colin
Montgomerie have something of a history. Back in 1994, the then very
burly Scot was third of three in a broiling Monday play-off for the US
Open title, his second of what would become four near misses in
America's national championship.
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"Whenever I feel like going to the fridge I put on the video from that year," he recently told his chums at the Daily Mail. "I was huge, wasn't I? The first thing I will say about that year is that I wish I could putt now like I did then. I led the putting stats that week and I think that's the only time in my career where I have done that and not left with the trophy.
"But mistake number one was undoubtedly turning up for the play-off with a shirt with a black tartan pattern. I hadn't bargained on playing an extra day. The only clean shirt I had left was that one. I was sponsored by Pringle and felt a duty to wear one of their shirts. All I could think about was how it would look if I won the title and wasn't wearing one. With hindsight, of course, I should have walked into the professional's shop and bought a white Oakmont shirt.
"The other thing that would be different if I had my time over again was that I would be a lot slimmer. If you look at the footage, I was enormous. I just had nothing left to give come the play-off."
Sadly for the soon-to-be 44-year old, that lack of fifth-day puff has spread over the years, to the point where he is now no better than an also-ran at the very highest level of the game. Which is no shame on him or his undoubted talent, of course. It is an immutable law of sport that the passage of time inevitably takes its toll on even the most gifted practitioners.
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So, as Monty arrives back at Oakmont this week, the chances of his
becoming one of the oldest-ever major champions appear slim at best.
His form this year has been nothing short of awful; just last week he
missed the cut in the Austrian Open, where the field was no more than
mediocre, and promptly fired his caddie, the long-suffering Alastair
Maclean. And his putting, always a bugbear, has long been inadequate to
take advantage of his still imperious ball striking. Which is why his
best finishes these days tend to be thirds and fourths rather than
victories. In the end, it comes down to whom makes the putts on Sundays
and Monty hasn't done that for a very long time.
It's a shame really. If anyone can be said to "deserve" a Grand Slam
title, it is the Glasgow-born, Yorkshire-raised London resident.
Despite the many tournament wins, the magnificent Ryder Cup record and
those eight Order of Merits, his will be a career largely unfulfilled
by the lack of a major victory. He can protest all he wants about how
much he has achieved, but the fact is that Monty could and should have
won more than one of the game's four most important events. And it was
for that failure that he will be remembered, rather than any number of
BMW PGA Championship - the biggest event he has ever won - victories.
Perhaps his biggest mistake was not coming to play more on the PGA
Tour, a circuit on which he has never finished first. Which is a
nonsense. This is a man who, at his best, reached number two in the
world without ever competing on the planet's biggest and most lucrative
tour. That's quite a feat and one that no one else has ever come close
to matching.
Had Monty taken the trouble to uproot his then young family and make
his base three-thousand miles west of his appearance-fee laden comfort
zone, he would have won multiple PGA Tour events and, it says here,
topped the money list at least once, such was the grinding consistency
of his play. That he never did either must be another source of some
regret as he marches inexorably into middle age.
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That level of immaturity and self-centredness has stayed with him over the years and has not left him yet. Indeed, the level of his popularity, especially in Scotland, remains a mystery to this close observer. Few leading professionals treat spectators with as much contempt and disdain than Monty. Only last month at Wentworth he marched past a group of autograph-seeking youngsters with a mobile phone clamped to his ear. It wasn't switched on. Later that same day, Ian Poulter spent 90 minutes signing his name for anyone and everyone interested enough to ask for it. It was quite a contrast.
Even more distressingly, the specter of cheating also hangs over Monty's greying head. The stunt he pulled in the 2005 Indonesian Open - where he famously replaced his ball in a far more advantageous position after an overnight rain delay - will live with him forever. Certainly, his peers have not forgotten. More than two years on, this reporter has been unable to locate a single member of the European Tour who does not continue to feel that Monty knowingly broke the rules. And at least one - a Ryder Cup teammate no less - mutters darkly of "maybe five" other, less-publicised misdemeanors perpetrated by the Scot.
Still, for all the tantrums and accusations of underhandedness, here we are only 12 months on from what has so far been Monty's nearest-thing in a major championship. At Winged Foot last year he stood in the middle of the 18th fairway needing a par - as it turned out - to win the US Open. With only a mid-iron to a pin ideally suited to his natural fade, he basically duffed the shot and eventually made a double bogey. As he admits himself, he will never have a better chance
"Of course, I thought 'this is my time,'" he told the Mail. "How could you not? What I had left was my stock-in-trade. If I had to play that shot 100 times, 99 of them would finish ten feet to the left of the flag.
"What unnerved me was that my playing partner, Vijay Singh, had hooked his ball into a hospitality tent and it took an age to get a ruling. This is no criticism of Vijay because I would have done the same. But if I could have walked up and hit my shot I would have won.
"Instead, I had five minutes to kill and that's when the doubts crept in. Was it a six or seven iron? In hindsight I should have spent the time swinging a club, keeping my rhythm and concentrating on making sure I made a full backswing. Instead, when my time came I was tight. I didn't complete my backswing and as soon as I hit it I knew I was in trouble."
Of course, nothing is ever that simple for Monty. In the wake of what he called his latest US Open 'disaster,' he stood accused of throwing a tee at a young lad who may or may not have moved as he drove from the 17th tee and of pushing a state trooper out of the way en route to the sanctuary of the locker room. Yet again, amidst the poetry there was petulance.
It was ever thus for a man destined to be remembered for what might have been rather than what was. And for what will be? Put him down for a couple of hissy fits, lots of putts and one missed cut this week.
