Having stepped out of Nick Faldo's shadow, Colin Montgomerie is set to equal one of the Englishman's finest tournament achievements. The 34-year-old Scot yesterday announced that he will be defending the Murphy's Irish Open title at Druids Glen on July 2nd to 5th.
Monty will, in fact, be going for three-in-a-row, a distinction achieved by Faldo from 1991 to 1993 - the first two at Killarney and the magical third at Mount Juliet. Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer have also won the championship on three occasion, but not in succession.
As it happened, Faldo and Montgomerie made similar debut appearances in the Irish Open. After leading the prequalifiers in 1976, Faldo shot rounds of 74 and 82 to miss the cut at Portmarnock. Monty met the same fate at the same venue 12 years later, after rounds of 76 and 72.
The Scot readily admitted that his victory at Druids Glen two years ago owed much to a disastrous, last-hole collapse by Andrew Oldcorn. But there was an unquestionable stamp of quality about last year's triumph in which he shot a course-record final round of 62 to win by seven strokes from Lee Westwood.
An extra edge will be lent to his appearance this year by the presence of Ernie Els, winner of the South African Open last weekend. Els beat Monty and Loren Roberts in a play-off for the 1994 US Open at Oakmont and outscored him again at Congressional last June. But the Scot had some element of revenge by beating the South African in the semi-finals of the Andersen Consulting Championship last month.
