After the European players had bubble-blasted each other with gallons of champagne on the 18th tee, they straggled slowly through the crowd and back to the sanctuary of the clubhouse.

It was evident from the dripping heads and soaking shirts that they had all enjoyed a decent hosing down in the splash zone.

All except Colin Montgomerie.

As pristine as he was after sinking his winning putt against David Toms on the same green some hours before, Montgomerie, somehow, escaped the champagne mayhem. The mildly bouffant hairstyle was in check. The playing uniform was dry and unsullied. Monty could have gone to church in his clothes.

It's not the Scot's style to get raucous. Bun-fights are not his thing, even after his record-equalling sixth singles win in a Ryder Cup, one that brings him level with some of the great players, such as Nick Faldo and Billy Casper.

But on a course where at the beginning of the day things weren't as they should have been, Mongomerie was the anchor.

The sodden K Club was more Glastonbury than golf course. The first tee had a greater similarity to Lansdowne Road than a country club. Montgomerie stood in rain falling down in biblical proportions and looked up at the people 10 deep, most of them standing on grass trails that had long turned to mud and unable to see anything of what was going on.

The one unchanging thing was Montgomerie.

Woosnam played an old classic and it turned out as he knew it would. Montgomerie, with all his claims on irascibility and bad temper, was the player the captain instructed to go out and secure a point at the head of the field.

He had faced the former Major champion before in a Ryder Cup two years ago on a magical afternoon at Oakland Hills, where the Scott holed out from four feet on the 18th green to win by one and secure a winning point for the European team.

That he had done it before might have given him a marginal edge, but Woosnam's instincts about the oldest player on the team and his reliability under pressure had been road-tested before. As Sergio Garcia cheekily observed afterwards about the age factor, "They got Walt Disney, we got Colin."

Montgomerie strode off in the rain, purposeful and often 30 yards ahead of the group. Halving the opening two holes, he then took the lead on the par-three third.

Toms hit in to 15 feet before Montgomerie stitched his approach to four. Toms rushed his birdie putt four feet past, but was saved having to hole out as Montgomerie dropped his birdie chance to put Europe one up.

He did much the same on the par-five fourth hole as Toms found himself in two bunkers on his way to a bogey six and Montgomerie stayed safe before again attacking the flag. All he left between his ball and the pin was three feet for his second birdie. Two up.

While Toms replied on the par-four fifth hole to pull the match back to just one hole, that is where Montgomerie kept him.

The American never got closer and even as a sequence of putts on the back nine from Montgomerie fell short, he again pushed two up with a three iron to six feet on the par-three 14th hole.

"It doesn't matter what position I play on this team. Ian thought it was good that I went out first. I'm probably the quickest player on the team," said Montgomerie.

"It was very important that I got off to a good start and got some blue on the board early, which I did on the third hole and never let it get back to square. I'm proud to be part of the 12 here and equal the score at Oakland Hills. We never thought that would be possible again for many, many years and we've done it the very next time."

While Montgomerie might have ended the match on the 17th, Toms holed a long putt to bring it down the final stretch and, although the worst the Scot could do was halve the match, anything less than a point would have been a deflating.

But safe he was. Splashing out from the bunker to six feet in three, Monty holed the putt and sent Europe to their record three in a row and his Ryder Cup contribution in the singles as eight played with no defeats.

"Monty is simply a leader on the course and off it," said Lee Westwood. "He's proven today to be an inspiration when he goes out first."

Monty is 43, and there might not be a place for him on Nick Faldo's team for the 2008 event in Valhalla, Kentucky. But if Faldo is anything, he is, like Woosnam, shrewd. They may well need the rocking chair for what would be Monty's ninth Ryder Cup.