Colin Montgomerie has a 'dream team' written out for the Ryder Cup next year but he's not about to reveal it with qualifying for the event set to begin at Celtic Manor next week. “It’s in a drawer at home and it will be interesting to see how close the team come out to that particular 12,” said Europe’s captain today on the eve of the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles.

Qualfying for the Rdyer Cup will end at Gleneagles in a year’s time when nine automatic qualifiers will be known and Montgomerie’s three wild cards will be revealed.

Montgomerie has presumably stuck pretty close to the current world rankings.

In order the top 12 Europeans are Paul Casey, Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Pádraig Harrington, Martin Kaymer, Robert Karlsson, Ian Poulter, Rory McIlroy, Ross Fisher, Luke Donald and Soren Kjeldsen.

Among those there are four players who would be making their cup debuts — Kaymer, McIlroy, Fisher and Kjeldsen — but only last week Montgomerie spoke in

glowing terms of big-hitting Spaniard Alvaro Quiros, so perhaps he is in ahead of Kjeldsen.

“There are a few rookies on that team, yes,” he said. “I wish them all success. It’s our Olympic Games if you like.” Until 2016, that is, when golf will almost certainly be part of the Games again.

Montgomerie will be calling on all eligible players to enter the Tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth next May — Harrington, Garcia and Poulter have stayed away in recent years — and the Wales Open on the course where the Americans will be defending the trophy next October.

He also expects a star-studded field on the next staging of this week’s event because it will be the final counting tournament.

That, however, is in stark contrast to the cast list over the next four days.

Oliver Wilson and Soren Hansen are the only two members of last year’s cup side playing and are also the two highest-ranked at 44th and 49th in the world repsectively.

What that means, of course, is that there is more attention on Montgomerie’s own game.

The 46-year-old eight-time European number one has missed his last three halfway cuts and never in his Tour career has he missed four in a row.

After an opening 76 in Holland last week Montgomerie sounded gloomier about his golf than ever.

“I haven’t been in the top 10 for over a year now (14 months actually) and that hurts.

“Never mind winning. Let’s walk before we can run here — a top 10 would be great this week and then we can gain some confidence for the next few weeks.

“All I’ve been doing is competing and I’ve got to get back to contending, so there’s no better time than to start at home.”

While extension work is going on at his nearby house — he moved back to Scotland on marrying for a second time last year — Montgomerie is living in rented property at Gleneagles.

What the championship can boast is the presence of the only three amateurs who have ever won European Tour events.

They are all professionals now and this is the first time Ireland’s Shane Lowry, Spaniard Pablo Martin and New Zealander Danny Lee — the circuit’s youngest-ever winner at 18 in Australia in February — have competed in the same event.

Lowry is joined by fellow Irishmen Gary Murphy, Damien McGrane, Paul McGinley, Peter Lawrie, Jonathan Caldwell and Gareth Maybin.