Two simply stunning strokes, both of which produced an eagle, brought Colin Montgomerie his first win of the year when he took the French Open at Le Golf National near Versailles yesterday.
The Scot, who has made a spotty start to the season by his own high standards, eagled the 14th and 18th, and still only won by two from Jonathan Lomas of Shropshire. He won Stg£116,778 which hurtled him to fourth place in the Order of Merit from 23rd, with £209,318, but he is still miles behind the World Match Play Champion Darren Clarke, who by virtue of winning that title and its Stg£624,709. It was Montgomerie's 23rd win on the European Tour, his 28th worldwide and it at least gives him a chance of an eighth successive Order of Merit title.
The Scot was under pressure from Lomas, whose 32nd birthday this was, after 13 holes, leading by just one shot, when he hit a three-wood second shot at the par-five 14th exactly 262 yards, which finished nine inches from the hole.
The tap-in eagle gave him a three-stroke lead-and could have destroyed Lomas who has little experience of playing with the leaders. But he was encouraged when Montgomerie, from the rough, got a flier at the 15th, went through the green and into a lake at the back, to bogey the hole. Then Lomas holed a 20-foot birdie putt at the 17th, to leave Montgomerie one ahead with one to play.
The par-five 18th, with its island green, offers opportunity for disaster, but Lomas, playing first, played a beautiful second to 20 feet. Afterwards Montgomerie said: "All credit to Jonathan for making me play a reasonable shot down the last." That reasonable shot was a six-iron which carried 178 yards and sat down a foot from the hole. It was all over.
The final stages produced an unlikely-looking leaderboard, with the presence of Australian Rodger Davis, 49 on the 18th of this month, the strangest aspect of all. Davis has been good enough to win seven times in Europe, the last time in 1993, and finish in the top 10 of the Order of Merit four times. But in the last five years he has not been in the top 100 and is playing principally to keep his hand in for the Seniors Tour.
But the £43,879 he won yesterday for outright third will keep the bank manager happy until Davis can get among golf's professional pensioners and the plenteous pots for which they compete.
For most of the day Michael Campbell, four times a winner already this season, was on that leaderboard, but successive three-putt greens at the 14th, 15th and 16th took him back into the pack as the rustiness following a five-week lay-off caught up with him.
The volatile Jarmo Sandelin, jointly the halfway leader with Anders Hansen and Fernando Roca at nine-under-par, began to slip away from that point and, after nine holes yesterday, disappeared completely. He had taken 78 in the third round and, obviously completely frustrated by his putting, would have been 37, one-over-par, to the turn yesterday.
But at the long ninth, after yet another putt had narrowly missed, the Swedish Ryder Cup player took the putter-head in one hand and the grip in the other and made as if to snap the shaft over his knee. It did not break, though, and Sandelin then tapped in the remainder of the putt-at which point he was technically out of the tournament.
He had, without realising it, bent the shaft, so altering the playing characteristics of the club and Rule 4-2 provides only for disqualification in such circumstances. Sandelin did not realise until the 10th green that the shaft had been bent. As soon as he did so he called in the referee John Paramor, who first applied the penalty and then gave the Swede a lift back to the clubhouse in his buggy.
