A day with Monty

I was lucky enough to get invited to a Yonex day with Colin Montgomerie at the Oxfordshire golf club this week.
The format of the day was to look at the new range of Yonex clubs for 2012 and then play golf in the afternoon where Monty would join each group for a few holes.

My thoughts on Monty before meeting him:
I really admire his consistency in winning order of merit after order of merit and would have loved to see him win a major.
Pie eater!
A very short fuse when playing.
A great Ryder Cup player.
An Awesome Ryder Cup captain.
Not that great in the commentary box.
I suspect he will be a nice bloke off the golf course.

Meeting Monty:
We played the 7th and 8th hole with him, a par 5 and par 4 so plenty of chance to chat. We actually first saw him on the 6th tee with the group in front of us. The 6th tee is next to the halfway house and Monty came bounding out to tell us there were no sausage rolls left! (previous expectation of Monty the pie eater confirmed).

I am always interested to see how my own game stacks up against tour players and I was surprised to find out that myself and Monty hit the ball a similar distance off the tee. He actually hits it lower than I expected but then he did mention that he was playing the Dunhill next week so maybe in for a windy week!
I was impressed with how aggressive he was with short chips around the green and got to see him salvage a par from an awful lie in a green side bunker.
Monty was putting with a belly putter and I asked him what he thought about the current talk about banning them. He said he didn’t think it was right to have a putter that can attach to the body…..but didn’t seem too bothered as he found them much easier from 5 feet! Typical golfer…if it works and it’s legal I’m bloody using it.

So Monty was good to talk to, a nice guy (although I wasn’t brave enough to take any photos at the top of his backswing) and he stuck around at the end to chat with everyone, and eat dinner of course!

The one thing that surprised me a little bit was that he was quite negative with a few comments about his past. I mentioned to him that he had a good history around the Oxfordshire having won there. He did acknowledge that but also bought up how he had also choked a fee times too. He actually answered the question “yes WE have won round here before”. The “WE” I found very interesting, I almost interpret that as a way of being able to blame someone else.
I wonder whether his lack of a major win is down to not having that mental edge?

Anyway, my final thoughts of Monty were all positive. Maybe one of the best Ryder Cup captains to date.