Time for Monty

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and Poulter to

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call a truce

FROM THE HERALDSCOTLAND.COM WEBSITE

By Douglas Lowe
AS Ian Poulter, the new Accenture match-play champion, is handily placed to claim an automatic berth in Europe’s Ryder Cup team this year, his interaction with the captain Colin Montgomerie will be one to watch with interest, as the pair have a prickly relationship.
It is good news for Montgomerie, of course, that his potential team members, including the beaten finalist, Paul Casey, and fourth-placed Sergio Garcia, eclipsed the Americans at Dove Mountain, Arizona, in what is the only match-play tournament on either the European Tour or the US PGA Tour prior to the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor, Wales, on October 1 to 3.
Montgomerie and Poulter have a long history of bickering, the most recent spat having come last September in the run-up to the Vivendi Trophy in France. That event – it used to be called the Seve Trophy and pits Great Britain & Ireland against the Continent of Europe – is viewed by some as a Ryder Cup warm-up.
Poulter, who has moved with his family to the United States and is concentrating on the US PGA Tour, decided not to come. He was not alone, but Montgomerie singled
him out for public criticism.

“[Poulter] having been picked for the last Ryder Cup team, a little more effort might have been made,” he said pointedly.
It was hardly a five-star insult but, given the history between the pair, it was a remark sure to cause a raising of the hackles.
In Monty’s eyes, nothing should stand in the way of regaining the Ryder Cup.
The scenario is there for Montgomerie to be disappointed again on June 3 to 6 at the Wales Open that will be played over the Ryder Cup venue. He has urged all his likely lads as a matter of top priority to come and play the TwentyTen course in this tournament to gain experience of the lay-out and, thereby, give themselves an edge over the Americans.
However, it is staged the week after the Colonial in Texas and with Poulter, who has had decent results there in the last two years, likely to play in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth the week before, the prospect of four transatlantic flights in three weeks will not be particularly appealing. Casey and Garcia are in similar situations.
Poulter’s victory on Sunday, the first by an Englishman in an individual world golf championship event, took him up to world No.5 and goes a long way to vindicating his decision to move to the US.

In Montgomerie’s eyes, though, nothing should stand in the way of regaining the Ryder Cup.
He was unimpressed 18 months ago when Poulter failed to show at Gleneagles for the Johnnie Walker Championship, of which Montgomerie is chairman and which is the final counting event for the Ryder Cup team.

Poulter, again, had scheduling reasons for not turning up at a time when he needed a wild-card pick by captain Nick Faldo.
Montgomerie, who also needed a pick, suggested Poulter had a hotline to Faldo, implying he knew he had already been selected. It was a remark that started a “handbags across the Atlantic” squabble with Poulter, suggesting Montgomerie should concentrate on his golf and the Scot, in turn, remarking “It’s nice to be told what to do by one so young and inexperienced.”
Poulter, as it turned out, did get the nod from Faldo – unlike Montgomerie – and emerged as a ray of futile sunshine at Valhalla, Kentucky, winning four points out of five, the best record by any player on either side, and showing himself without question to be a team player of the highest calibre.
That was hardly what Montgomerie thought just over four years ago in the Seve Trophy at the Wynyard, in North-east England, where Poulter, having finished his game, went to the range to practise and could be heard hitting balls while the remaining matches were coming up the 18th.
Montgomerie, who was captaining the GB&I side, marched up to Poulter to suggest he should be out on the course supporting his team-mates and reportedly received a very sharp retort. Poulter later referred to the captain’s “schoolmaster-like” approach to team meetings.
Then they were paired together at the 2008 European Open where Montgomerie took a dig at his rival’s exotic dress sense. “I don’t like being beaten by men dressed in pink,” he remarked. Pink, as fate would have it, is the colour Poulter was wearing at Dove Mountain on Sunday for his greatest success.
Montgomerie will have more control over what his team wears at Celtic Manor this autumn, but I daresay he would have them all out in purple if he thought it would make the slightest difference.
You tend to hope the pair will have a quiet word with each other before too long to call a truce to this sniping so that sweetness and light can reign – at least until the Ryder Cup is back in European hands. Then normal tit-for-tat service can be resumed.