COLIN MONTGOMERIE EXCLUSIVE: I didn't say I wanted Tiger to retire... but he HAS lost his aura

There was a glint in the eye of the Tiger as he got his teeth into the suggestion, on the eve of playing in The Open at Troon, that it might be time to retire.

The comments of Colin Montgomerie, in which the veteran Scot asserted that any enjoyment of the game seemed to have gone for the injury-ravaged Tiger Woods, were duly relayed to the 15-times major winner at a pre-championship media conference.

Woods didn’t miss with his response, alluding to Montgomerie’s failure to win a major during his career despite a host of near misses. ‘Well, as a past champion, I’m exempt,’ he said. ‘Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt. So he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.’

It was the bluntest of retorts. And yet, when Mail Sport catches up with Monty, he is sticking to his opinion that the Woods’ magic has become mediocrity and the fun has turned to frustration. He reckons that is a widely-shared opinion. However, he also claims he was misquoted and misrepresented.

‘Yes, I was. The journalist (at the media conference) said my name and used the word “retire” and that was wrong,’ says Monty. ‘I didn’t say “retire”.

‘I wanted him (Woods) to be remembered as the player he was and not the player he currently is. The last five or six majors have not been good (for Tiger). And I want him to be remembered the way he was as a contender and not just as a competitor.

‘It’s a shame to see because the enjoyment doesn’t seem to be there for him as it was when he was contending. It was that fist pump, it was the whole Tiger scene around him, that aura that he had which was incredible. I don’t see that. No. And it’s a shame.

‘I don’t want to see him go to the Masters next year and for it all to fizzle out. I don’t want to see that. I want to see him the way that I remember, Tiger contending. The fist-pumping and all the stuff that was around him, wearing the red shirt on the final day. I want to see that again. Yeah. And I’ve missed it. We’ve all missed it.’

Now 61, Montgomerie maintains his own competitive edge on the over-50 Legends Tour these days, although he’s taking a break at the moment because of ill health. There was speculation that he might be out of action for the rest of the year but the truth is he hopes to be back playing in October.

This period of rest and recuperation has given him the chance to reflect on the 25th anniversary of winning a record seventh successive European Order of Merit, as it used to be called. He won the title eight times in total but to come out on top seven times on the bounce between 1993 and 1999 showed a remarkable, and unmatched, consistency of excellence at the top level. In European golf terms, he pretty much owned the Nineties.

‘Well, I know how much that took out of me, that’s for sure,’ he reflects. ‘How hard it was, not just physically but how much it took out of me emotionally with the children growing up at that stage. All three children were born during that time and it definitely took a lot out of me.’

To try to put Monty’s achievements into perspective, it is worth looking at Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irishman has won five equivalent European titles, which leaves him still three behind.

‘If Rory does it (catches up) in the Race to Dubai as they call it now, hopefully I’ll be able to fly out there and congratulate him because I’ll know how difficult it is to achieve that,’ says the Scot. ‘He’s the only one that would really challenge (the record) at this stage.

‘There might be someone else who comes along but he is the only one at the moment that has a possibility of doing it. Probably not seven in a row, but eight overall or maybe nine. So let’s hope I’m fit enough to fly to Dubai and congratulate him, come the time, because he was a rookie in my Ryder Cup team in 2010. There’s always a bond there, having captained a player.

‘You have to make sacrifices in pursuit of these things. I was 30 when I won it for the first time. I felt I had to play in events that I might otherwise have given a miss because finishing second was no good. It was like a conveyor belt that I couldn’t get off, didn’t want to get off initially, and then thank God it broke down, thank God it did. The whole thing broke down and it was great.’

Did the pressure ease?

‘Very much so, yeah,’ he says. ‘Lee Westwood won (the Order of Merit) in 2000 and I was rather glad he did. I was leading most of the year and then he took over, which was great.

‘Sometimes with sporting achievement, you don’t really see it clearly at the time. Looking back now, and you here interviewing me 25 years on, you can appreciate that it’s a little bit of history. And I have a trophy for it which means an awful lot to me.

‘Ken Schofield (then boss of the European Tour) presented it to me in 1999. It was made of Waterford glass, had seven stars on the bottom and there was an inscription on it which said seven-in-a-row was an achievement which would never, ever be repeated.’

Monty’s domination of European golf back then left some of the greatest names in the game standing in the shadows as he hogged centre stage.

‘When I think about it, the players behind me, latterly, included (Jose Maria) Olazabal and Westwood, in his early days, plus the likes of (Ian) Poulter, Graeme McDowell and Luke Donald. Earlier that decade I was beating (Nick) Faldo, Seve (Ballesteros), (Ian) Woosnam, (Bernhard) Langer, (Sandy) Lyle. They were legends, icons of the game and I guess that must have been something to have stayed ahead of them.

‘I always felt the Order of Merit was like a league table, it was about consistency. In football, winning the league championship is the best guide to the best team. And as a football fan, you watch and you wonder how Manchester City can keep up that level of achievement. For me, in golf, that consistency through the year meant more than winning in one particular week.’

Maybe just as remarkable as Monty’s ‘magnificent seven’ was his failure to win a major. There was common agreement at that point that he was the best player never to have won one of golf’s big prizes. Three times he was runner-up at the US Open, in 1994, 1997 and 2006, and he had to settle for second place at the 1995 USPGA and the 2005 Open Championship as well. Five standout chances to join the golfing elite and five crushing disappointments.

‘They all stung at the time but they’re history now,’ he says. ‘I was beaten four times by a better player on the day. The one that got away was Winged Foot 2006 (the US Open) which was my fault. But, then again, you make mistakes, we’re all human, we’re not robots.

‘I’ve locked that away now. I’ve no regrets. Yes, of course you’d love to have won a major. But I wouldn’t have said it was the making or breaking of one’s career.’

Montgomerie has gone on to win three majors at senior level, a US Open and two PGA Championships in the space of just over a year, which gave him considerable compensation.

‘Oh, very much so, yeah,’ he insists. ‘I was playing with Gary Player at Carnoustie last month and he’ll tell you he won nine majors and nine senior majors and they all mean as much to him. I know what he’s on about. You’ve beaten 150 or so top players in a four-round competition on a proper golf course. So it’s the same thing.

‘The first one was the USPGA in 2014 and I thought, right, now I belong. It felt like a tick in the right box and it gave me huge confidence. I won the US Open and another PGA the following year. It was a big deal.’

After Monty’s enforced break, he’ll be desperate to bounce back. Not, as fellow Scot Paul Lawrie told Mail Sport recently, for the joy of hitting hundreds of balls every morning on the practice range. No, what Montgomerie is already missing is the cut and thrust of competition. It is what he has always thrived on.

He won a total of 31 European Tour events, between 1989 and 2007, and is renowned as one of the best Ryder Cup players of all time, never losing a singles match. Monty’s face lights up as he explains his simple golfing philosophy.

‘I don’t really enjoy the routine. I enjoy the competition, that feeling of trying to beat somebody. I don’t care who it is. It really doesn’t matter. It might be somebody that I don’t know. But I want to beat him and he wants to beat me.

‘That means more to me than my love for the game of golf itself. It’s that competitive streak that I’ve always had. Wanting to win is what it’s all about.’