Montgomerie's strange twist on the pain-free fairways

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The way things are shaping up, sportswriters should travel with a consultant physiotherapist, or at least take a crash course in anatomy and physiology. You never know what is coming next. You need to know that a metatarsal isn't something out of Jurassic Park or a kangaroo but a bone in the foot. That a back strain is probably a prolapsed disc, maybe a bunch of them. If you don't know a cruciate from a gluteus then forget it.

Once upon a time a broken leg meant something. Now a broken leg is a bore. The fashionable injury is a fractured metatarsal. Professional games players can get a lot of injuries but if it isn't a fractured metatarsal it isn't the World Cup. It's an injury for stars, David Beckham, Gary Neville, Danny Murphy, that hasn't trickled down to rest of us yet. Give it time. "Doctor, my foot hurts. Could it be broken metawhatsit? You know, the Beckham thing."

Fractured metatarsals are rare in golf because nobody steps on a player's toes, not physically anyway. Golf is a game where a "late hit" means a slice, not a busted tibia. It's where "rough" does not refer to the opposition but high grass. Where hardly anybody ever needs crutches and the bleeding is all internal. The game is played at a walk and the most terrifying thing a golfer sees is a downhill putt. He doesn't need a helmet or a mouthpiece. No one has ever seen a golfer carried from the field. Neurosurgeons are not needed at ringside.

A golfer's idea of trauma is a bare lie or a ball up against a tree. A "catastrophe" is a seven on a par five. When a rugby player says, "Something terrible happened to me yesterday," he is looking at the walls of a hospital room. When a golfer says, "Something terrible happened to me," he means a missed cut, shooting in the high 70s. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you might have to take your shoe off to hit a ball out of a water hazard.

Golfers wear out but it's not like living with the jump jockey's certainty of multiple injuries. They aren't washed up at 35. In fact, not at 45. Sam Snead, who died last week, played a regular tour event at 60. Jack Nicklaus won the Masters, his 18th major championship, at 46. Players on the US Senior Tour make more than they did in their prime.

Golfers are the luckiest guys in sport but don't tell that to Colin Montgomerie. His back hurts and troubled him throughout the Volvo PGA Masters here as it did in Germany last week where he matched Tiger Woods over four rounds of the Deutsche Bank Open before losing to the World No 1 in a play-off. Commentators remark on Montgomerie's ailments in hushed tones. Restricted swing, takes one club more, can't even pluck the ball from the cup without feeling twinges. Talk is that if Montgomerie's back condition, said to be chronic, doesn't respond to treatment he could miss the Ryder Cup in September.

Apparently, the treatment prescribed for Montgomerie involves strengthening his stomach muscles. Get a "six-pack"abdomen he's been told and your problems are over. Montgomerie with a "six-pack" would be something.

Montgomerie has made millions from golf without ever having a concussion or bruised ribs and will probably never need an operation to put a knee back together. He spends his working life in the kind of sylvan retreats you imagine Eden looked like. Birds sing, the sun usually shines, a guy carries his clubs for him. There's no heavy lifting. He made many thousands by finishing tied for second here yesterday without hammering a nail, sawing a plank, climbing a rig or knocking down a rampaging forward.

After shooting level par in Saturday's third round, Montgomerie stalked off the 18th green as though he could not see anyone within a 10-mile radius. "The prolapsed discs are playing him up," somebody said. In other words, a dodgy back. Terrific golfers have my admiration but anybody who made money easier would be prosecuted.