Montgomerie breaks spirit of the Old Lady

A 65 took the 42-year-old into a one-shot lead over Kenneth Ferrie at this Dunhill Links Championship and so earned him the honour of tying with David Frost for the lengthened Old Course record.

To the ignorant it might seemingly also have earned him the painful honour of looking back at his final-round 72 here in July to speculate "what might have been", especially as Montgomerie can usually be relied upon to find regrets in six rings on a lottery ticket.

But due to the barely recognisable landscape, the much-fairer pin positions and the realisation that he has finally worked out how to seduce the Old Lady, the Open runner-up was not looking anywhere but forwards to a victory that could yet win him his eighth Order of Merit, not to mention enough Ryder Cup points to make his eighth appearance a near certainty.

"That ranks right up there with my finest 18 ever," he said after somehow surviving a torrid six-hour round without a bogey to his name. "When you consider the average score out there was 73.5, that was probably the best day I've ever had against the field."

In running, he left them for dead from the stalls. By the sixth, the joint-27th competitor had leapfrogged 26 places with four birdies and an eagle. Six-under through as many holes, time to settle back and shoot for that mythical 59.

"Not quite," said Montgomerie, grinning at the absurdity of such a possibility. "Even the amateurs with me dared not even mention it. They knew as I knew that if I could finish in one under from the seventh that would be one hell of a score."

But for the missed nine-footer on the last, Montgomerie might even have bettered his wish, although that is to ignore some of his valiant escapes into the 35mph gusts on the back nine. None was more pleasing than the Road Hole 17th, where he found the path at the back of the green before pinching it off the shale to 15 feet and draining the putt. A little knowledge might be a dangerous thing, but around St Andrews a local knowledge is almost a necessity.

"I've been coming here for 17 years, playing Dunhill Cups and Dunhill Linkses, and I'm now very comfortable with this course, in any condition, at any stage," he said. "I couldn't wait to get back after the Open but I didn't even bother to practise here this week. I did do at Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, but I feel that my caddie and I just know it so well. We can play chess with this course now."

Checkmate Monty, although he will as likely have to conquer his lifelong aversion to all things windy at Kingsbarns today if he is to return to "the auld grey toon" tomorrow still holding the advantage from Ferrie, the Geordie heavyweight whose 68 at Carnoustie yesterday rivalled the leader's for chutzpah. There is also the inevitable Swede to worry about, in Pierre Fulke at seven- under, and with him lies the streaky Argentinian Ricardo Gonzalez.

The rejuvenated figure of Paul Casey will also endanger the fingernails after his tidy 70 took him into a share for fourth on six-under, although the young Englishman would be the first to confess that a confident Montgomerie, at his new favourite place on earth, could be one mighty obstacle to bypass.

"I saw him from a distance out there and he was smiling and strutting," said Casey, too young to remember all the Dunhill Cup days when Montgomerie would be scowling and tutting after many an ignominious defeat.

There was the Indian Gaurav Ghei, the Chinese Zhang Lian-wei, but his most famous scalper of all was Raul Fretes. "If we can't beat Paraguay," he had declared so prophetically, "we may as well go home."

Monty went home all right. After yesterday he would now doubtless claim he was already there.