Not Quite The Full Monty

About thirty miles north of New York in Mamaroneck, Colin Montgomerie last night blew perhaps his finest chance to claim a major, taking a tragic double-bogey when a par would have won him the US Open (though to be fair he didn't know it at the time).

Montgomerie has had ongoing battles with American galleries (who call him Mrs Doubtfire), but he has won them over in recent years with a charm offensive which has never seemed entirely natural, but then again it wasn't quite clear to me what he had done to offend them to begin with.

Montgomerie fired a perfect drive down the 18th, and with Phil Mickelson in some trouble behind and playing erratically generally, he must have known that a straightforward iron and two putts could well have seen him claim an emotional first Major. Firstly he demonstrated uncertainty by changing clubs seconds beforehand, and then he inexplicably hit an approach shot so awful that he could only exclaim, "..what kind of shot is that?"

Although terribly sad for Monty, it was a perfect example of why golf remains for me perhaps the ultimate pressure sport. He must have hit 7-irons dead straight and true so many thousands of times in tournaments and in practice, and yet when he needed just one more he was found wanting. Thankfully the smirking Mickelson's own 18th hole cock-up allowed an unlikely outsider (Geoff Ogilvy) to triumph.

Golf is special for so many reasons, but it is one of the very few sports where your opponent(s) can do absolutely nothing to prevent you from beating them. This trait, in combination with the fact that the ball is stationary, ensures that the natural instincts upon which great sportsmen rely in other sports are largely absent in golf, replaced by an ongoing mental battle which sadly Monty lost. Similarly is it any wonder that great impulsive footballers can go to pieces in a penalty shoot-out, a situation which resembles golf with its binary outcomes and stationary ball?

Although golf is a sport I enjoy playing as well as watching, there is another sport dear to my heart which requires similar mental fortitude yet which receives generally negative and stereotypical press. Yes, of course I'm referring to darts, and like golf it is one of the few sports where performance would likely be improved by imbibing alcohol. I suspect this shared trait is not mere coincidence.