Golf: I Beat Myself Last Year But I Can Still Win It - Monty

If Billy Goddard looked a little overwhelmed yesterday at the prospect of lumping Colin Montgomerie's gargantuan bag around Oakmont's undulating links in the baking heat, he could at least console himself that he was carrying less baggage than his new employer, who arrived for the US Open looking less like a potential winner than he has at any point during his illustrious career.

Last week's missed cut in the Austrian Open was shocking by any standard but it can, and will, be brushed aside by Montgomerie. His history in the US Open will not be so easily forgotten. Pebble Beach 1992, Oakmont 1994, Congressional 1997, Winged Foot 2006 - it reads more like a list of American Civil War battles than a litany of Monty's near misses.

Four times the Scotsman played himself into a winning position, only to finish with three second places and a third. Every one of those defeats hurts but as Montgomerie, now aged 43 and seemingly well into the back nine of his career, looked back this week he judged last year's second-place finish at Winged Foot to be the most hurtful of all.

"My other four major championships I had finished runner-up in I really felt that I had been beaten by better players, better golf. On this occasion it was the first time that I had beaten myself and that's what hurts about it," he said. Standing in the middle of the 18th fairway on the Sunday afternoon, he needed to find the green with a six-iron and take two putts for par to win. Instead he hit a seven-iron short of the green and ran up a double bogey.

"I have hit that shot thousands, tens of thousands of times. It's a six-iron to the middle of the green off an upslope - it's not a difficult shot at all," he reflected. "What I did do is I got tight on it and I didn't complete my backswing. Whenever I don't do that my shot goes right and short right. That's exactly what happened. It was the worst shot under pressure that I've ever hit.

"Did I get ahead of myself? I don't know. I've been around long enough not to but I felt it was it [my tournament], so much so that I swung the club as well as anyone can on the 18th tee and won shot of the month, I think for June last year. It was position A. It was right-hand side of the fairway, perfect uphill lie to a green with a pin on the right-hand side. Now for a fader of a golf ball to have a pin on the right-hand side is a fantastic result for me. If it's on the left I've got more of a problem, but on the right I aim for the middle of the green and it fades in to the right-hand side. Simple."

Montgomerie should be credited for his candor, although clearly there is a limit to his appetite for self-flagellation. Outside factors, principally a long delay while his playing partner Vijay Singh waited for a ruling, also had a hand in his downfall, he insists.

"He had what can only be described as a horror duck hook into a tent on the left-hand side and took a ruling, did not quite understand the ruling or did not accept the ruling and had another ruling. This took about seven or eight minutes before he hit his second shot.

"I'm convinced to this day that if I had walked up to that shot and was first to play, which would be usual playing with Vijay Singh because he's longer than me, I would have won the US Open. I would have hit that six-iron in the middle of the green and two-putted or single-putted and walked off with it. Unfortunately it didn't happen."

Of the four US Opens he might have won he rates his second-place finish in 1994 at this week's venue, Oakmont, as the least painful to look back on, partly because he was never in contention in the three-man play-off won by Ernie Els and partly because of his age. "That year I wanted to prove to my peers and myself that I was able to compete at that level and I putted very, very well," he added, in an interview to be broadcast by Sky Sports this evening. "To lose was disappointing but not devastating. After all, there would be plenty of other chances, right? I was at the beginning of my career," he said ruefully.

Montgomerie has learned a hard lesson over the intervening 13 years, although as you might expect from such a bumptious figure he is not inclined to admit that his chances of winning the elusive major have gone for ever.

"I get up to go to the US Open more than any other tournament in the world," he insisted. "I stand on the 1st tee and I feel one up against a lot of the field because a lot of them are in trepidation over the damn thing. They think: 'I don't want to be here. Oh, my word, this is difficult.' I don't because I have this ability to hit the fairways, of a certain length, and if I can get that back, that feeling back, that swing feeling that I had at Winged Foot last year, I have a chance."