Golf: Molinari makes it tough for Monty with top-20 surge

COLIN MONTGOMERIE now has four players in the world's top 20 who are not currently in his Ryder Cup side - and he has only three wild cards to hand out in just over a month.

Italian Edoardo Molinari followed up his Scottish Open victory three weeks ago with a third-place finish at the Scandinavian Masters in Stockholm yesterday.

That took the former US Amateur winner into the game's top 20 for the first time but, like Paul Casey, Justin Rose and Padraig Harrington, he still has to make it into one of the nine automatic qualifying positions for October's match at Celtic Manor.

Molinari, whose younger brother Francesco lies seventh in the current standings, said after finishing two behind Swede Richard Johnson: "I think I could have won easily to be honest - I missed so many putts.

"But that's golf sometimes. I'm still outside the team, so I need to play very well in the last two or three events."

Johnson won his home country's only European Tour event by sinking a 30-foot birdie putt on the final green after it looked as if he would go into a play-off with Argentina's Rafa Echenique.

Now, after only his second appearance in Europe this year, he will turn his attentions back to his ailing US Tour career in West Virginia this week.

The 33-year-old is only 148th on the money list there and has not had a single top-30 finish since February.