Colin Montgomerie is great value for killer quotes

SOME described it as a “bold statement”. Others used stronger words. Kicca, a new social media platform, certainly grabbed people’s attention when it launched last week by getting Colin Montgomerie to comment on Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

Good value: Colin Montgomerie. Picture: Robert Perry

In effect, Montgomerie said that Woods will need to raise his game to new heights if he’s going to have a chance of reclaiming the world No 1 spot from McIlroy. “Rory’s taken golf to one level beyond where Tiger was,” he declared.

Personally, I think McIlroy has not yet taken that bar higher, especially if you look at the golf Woods was playing when he turned both the US Open and Open Championship into processions in 2000.

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Not for the first time, though, it was an example of what great value Montgomerie is when a microphone is poked under his nose. Sure, he comes out with outrageous stuff and has been known to contradict himself. But he’s gold dust to the Fourth Estate.

Scottish scribblers – the ­majority anyway – have gratefully accepted the sackful of lines he’s delivered over the years and it was a timely ­reminder of how that should not be taken for granted when he left some American and British colleagues purring with the content he’d provided for pieces in Turkey recently.

Mainly playing Senior golf these days, he may be out of sight most of the time but, rest assured, it will be a good while yet before Colin Montgomerie is out of mind.

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