KITCHENAID SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 25, 2022

Colin Montgomerie

Press Conference

Harbor Shores

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: First win in America, yeah, it was a big deal. Played with Bernhard Langer all four days and managed just to come out on top which was great. And loved it ever since. Loved the golf course. First time I played here, it's got 18 very, very strong holes and very few golf courses you can say that about. Some of the best courses in the world have weaker holes or weak holes. This doesn't. It has 18 very, very strong golf holes.

So I look forward to coming back here and look forward to catching up with friends. We have many over the years through the Whirlpool and KitchenAid connection. Look forward to participating this year.

Q. I want to ask you about your match play with Davis, was that the Andersen Consulting.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: It was indeed. It was indeed.

Q. When all the people over the years said you hadn't won in America?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Yeah, I think Scottie Scheffler won the match play at Austin, Texas. He earned that. I know, I couldn't get that, yeah. Because I don't know who won -- I think Scottie Scheffler won The World Match Play, did he, in Austin, Texas, they he gave him that victory, but they didn't give it to me.

Q. Good point. What fuels your desire to play these days?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Winning. Have the opportunity of winning. Not competing in the event but contending in the event, there's a big difference. I do this to try and contend. Meaning, top 10, top five, you know, to have a chance to contend. And that's why I do this, yeah.

And when that goes, I'm 59 next month, when that goes, when that opportunity or when that perception goes, then it's time to buy the Labradors and start walking the dogs on the beach. And until that time, and I'm not there yet, but until that time, I'm here to contend.

Q. You said this course has 18 strong holes. Does it surprise you that the scores have been as low in the previous four tournaments, including 19-under the last day?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Very fortunate with the weather. Very fortunate. You see the pictures and everyone is in short sleeves and it's warm and sunny and no wind. We've been very, very fortunate. It is a strong golf course, but a golf course that's playable.

If you get in the right quadrant of the greens and hit the fairways and hit the right quadrants of the greens, you have a chance of scoring. Yes, the leading scores might be good. But there's an awful lot over par. So it's a matter of finding the fairways first and controlling those iron shot distances into those pins. It's a unique golf course that way.

But I'm not surprised at low scoring because of the weather conditions. If you get favorable weather around anywhere in the world, you can score, yeah. Yeah, we were very lucky the last three times, four times we've been here that the weather has been very, very good.

Q. And can that contend?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: It won't be 19-under, I can assure you. If it is, I'll be speaking to you Sunday night. If we have a breeze, Thursday, Friday, and get better over the weekend, you'll see some higher scores, yes. It will be more difficult.

JOHN DEVER: Can you talk about the state of your game, and also it's been four years since we've been here. Talk about the influx and talent that's joined this tour in recent years.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: This tour is very, very strong, the Senior Tour. The PGA Tour Champions and bringing other tours in with us this particular week to join us for the senior PGA. Very strong. It was very strong before but as I get older, the young guys come in. We've got Harrington who can compete on the main tour regularly, Jim Furyk, Goosen, Els, we've got Jiménez. There's a huge crux of new players, K.J. Choi, Mike Weir, who have worked hard over the last treading water time between 47 and 50, and we are all treading water, waiting to turn 50, and to come out here and compete.

You see David Duval working as hard as he ever has on the range there yesterday. I was watching for an hour. I sat having something to eat watching him for an hour. He was working very hard. Fantastic to see. Fantastic to see that commitment still and that position to try and win, to try and do well, to try and compete again and contend again. Fantastic. So it's a very, very strong tour and getting stronger every year, yeah.

JOHN DEVER: And your game, how is it?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: A couple good finishes. A couple Top 10s in the last two weeks, and I feel that working at home in Willesley golf club in London, that we are getting somewhere. We are getting somewhere. I feel in a better place than I have done in, say, the last three or four years in my golf game. And just trying to put the scores together.

If it comes down to, generally it comes down to the winner holing out, and if you can hole yourself footers, 8-footers around here which is a good iron shot for a birdie or you're out of position and your first putt has gone by or you chipped up, you have a lot of 7, 8-footers. If those go in, if those go in, yes, I'll contend here. But those putts have got to go in, the momentum putts. The ones that Tiger always holes. The ones that the top players in the world hole. That's what you've got to do to win. You've got to hole out from seven, eight foot.

Q. What was your favorite golf memory in Michigan? Was it winning here or the 2004 Ryder Cup?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE:

Well, both. Michigan you have some fantastic golf courses here in Michigan. Yes, of course, holing the winning putt under Bernhard Langer as captain in 2004 will always go down.

But I think being totally biased, I think winning here. Winning here. To win, to beat 155 other guys, only had to beat one guy on that particular day in a match-play sense. But to beat 155 guys over the week on a superb golf course is probably the best performance I've had in Michigan and I look forward to trying to emulate it.

Q. Wild finish to the PGA Championship last week. You've had a memorably difficult finish in a major or two. What would you tell Mito Pereira after his finish if you could give him some advice?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Yeah, I've double-bogeyed the last, thank you for bringing that up. I've double-bogeyed the last to lose at Winged Foot in 2006, and he's managed to do the same there as Southern Hills last week. A young player, younger than I was and that was one of my last opportunities; it won't be his.

So all I've got to say to him is be patient and I say that to anybody coming through. Be patient. It's a hell of a long career and just be patient with it, and take, if you can, take as many positives as possible. I know that's a bit cliche, you take the positives and everything.

But after 71 holes, he was ahead and that's a hell of an effort, okay. After 72 he wasn't, but after the first 72 holes to be ahead is a bloody good effort and he should try and take as much positives as possible.

He spoke extremely well afterwards, very mature, very well-spoken in a different language, and I thought he did extremely well, and I wish him the best as we all do.

Q. Sorry for bringing that up.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Not at all. That will be your last question here. (Laughing).

Q. What is the most remote place you've ever won a golf tournament?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Very good. I won the 72-hole golf challenge in a day up in a place called Skellefteå. Not many people have won a golf tournament in the Arctic Circle so that was good. 72 holes in a day, I was knackered. My last tee-off time was two o'clock in the morning and it was June the 21st, obviously, midday, midsummer's day in Sweden and the Arctic Circle doesn't get dark. That's getting up there. That's remote. That's good. That's not bad, actually. I thought of that quite quickly.

Q. Walking?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: We don't do buggies in Europe, no. That's why we call them buggies, not cars, yeah. Our Queen can go in a buggy but that's good for her. We don't use buggies, no, no. I don't think buggies should be -- I really don't think buggies should be on a golf course to be honest with you.

Q. When you were asked to play, did it strike your curiosity?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: I was playing for the Scotland Amateur Team at the time and we played down in a place called Falsterbo which is the southern most point of Sweden and it was a 2 1/2 hour flight north, and Sweden is up there, anyway, so imagine how far north we were, amazing. So yes, was a curiosity trip that worked out quite well.

Q. The Wannamaker Trophy is massive trophy.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: It is indeed.

Q. The trophy this week is even bigger.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: It is. Thank God, Will Zalatoris couldn't win. He'd be lighter than the trophy.

Q. Talk about how big that trophy is when you see it in person and how impressive it is.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Well, it's an amazing trophy, our trophy, the Senior PGA trophy. When I first won it here, I think it was Julius, I think Julius was here with us. He said, "Hold it up, Monty, hold it up."

I said, "Julius, you have no idea how heavy this bloody thing is, how can I possibly?" But when you've won, it's amazing when the adrenaline gets going, you can raise anything. But two great trophies in the world of golf, and it adorns my study wall. I have a replica of it, two of them, actually. And I'm very, very honored to have both at home, yeah, fantastic.

Q. Since you brought it up, Winged Foot.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Oh, super. Back to that. Great. Yeah, glad you've come.

Q. I'm just following up on your comment. How long did it take you to actually get over that?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: I'm not over that. Never will be. Sleepless nights. Get up five times thinking about it every night. No, hey, if somebody said to me, one shot left, if you want one shot again, obviously it's that one. I've had a hell of a career. I'm very, very fortunate. I'd take nothing back. People say would you trade your Money Lists for a major? No. Would you trade anything or anything else? No.

I've had a great time at this and I wouldn't trade anything for anything. So that went pretty quickly to be honest. I got on with the next one.

Q. Since it keeps coming up, not necessarily here, but on other tours, how much did money drive you when you were playing?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: It didn't really. The money that we were playing for on The European Tour at the time was a fifth to a 10th of what the Americans were playing for. Money wasn't driving us but winning and contending was. I'm six years younger than our elite Europeans: Lyle, Woosnam, Seve, Langer, Faldo era, and I was trying to compete with them. I was trying to get better to compete with them. All I was trying to do was get better. The money would have taken care of itself, so I never thought of the word 'money,' the evil word money. I would never think of that.

So all I was trying to do was get better and I knew if I got better, that things would take care of themselves. So I had to get better because they were better than me when I started and I had to learn from them and get better also, to try and compete with them.

So money was never really an issue in Europe. We never had that amount, the Tiger era changed money on PGA Tour, and Europe is still behind on that front but doing an awful lot better than we were.

Q. Paul Broadhurst was in here earlier, like, yesterday, and was a little concerned about how The European Tour is going because the purses are so small, almost comparative to what they were in 2000. Does that concern you?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Doesn't concern me because I'm not actually playing on that tour anymore. It doesn't concern me that way. I'm on this tour now, on the PGA Tour Champions, I'm very, very fortunate to be that way.

If money is mentioned, we play for average purses very equal to The European Tour, to the DP World Tour which is incredible and we are very, very fortunate to be in that position. But as far as the DP World Tour, that's for those in charge to try and negotiate.

But it's very, very difficult economically now. The world is paying for COVID now and you see here, standard of living costs have risen dramatically as they have in Britain and it's very difficult. And also Europe.

So it's very difficult. Sponsors are very difficult to find. That's why we're so lucky to be here under the KitchenAid, the Whirlpool banner to actually be playing for the sums that we are this week and the following weeks on. Very, very fortunate.

Q. In your early days when you arrived on The European Tour, leading the amateur ranks, what did you measure yourself against? Before we knew who Tiger Woods was and such, who, early stages, did you measure yourself against over there?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: There were two guys that were icons, really, of the game. One of them is still playing out here, Bernhard Langer, and Nick Faldo were my two players that, how can I get anywhere near as good as them. I never thought I could. Probably never have. Sometimes. Occasionally. And I had to improve.

So I asked questions. I learned from them. I played practice rounds with them. I ended up playing a lot of Ryder Cup matches with them as partners. Bernhard and I, I think we played seven or eight games with Nick and Bernhard and Nick, so 16 Ryder Cup matches with the pair of them. I learned a hell of a lot from them and learning how to negotiate courses, course management skills, all about pressure putts and all the stuff that goes on. So they were the two guys that I looked up to, Bernhard Langer and Nick Faldo.

Q. What is one thing you learned from Bernhard?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: It's difficult to say one particular thing I learned from him. I think I was always a little bit too quick. And to be honest, he was always a little too slow, so we met in the middle somehow.

But he never played a shot before he was ready. He never made an amateur mistake about -- about thinking after the shot, he always thought before the shot and worked it all out beforehand.

And the course management skills, I learned a lot from them both but mostly Langer. His course management skills, he never made an unforced error. You hear commentators last week saying that was an unforced error -- he missed the green on wrong side or missed the green big and couldn't get up-and-down or something.

You never saw that with Langer. It's amazing over four days, not make an unforced error, how it adds up to be on that leaderboard where you probably wouldn't have been if you had made those so-called amateur errors that we all make and we all try and negate but sometimes we can't do it.

So he was the expert at that. Nick was just -- Nick was more technical, he was more technical in the swing. I learned quite a lot of swing thoughts from Nick but more course management from Bernhard.

Q. One guy not this week or last week is Phil. Can he come back?

COLIN MONTGOMERIE: Let's hope so. Let's hope he comes back to the PGA Tour. PGA Tour made Phil Mickelson, and let's hope Phil Mickelson comes back to the PGA Tour where it started and where it should finish.

JOHN DEVER: Thank you and have a terrific day and terrific championship.