Monty: I want to win for Sam

Colin Montgomerie, fired up by the hostility of the crowd in Boston three years ago, today revealed a very different reason for badly wanting to win the Ryder Cup this weekend.

He wants to give Europe captain Sam Torrance the perfect send-off to his Cup career.

Torrance has no intention staying on for a second match in charge win, lose or draw on Sunday and Montgomerie said: “It would be nice to sort of finish Sam Torrance’s career, if you like.

“It means an awful lot to him. He’s a very emotional man and I know him very well. He’s from not just the same country as me, but the same county, and I know what it means to him.”

At Brookline in 1999 Montgomerie gave what he considers his best-ever performance on American soil.

It did not prevent a United States win, but the way he overcame probably the worst heckling ever seen in golf gave him immense satisfaction.

And he agreed his desire to win on those three days might have been greater than at any major championship – and everybody knows how much he still yearns to win one of those.

“The more it went on and the more that Paul Lawrie and I had to put up with the first two days, the more I took on a role of ‘I don’t want to lose’.

“And when I’m in that position I fight like I never have before. I holed putts I wouldn’t have normally and Paul and I did particularly well.

“It was an event I’ll always look back on with memories. I’m not saying all fond, but memories.

“In the last singles match I had with the late Payne Stewart it was a very difficult time. I’m sure that it hurt his game as well as it did my own. It was a shame the way it finished – he’d had enough, I’d had enough and he picked up my ball on the last.

“I’ll never forget that. I’ll always think of fond memories of that game with him. It meant so much to him to represent his country. The first thing he said when he won the 1999 US Open was that he was in the team.”