Monty struggling at Heidelberg

If the start was a sign of things to come, Colin Montgomerie was in for a long, tiring and instantly forgettable time today.

After finishing his opening 75 with a double bogey in the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open in Heidelberg yesterday, the 40-year-old resumed by instantly dropping two more strokes.

And it appeared to so affect Montgomerie that his sports psychologist and friend Hugh Mantle – fully aware, of course, of the turmoil in the Ryder Cup star’s private life – felt the need to put an arm round him and give him a pat of encouragement.

After missing his bogey putt Montgomerie immediately headed off away from the green.

It looked at first as if it might be to confront a press photographer who had twice clicked at the wrong moment as playing partner Retief Goosen was playing. But all the Scot wanted was his own space and some seconds of solitude.

Mantle joined him, then left him to it.

His opening drive had finished in the face of a bunker, his next shot finished in thick rough only 30 yards away and his third not only did not make the green, but also went in the rough.

He had double-bogeyed the same 10th hole in the first round and he did so again after chipping 10 feet past.

Montgomerie managed to par the next, but his mind did not seem to be fully on the job in hand as he then teed off out of turn – ahead of Goosen – at the long 12th.

At five over par, 12 strokes behind joint leaders Trevor Immelman, David Howell and Gregory Havret, Montgomerie was heading for an early exit and a 500-mile drive back home, having decided not to fly.

A missed cut would almost certainly mean that he dropped out of the world’s top 50 and therefore failed to earn an exemption for the Open at his home club Royal Troon in July.

He does not have a place in next month’s US Open at the moment either.

Meanwhile, Padraig Harrington, the other member of the group and the defending champion, birdied the 11th to improve to three under.

Howell was the first of the overnight pacesetters back into action and while he set off again with a par at the 10th partner Marcel Siem, Germany’s best hope in the injury absence of Bernhard Langer, birdied it to make it a four-way tie at the top.

Darren Clarke also made a three there to move to three under.