Monty fights back

Colin Montgomerie fought back from a dreadful start to keep his HSBC World Match Play Championship hopes alive at Wentworth today.

Montgomerie, never behind in his opening day victory over Ryder Cup team-mate David Howell, lost four of the first six holes to defending champion Michael Campbell.

But the Scot, winner of the title in 1999 and with three other victories on the course to his name, recovered to be all square with one hole of the morning round to play.

It was looking really bad for Ryder Cup team-mate Luke Donald, however.

Tenth in the world and the highest-ranked player left in following the opening-day exits of Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Adam Scott, Retief Goosen and Ernie Els, Donald crashed to five down after just 10 holes to Woods’ conqueror Shaun Micheel.

The other two matches also involved a member of next week’s European side at the K Club.

Swede Robert Karlsson followed up his win over world number two Furyk by taking a one-up lead over Argentina’s Angel Cabrera, the player who had put out six-time winner Els, while England’s Paul Casey was left with Canadian left-hander Mike Weir.

They were all battling for golf’s biggest first prize of £1m (€1.48m), but the absence of Woods and other big names brought a noticeable reduction in the size of the crowd.

Campbell sank an eight-foot birdie putt on the opening green and then was handed the fourth, fifth and sixth on the plate eight-time European number one Montgomerie – still in with a chance of making that nine this season – found trouble.

However, a 15-foot putt won Montgomerie the seventh and a seven iron to three feet on the next for another birdie narrowed the gap to two.

Campbell birdied the long 12th, but his opponent hit a five iron to eight feet on the 14th, the Maori double-bogeyed the next and Montgomerie rolled in a 14-footer at the 16th.

Casey, impressive conqueror of Retief Goosen in his first match in the event, was behind three times to Weir over the first 13 holes, but the gap was never more than one and the Surrey golfer drew level again when Weir bogeyed the 15th.

Micheel, cock-a-hoop after eliminating Woods, birdied the first two holes and added two more to be out in 31.

Three down was bad enough for Donald at that point, but the American struck a six iron to five feet on the 11th and two-putted the 531-yard 12th for yet another winning birdie.