Captain Monty Open To Having Lunch With People He Never Would Have Dined With Before

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Mike Aitken reports on just how desperate European Captain Colin Montgomerie is to win.

"I feel in the past that there has been only a select few told things on a need-to-know basis but I want this to be an open campaign," he explained. "I will do it through e-mails to the players and talk to them in players' lounges. At lunch, maybe I'll sit at tables I wouldn't otherwise have sat at and say 'listen lads, this is what's happening'.

Lunching with the little people he never would have wasted his time with.  Now that is determination!

"In the American golf imagination, the nine-holer is maligned as a Velcro-patched pitch 'n' putt, the lesser-dressed cousin of miniature golf."

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I loved Tom Coyne's SI Golf Plus My Shot piece on Irish golf and the beauty of the 9-hole round. He nails it. If there was some way we could de-stigmatize the 9-hole round, I'd sure love to hear it. (I still say a match play event with 9-hole matches in pool play would help.)

As for Coyne's book, I just received it and haven't had a chance to look at it yet. But freelancer and avid book reader Tom Mackin says this about it and John Garrity's latest:

If you're not going to Ireland soon -- despite one Euro being worth $1.30 American, the best rate in a long while -- two new books will get you there in spirit. Tom Coyne's "A Course Called Ireland" (Gotham Books) chronicles his walk -- yes, walk -- around the entire island while playing almost 60 links courses. John Garrity investigates his own Irish heritage, at a more leisurely pace, in "Ancestral Links" (New American Library). Two different perspectives on the game and the country with a shared favorite: Carne Golf Links in County Mayo.