Montgomerie putting emphasis on short game

Colin Montgomerie, a man previously devoted to the driver, is undergoing a dramatic change of attitude. The Scot has played 46 events on the US Tour and has not, so far, won, and it is beginning to get to him.

Montgomerie has always maintained that "total golf" is the only form of the game worth playing. By that he means that the challenge should start on the tee and remain until the ball is holed out. Because of that belief he has always concentrated on his driving, on hitting fairways, because, in his book, unless you do, you are dead.

Now he is coming round to one of the oldest adages in the game - drive for show, putt for dough. "I'm beginning to learn," he said yesterday "that the last shot is more important than the first."

This statement comes after a session with the man who is credited in the United States as the short-game guru, Dave Pelz. "We all need help from time to time," he said and coming after an abysmal two weeks on the greens Montgomerie decided that now was the hour.

Pelz has been giving the Scot drills to improve not just his putting but his chipping, and also told him it would make sense to be in the US the week before the majors, to acquire the touch to cope with the faster, firmer greens here.

"If I was a bachelor I'd have been on the US Tour seven years ago," he said, "but as a married man with three children that is now impossible."

Such problems do not exist for the co-favourite of this week's championship, at Ponte Vedra, near Jacksonville. David Duval. He is both single and single-minded and, this week at least, is getting more media attention than even Tiger Woods.

Duval, in the minds of many the best player in the world, gave a calm and collected, quietly controlled press interview yesterday - a mirror image of the way he plays.

Duval was the most successful American golfer last year: better than Woods, ranked number one to Duval's number two, and better than Mark O'Meara, the US Player of the Year.

Neither of those distinctions bother him. He does not rate the world rankings because the top players do not play against each other often enough, and does not begrudge O'Meara his honour even though, as he says: "I do believe I played the best golf between January and November last year. But what O'Meara did in '98 was different. He won two majors. It was historical. It's why he was Player of the Year."

His response to questions is reflective, and, if they seem to lead to controversy, deflective. Typical was his refusal to discuss the world rankings and, in particular, whether he should be ranked above Woods. "The rankings are just not good enough," he said, and immediately defused the remark, "but I don't want to be critical because I don't have anything better to put in their place."

He also did not want to debate spectator behaviour and the perceived increase in rowdyism. Duval said, simply: "If your head is where it should be you are not going to hear cameras going off, or mobile phones, or heckling."