DAVlD FEHERTY gets his last chance of a place in Ireland's 1996 Dunhill Cup team when the Volvo Scandinavian Masters begins at the Forsgarden club near Gothenburg today.
The former Ryder Cup golfer who was a member of the 1990 winning Irish team and played for the fifth time in the 1993 match, is returning to the United States next week where he is due to commentate for CBS on the US PGA Championship in Kentucky.
It means that this week's Scandinavian tournament will be his final one before the Irish team is finalised after the Czech Open which starts on August 15th.
Feherty stands 61st in the money list with just over £70,000 and only this week's first prize of over £116,000 will be enough to get him past Paul McGinley who is a firm favourite to be the third man with Darren Clarke and Padraig Harrington.
Ryder Cup hero Philip Walton is even more of a Dunhill Cup outsider, for he currently fills 101st place (£36,434) in the rankings and is almost resigned to forfeiting the place at St Andrews that he has filled for the last two years.
However Feherty will have the considerable benefit of playing with a freshly determined Colin Montgomerie and the committed Swede Per Ulrik Johansson in the first two rounds.
Montgomerie has emerged from 10 days of introspection after his Open championship failure to announce that he believes the key to a rosy future is hard work. "Whether I shoot 65 or 75 in the first round I will spend two hours on the practice ground afterwards," declared the Scot yesterday.
After the Open I asked myself why I was not doing as well as I can and why my temperament was not what it should be. I decided it was because I had net been doing enough practice for two months and that I had been getting upset with myself because of it," he said.
Montgomerie won this title in Stockholm in 1991, and if he justifies his favouritism by taking it again, he will be in a very strong position to secure a record equalling fourth successive European number one title.
His principal rivals look to be Ian Woosnam, who is his nearest challenger in the money list, and Bernhard Langer who has recovered from the shoulder injury which forced him out of the Open on the second day.
Peter Baker, who won on this refurbished course three years ago, and Jesper Parnevik, who became the first Swedish winner on home soil at Malmo last year, are other strong claimants. But few Swedes are expecting much of John Daly after his embarrassing 89 in the Dutch Open second round last week, and the form he has showed since arriving in Scandinavia. He was still hitting the ball "sideways" during an exhibition day in Oslo with Montgomerie and Parnevik at the start of the week, and he remained disconsolate yesterday.
Des Smyth, who led at the halfway stage at Hilversum last week, Harrington, who missed the halfway cut there by one shot, and Ronan Rafferty augment the Irish title challenge. Also in the line up are Raymond Burns, Francis Howley and David Higgins.
