A beacon's dark looks Colin Montgomerie : PROFILE

Peter Corrigan assesses the strengths of a golfer who is taking a grump y ride to greatness

COLIN MONTGOMERIE'S recent betrothal to Big Bertha was a marriage made in heaven to those who relish his struggles to rid himself of the tetchy image that has dogged his otherwise admirable golfing career. Big Bertha is the name of the big-headed driver manufactured by the Callaway company whose clubs are now being used by the 16-stone Scot and the name matches with regrettable ease the persona of a player prone to flouncing about the fairways when his game goes wrong.

He constantly vows to improve his temperament and has made good progress towards fulfilling that pledge during the eight years he has climbed up through the professional ranks with an amazing steadiness never before achieved by any golfer in the world. But the polished ascent has too often had the shine taken off it by the scuff marks of tantrums.

Only last weekend, playing in the Desert Classic in Dubai, Montgomerie inflicted a slight blemish on an excellent start to this year's tournament campaign. In the second round, he scored a 63 that put him way out in front of an exceptionally strong fieldbut in the third round he allowed the eventual winner, the American Fred Couples, to draw level with him. As his game began to fray, the Scot responded with customary grumpiness, kicking the sand and complaining about noisy spectators.

When a baby cried while Montgomerie was teeing off on the 12th, he swung round and, in the immortal words of my colleague Tim Glover, "gave it a look that King Herod would have been proud of". Having seen that look many times I can vouch for the gospel clarity of the reporting.

Montgomerie finished second in Dubai, an especially excellent performance for someone breaking in new clubs, and paid an envious compliment to Couples: "He is ultra laid-back and it was very relaxing to play with him." Then he added, perhaps unnecessarily: "I'm a bit more fiery than he is."

It must be said that every golfer in the world looks petulant when compared with Couples and, furthermore, it seems odd even to bring up the subject after a week in which we've seen how devastating real petulance can be in certain other sports. The nature of golf, however, is such that even the mildest irascibility on the course brings dismay to the onlooker. Grit, determination and steely competitiveness are all acceptable facets of the golfer but bursts of outrage that manifest themselves in club- throwing, bag-kicking or other signs of peevishness are not appreciated at any level.

The matter deserves Montgomerie's urgent attention because it represents the only weakness in a personality that bulges with attributes that could make him a hero. He is intelligent, articulate and can be so disarmingly charming that one or two journalists who have interviewed him have accused golf writers of misrepresenting him. Perish the thought. The same eruptive personality also contains enough courage and resolution to scoop up every prize in the game. No matter what the pressure, he doesn't back off. His temper may let him down occasionally but his bravery never does, neither does the consistency of the commitment he brings to his golf, which is a quality that separates him from most of his British contemporaries.

We have seen many a young hopeful hurtle into the professional ranks with spectacular early success only to fade into the pack and slowly disappear from sight. When Montgomerie turned professional in 1987 as very much a raw 23-year-old he began a sequence of unparalleled annual progress. After a distinguished amateur career, his first tournament as a professional was the European Masters at Crans-sur-Sierre in Switzerland. He booked a flight to Geneva that was double the price it should have been, he lost his clubs en route and they didn't join him in time for a practice round. He took a seven on the first hole, missed the cut and by the time he got home to Glasgow had spent £2,000.

He seriously considered ending his career there and then and re-joining the biscuit factory where he had first worked but he discovered that there were travel agencies who specialised in ferrying golfers around the European circuit at a third of the costhe had incurred. Nevertheless, he earned only £2,051 in his first year and finished 164th in the European Order of Merit.

In the following years he finished 54th, 25th, 14th, fourth, third, first and first. His prize money last year was a record for the European Tour of £762,719. If he finishes first again this year he will be only the third player in the history of the Tour to win three successive Order of Merit titles. The other two were Peter Oosterhuis and Seve Ballesteros.

Apart from a low boiling point that caused several caddies to drop his bag and run, Montgomerie's early days were also marked by a slow acceptance from his fellow pros. He had come from a comfortable background. His father is secretary at the Royal TroonClub in Ayrshire, where Montgomerie swung his first club at the age of four, and he went to Strathallan, the Scottish public school. He spent four years on a golf scholarship at Houston Baptist University in Texas where he gained a degree in business management which earned him an offer of a job with Mark McCormack's International Management Group. They now work for him.

In golf, there are not many instances of ragged urchins making it to the top but on the other hand there is no advantage in being born with a silver spoon in your mouth unless you can use it to sink putts with. His battle to win the wholehearted respect of his fellow pros has proceeded alongside a reluctance among some of his countrymen to embrace him as a true Scot. Since he takes his Scottishness very seriously, this is hurtful.

Although born and educated in Scotland, he was brought up in Yorkshire where he was coached by Bill Ferguson from an early age. Montgomerie is 31 years old and there are not many of that age who can say they have had the same coach for 22 years. That, plus the four years spent in America, did not implant him in the Scottish mind at an early age even though he played in the Walker Cup and won the Scottish Amateur Championship just before turning pro in 1987. He was also following very popular Scottish he roes like Sandy Lyle and Sam Torrance who gave off a totally different aura.

You might think that Montgomerie looks the part. Tall and powerfully if not athletically built, golden of curl, noble of brow, haughty of manner and deadly of purpose, you wouldn't find a more suitable figure to tramp the glens in search of glory. But ifyou aspire to be a Bonnie Prince Charlie it pays to be more of the Bonnie Prince and less of the Charlie.

The Scottish press have not taken kindly to his excesses. The most common sentence in Scottish golf reporting refers to the teddy being thrown out of Montgomerie's pram again. He hasn't been helped by the recent failures of the Scottish team which he hascaptained in the Dunhill Cup at St Andrews over the past two years. In 1993 they were humiliatingly defeated by Paraguay and last year failed to reach the semi-finals.

His career has been dogged by a number of narrow failures. In between receiving a couple of reprimands from the European Tour for talking or behaving out of turn - "We are losing patience with Monty," the Tour director, Ken Schofield, said- Montgomerie has been within touching distance of at least 10 tournament victories to add to the several he already has. The two most notable near-misses were the US Opens of 1993 and 1994. He finished third to Tom Kite at Pebble Beach the year before last after Jack Nicklaus had prematurely congratulated him on winning. Last year he lost the same elusive major to Ernie Els in a play-off dominated by humidity that should have seen off a man of Montgomerie's bulk a lot earlier.

The Scot's brilliance as a player relies heavily on his skill around and on the green. He is also possessed of a valuable self-belief. If he could draw a ball from right to left as well he fades it, his game would be complete. He is working on it but notdesperately so because he is not a slave to the practice ground. Above all, he has it in him to be a hero.

This year he could become the first Briton to win one of the four major championships since Nick Faldo's Open victory of 1992. He could be the pivotal figure as Europe seek revenge against the United States in the Ryder Cup in Rochester, New York, in September. There are boundless possibilities for him, particularly if he can keep as firm an eye on his temper as he does on his horizons.