Monty joining dawn patrol as Masters plight forces early start

No surprise, then, to find Colin Montgomerie practising at the unheard-of hour of 7am at Doral on Tuesday as he desperately seeks a last-minute invitation to Augusta's garden party, a week before his own big date at Loch Lomond.

Monty said recently that he thinks about the Masters 'last thing before I go to bed at night and first thing the next morning'. Given his round with the larks on Tuesday that last statement would now appear literally the case.

The good news for the Scot is there are only 78 players in the field at the CA Championship, beginning on Thursday here in Florida and there is no halfway cut.

The bad news is that Open Champion Padraig Harrington is the only absentee among the world's top 60 and Monty has to beat all but three of them if he is not to miss only his third major championship out of the last 65.

If this is the last-chance saloon, the bouncer on the door appears ready to turf him out on his ear.

In his last three appearances at the course they call the Blue Monster, Monty has been eaten alive, missing the halfway cut on two occasions and finishing tied 55th when this event moved last year. Furthermore, there was an early bath for him at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week.

'I really need to pull out all the stops,' said Monty. 'My world ranking has slipped and so I have one last chance to play to my ability.'

When you think that this time last year he was in the world's top 20 — he is now 66th — his world ranking has not so much slipped as fallen off a cliff.

The only other occasion he plummeted so far so quickly was when he was sifting through the debris of his first marriage. Let's hope he is right when he says that it is simply a matter of not playing as well as he can.

But the worry this time, of course, must be that at 44 and after 20 years on tour, age has finally caught up with him. After all, the only player in the world's top 25 aged 44 or over is 45-yearold Vijay Singh and he just happens to be the most prolific fortysomething winner in U.S. Tour history.

On the positive side there is the fact that he won a couple of rounds last month against strong opponents in Jim Furyk and Charles Howell at the Accenture Match Play Championship. 'I am working harder than ever because I have to in order to have any chance to compete,' said Monty. 'In the past, if I had a couple of average rounds I'd still finish in the top 10. Now, I wouldn't be around for the last two days.'

Given Monty's desperate record at Augusta, why does it clearly matter so much? 'I don't want to miss any major championships because that's hardly a good sign, is it?' he argued.

'But this being a Ryder Cup year, the Masters means more than ever because players are going to go past you if you're not competing, as there are so many precious points available. Then there is the fact that the Ryder Cup captain, Nick Faldo, has qualified for the tournament and I haven't. That doesn't look good either.'

Further incentive comes from the memory of the only other time he missed out, in 2005, when he sat on the sofa, his face set in that look he has every time he scores a 76.

'It was a miserable experience,' he said. 'I had just shot 60 in Indonesia the previous week, for heaven's sake, and I was sitting there thinking: "Hey, I can actually play this game, I could be competing there". I don't want to feel that way again.'

Imagine combining that feeling with all the fiddly last-minute wedding jobs that someone with Monty's personality simply isn't equipped to handle?

If only for bride Gaynor Knowles's sake, therefore, cheer him on when he tees off in the first round alongside American Hunter Mahan and 25-year-old Englishman Nick Dougherty, two of those whippersnappers providing constant reminders that time is marching on.