Colin Montgomerie will be aiming to successfully defend a Senior Major title for the second time this year when he heads to Del Paso Country Club in California for this week’s US Senior Open Championship.
Last month the Scotsman, who turns 52 on Tuesday this week, made it back-to-back wins in the US Senior PGA Championship presented by KitchenAid when he won by four shots of the Pete Dye Course at French Lick.
He maintained that fine form to post a third place finish at the Constellation Senior Players Championship and to open with a one under par 69 on the testing Chambers Bay links at the US Open Championship last week.
Montgomerie’s performance on one of the most physically demanding courses around, where he eventually finished tied 64th, drew high praise from all quarters, and he knows he will have to prolong that sort of form if he is to make it another successful title defence.
“It isn’t easy when you are up against highly competitive guys like Mark O’Meara, Tom Lehman and Kenny Perry, Freddie Couples and Bernhard Langer, to name a few,” he said. “When I do win I am having to play very close to the levels I was in the 1990s.”
A star-studded field has gathered in Sacramento, including three-time Senior Major champion and two-time Masters winner Bernhard Langer, who won the US Senior Open in 2010, Englishman Roger Chapman, the 2012 victor, and Spaniard Miguel Angel Jiménez.
Jiménez, who has won twice on the Champions Tour in the USA since turning 50 in early 2014, will begin his quest for a maiden Senior Major title alongside Americans Dave Eichelberger and Bob Gilder.
Montgomerie, who last year beat Gene Sauers in a three-hole play-off at Oak Tree National in Oaklahoma, has been paired with Langer and Patrick Tallent, the reigning US Senior Amateur champion, for the first two rounds.
Other European Senior Tour members in the field include the in-form Peter Fowler, Englishmen Paul Wesselingh and Barry Lane and Welshman Ian Woosnam.
