Three-time Senior Major Champion Colin Montgomerie hopes that St Andrews can become a regular venue for The Senior Open Presented by Rolex ahead of the Championship’s first staging on the famous Old Course this week.
With a record number of entries totalling in excess of 750 for this year’s Championship, the eight-time European Tour Number One hopes that The Senior Open will return to the hallowed links of the Home of Golf in future.
“When the schedule came out for our Tour and I saw we were coming to St Andrews it was very special,” said Montgomerie. “I didn’t appreciate, having been a senior now for five years, that we had never been here before and that was something that was missing.
“Everybody deserves a lot of credit for this year. It’s not easy in the mid-season to close this course for two weeks to have this tournament here. It’s fantastic.
“I have been speaking to people in America and they have said ‘of course I’m coming over, it’s St Andrews’.
“It’s the largest entry we’ve ever had at a senior event anywhere, because it’s St Andrews. Let’s hope we can do something similar to The Open, where The Senior Open can come here every five years – wouldn’t that be fantastic.
“It would give us something to look forward to every five years – coming back to St Andrews.
“This is a very special place; you talk about the golf course, but the town itself – the university – everything St Andrews does is first class. It’s a lovely place to be.”
With The Senior Open taking place on the Old Course for the first time in the Championship’s history, Montgomerie believes that victory at St Andrews would be one of his career highlights.
“It was interesting that Freddie Couples, when he won this a few years back, he said it was his number one victory after the Masters,” he said. “It means a lot, winning anything, but winning the Senior Open would mean a little bit more because it’s St Andrews.
“We might not be back here, so this is our one shot. I feel the same as a number of others – to stand on the 18thwith the trophy would be a huge, huge delight.”
