Colin Montgomerie targets Charles Schwab Cup victory
Thursday 5 November 2015 15:01, UK
Colin Montgomerie wants to end to the Champions Tour season as the leading player by holding on to a slender advantage heading in to this week's Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
This week's event, the equivalent of the PGA Tour's TOUR Championship, sees the 30 highest-ranked players in the Champions Tour standings compete at Arizona's Desert Mountain Club, with Montgomerie currently topping the points list with a win and 12 top-10 finishes during another strong season.
Montgomerie, who won the European Tour's order of merit title seven years running during the 1990s, heads in to the season finale with a narrow 39 point lead in the standings over Jeff Maggert, as reigning champion Bernhard Langer lurks not far behind.
The Scot finished runner-up in the standings 12 months ago but admits he's fully focused on going one better this time around.
Champions Tour Golf
"As a British player, it would mean everything really," he said. "Having not ever taken my membership up on the PGA Tour and having done it now on the Champions Tour, it would be great in my second full season, having finished second the first year, to go and win it.
"I want to give everything. If I don't win and Bernhard or Jeff wins the Schwab Cup, I will be first congratulate them and I can go home on that flight from Phoenix to London on Sunday evening saying to myself, 'Well, I've given myself the best chance.'
"But it will take a lot of effort. Bernhard's playing as well as he ever, ever has. We all know that. Jeff is as steady a player and as good a player as you can get. So it will take a lot of good golf.
"Last year I was too far behind, but this year that's not the case, so I'm ahead of the game slightly this year that I'm giving myself an opportunity."
Montgomerie will tee off alongside US Senior Open champion Maggert as part of the final group out on Thursday, with Langer featuring alongside Senior Open champion Marco Dawson.
"Any other year you almost would have secured the Schwab Cup with over 3,000 points," Langer said. "But this year all three of us have had a very consistently great year, so it's fun to be in the mix."
