This years build up to the Open at Turnberry has been dominated by a particularly petty spat between Sandy lyle and Colin Montgomerie, although before I explain further it appears to be mainly Sandy Lyle causing the problems here.
There are some basic issues here, firstly Colin Montgomerie was recently selected as the Ryder Cup captain for Europe, one of the other candidates was Sandy Lyle. Sandy Lyle has already spoken out about the fact that he was ignored for the position and the fact that monty has now got the job does not appear to be going down to well.
The next source of the argument refers to the Indonesian Open in 2005 when Monty was accused of replacing the ball and getting a better lie during the tournament , Monty was cleared by a committee and various others of any wrong doing. Sadly it appears that Sandy Lyle on the eve of what is in a British Player’s eyes anyway, the most important tournament in golf has disrupted the preparations of Monty.
Now I am no Colin Montgomerie fanboy, I personally believe that with a better controlled temperament the man could have easily won major tournaments but the petty comments being made only make Sandy Lyle out to be a sore loser. At this moment Lyle has issued a sort of apology but then seemed to retract by then going over the Indonesian incident again. Subsequently Monty blanked Lyle later, usually I would say typical Monty behaviour, but in this case probably correct.
Incidentally would you have Lyle as the vice-captain or a future captain of the European ryder cup team, on the basis of this I’d rather not.
