People were hiding down manholes but I just thought you’d be better off ordering a drink from the bar, sitting on the beach and watching it happen

COLIN MONTGOMERIE ON HIS BRUSH WITH HAWAII’S BOGUS ‘MISSILE ATTACK’

TRUST Colin Montgomerie to be in Hawaii when everyone received the infamous text warning of a missile threat. Trust him to have a typically entertaining take.

‘We arrived on Friday and then on Saturday morning someone’s going to blow us up, and I thought: “That’s just great”,’ he said.

‘Of all the places to go, you know you could go anywhere and we pick that one place that has a missile threat.

‘It was weird. People were disappearing down manholes and you’re thinking to yourself: “That’s no use”. You’d be better off ordering a drink from the bar, sit on the beach and watch it happen. Better to go out in style than down a bloody manhole.’

Thankfully, after a 30-minute hiatus, the missile threat proved a false alarm and so Monty will embark on another season going out in style on the Champions Tour in America, where he has three senior majors to his name.

This week, however, there’s a change of pace and a rare outing these days on the European Tour, where he’s competing in what was once one of his favourite events, the Omega Dubai Desert Classic.

‘I walked along the practice ground and I didn’t really recognise too many, to be honest, but it was nice they recognised me,’ he said. ‘Niall Horan was there and I didn’t recognise him either, but he said hello. I believe he has more Twitter followers than me.’

It should be pointed out he was being droll here but, for the record, Monty has 53,900 followers while Horan, the golf-loving former member of One Direction turned successful solo artist who is playing in the pro-am with Rory McIlroy, has 34.8 million.

What else is happening in Monty’s world? There’s a hilarious picture on his Twitter account of him in Hawaii with a surfboard under his arm. If you’d thought there’d be about as much chance of a missile going off than Monty successfully riding the waves, you’d be right.

‘I was thinking how difficult golf was and the fact there’s got to be something easier than this, so that’s when I thought about surfing,’ he began. ‘Then someone said you’ve got to have a strong core to be good at it and that’s when I realised it was probably a bit harder than I gave it credit for.

‘And then someone said there was a bit of a reef on the Hawaiian coast and you should not bother there because you could kill yourself on the reef. So, I didn’t bother with surfing at all, to be honest. I wasn’t bombed in Hawaii, and I didn’t kill myself, either.’

Should we talk about golf? Monty arrives here fresh from playing in a Champions Tour event staged in the place that’s supposed to be paradise, where he was one shot ahead of American Jerry Kelly playing the last and contrived to finish one shot behind.

‘It’s not often in my career I’ve messed up on the 18th but I did there and it made for a long flight,’ he said.

At 54, the hunger to improve saw Monty work on his chipping and putting over the winter in near sub-zero temperatures with the noted short-game specialist Kevin Craggs — based at Kingsfield golf centre near Edinburgh — who has worked with Catriona Matthew.

‘When you’re going up against the likes of Bernhard Langer and Fred Couples you’ve got to improve, or you just get left behind,’ he said. ‘I’m shocked how good the scoring is, because we don’t play pitchand-putt courses.’

Monty is keeping a close eye on what’s happening over here and believes Europe is on the cusp of another special era.

‘I always thought the 2006 Ryder Cup team we put out at the K Club was very strong but this one might be even stronger,’ he said.

‘Now, suddenly, you’ve got three guys who have appeared from nowhere and Jon Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton have all shown they belong on the world stage. There’s also the fact Paul Casey has rejoined the European Tour because he’s a very good player as well. So, you’ve got those four on top of the core we saw at Hazeltine two years ago and it looks like European golf is on the verge of another great era.

‘I know the Americans think they’re favourites, they always think like that, but it looks like “game on” to me in Paris in September. It’s going to be one hell of a match.’