Montgomerie credits the fans with helping him home

Colin Montgomerie surged down the back nine all the way into second place Friday, setting up a mouthwatering Saturday duel with Tiger Woods. Monty credited the support of the large gallery for his strong finish.

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (PA) -- Colin Montgomerie praised the Open Championship galleries Friday night for staying around to help him set up a mouth-watering head-to-head duel with Tiger Woods on Saturday.

Many of the 40,000-strong crowd might have thought of heading away from St. Andrews after witnessing Jack Nicklaus' farewell and then the completion of a 67 from Woods that took him clear of the field.

But Montgomerie then birdied three of the last five holes to move into second place on 7-under, only four behind Woods and alone in second place. His strong finish put him in the final pairing with Woods on Saturday.

Even so, Montgomerie thinks that unless Woods stumbles the rest of the field could be playing for second place.

"It was great that the crowd stayed," he said. "I pay a lot of respect to them for helping me home."

"I'm not going to say it will be fun tomorrow. Everybody who says that playing with Tiger goes and shoots 80," he added. "This is not fun -- it's a major and business. Very much business. I look forward to it -- the crowd, the whole atmosphere. I'll enjoy watching him and the fact that the crowd are very much behind me here."

Unlike, of course, Augusta in 1997. They were out together in the last group of the Masters on day three then, and Montgomerie managed only a 74 to Woods' 65.

The seven-time European No. 1 has been in a playoff with him since -- in Germany -- and is considerably more comfortable and relaxed than he was that day.

"If Tiger does stumble at all -- a couple under for him! -- that gives us a chance. I'm just the leader of a very strong pack and one of us is going to shoot low," Monty said. "But if he plays well, I'd have to go along with those who think we're playing for second. He has a four-stroke cushion."

"If I putt as well as I did today, I have a chance. I'm pretty relaxed now," he added. "Three years ago I led at Lytham, but missed from five feet on the last hole of my second and felt deep down I wasn't going to win. Today I holed a 12-footer and it's a big, big difference. I'm pretty relaxed now."

Montgomerie was round in a 6-under 66 to Woods' 67 on a Friday that saw Monty play a two-ball with fellow Scot Paul Lawrie, the winner in 1999 and the last European to capture any major. That pairing was caused by David Toms disqualifying himself after telling officials that he thought his ball was moving when he tapped it in on the 17th hole on Thursday.

Montgomerie had been marking Toms' card and feared at first he might have been responsible for something. In March, of course, he was involved in a rules controversy in Indonesia in which some fellow competitors questioned his placement of a ball in a bunker after an overnight weather delay. European Tour officials cleared him of any wrongdoing in that incident.

"I thought, 'what have I done now?'," Montgomerie said. "But thank God it wasn't me this time."

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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