The Bridesmaid

Jacklin, who reminded his audience that Raymond Floyd shared his sentiments, said that his vote – all Hall of Famers have a vote – had gone to Ian Woosnam, the 1991 Masters champion.

That said, Jacklin moved on to the hub of the matter; the thing that would seem to have riled him and the other over 50s rather more than anything else about Montgomerie’s new status. Where he and the other seniors had had to work their tails off to get into the Champions Tour in the States, Monty, thanks to his Hall of Fame credentials, was how an automatic qualifier for that particular little goldmine.

You would have to suspect that the senior contingent might well have been inclined to let the matter lie had not Monty made the somewhat rash comment that he was taking aim at a Grand Slam of senior majors.

Tom Watson, rather than Jacklin, was the first to speak out on that front.

While this quintuple Open champion conceded that it would make for a ‘major’ story when Montgomerie joined the Champions Tour, he none the less wasted no time in indicating that he might find the senior scenario a whole lot tougher than he thought.

"I fully expect Colin to play well out here as he still drives the ball great and can hole putts, too," said Watson, who won the Hong Kong Open title in 1992, 13 years before Montgomerie. "But the question for Colin and others like him is, ‘Can they dominate the Tour?’ The only two to have done that in the Tour’s history are Lee Trevino and Hale Irwin."