Always Count on Monty to Let Claret Jug Get Away Scot-Free

On an afternoon when Scotland’s national game was toted through the countryside by its national player, it only figured that the wind would be filled with its unofficial national anthem.

‘It ‘er in the ‘ol, Monty!

Awwwwwww

‘It ‘er up ‘n’ down, Monty!

Ohhhhhhh.

Once again, the greatest player to never win a major had an opportunity to enchant the home folk while breaking the spell.

Once again, Colin Montgomerie was the golfing equivalent of a kilt.

Lovely, efficient, but all you remember are the hairy knees.

Montgomerie began the third round of the British Open on Saturday in the final twosome with Tiger Woods, trailing the leader by four strokes.

For once, a Full Monty of hope.

At last, the man nicknamed “Mrs. Doubtfire” had more fire than doubt.

“Tiger Hunter” blared one tabloid headline.

“It’s Not Gonna Be Fun!” blared another headline.

Alas, it wasn’t.

Montgomerie outscored Woods, busted par, and still lost ground, falling into third place amid so many groans, you would have thought the St. Andrews Old Course was once again overrun by sheep.

He continually left big putts short. He often let big chances slip. Woods’ game endured a rare hiccup, and Monty simply offered him water.

He didn’t really make any impact until the final shot on the final hole, a 12-foot birdie putt that somehow found the cup and stunned thousands of fatalist Scots who expressed the gamut of emotions during the ball’s short trip.

“Ahhhh ... ewwwww ... uhhhhh ... yayyyyyy!”

“I felt that ball at the last hole willing into the hole, and it somehow got there,” Montgomerie said later. “I felt the crowd were almost helping that one in.”

Of course they were. They love their Glasgow man in spite of himself.

Maybe it’s because he looks a bit like Scotland -- craggy, overgrown, sunburned.

Or maybe it’s because he’s territorial like Scotland -- he might be the best player in Europe, yet he has never played more than a dozen PGA Tour events in the United States after being heckled there early in his career.

He’s also resilient like Scotland, taking the course this weekend in the wake of news reports that his wife threw him out of the house, leading to their divorce.

Then there was the cheating scandal from the Indonesian Open, where Montgomerie acknowledged having improved the lie of a ball that was marked during a rain delay, and wound up donating his prize money to charity.

“He is our glorious failure,” said David Christie, a tire maker from Dundee, standing among the pained masses behind the 17th green.

Glorious? A man who has never won on the PGA Tour, never won a major and had only one top-10 finish in 15 British Opens even though two have been on his home course at Royal Troon?

“We always have hope for him, he’s one of us,” said Christie. “It’s just that he continually fails in his attempts to please.”

So he tried again Saturday, in the usual unlikely fashion.

Woods showed up as the cool kid on the block in a tight white turtleneck; Montgomerie looked like the old man next door in a lumpy blue sweater vest.

Woods was sponsored by the usual hip companies while Montgomerie’s hat contained the name of the maker of the official Olympic badminton shuttlecocks.

Yet beginning with the introduction on the first tee, it was clear the square guy was the stud, Scotland’s newest folk hero, Strangeheart.

“Ay’ Monty!” thousands shouted. “Ay’ Monty!”

The cheering for the other guy was so muted, one young man asked his father, “Is it OK to boo Tiger Woods?”

Montgomerie, once hassled so badly in the U.S. that a magazine printed “Be Nice To Monty” buttons, clearly enjoyed it.

“It was quite an unbelievable situation to find myself in here,” he said. “I would like to do well for them [today], especially. It would be fantastic if we could get through this together.”

Woods, no surprise here, clearly didn’t care.

“I expected it, it should be that way, he’s native born, he’s never won a major championship ... and this is the best chance in a long time,” Woods said. “Obviously, the people should be rooting for him and they were.”

It took all of one hole for them to realize the futility of such a gesture, Montgomerie’s first putt for birdie hanging on the lip while he waited and waited for a wind that never came.

On the second hole, Woods bogeyed and Montgomerie could have picked up two strokes, but his birdie attempt was short.

On the third hole, another weak putt, another lost birdie chance.

And on it went, with Woods eventually surviving well enough to use his famed fist pump while Montgomerie was resigned to his famed grimace.

“I just didn’t hit my putts hard enough today,” he said, later adding, “That’s the goal [in the final round], not leave any putt short of the hole.”

When Montgomerie did close the gap to one stroke after the 10th hole, he proceeded to make mistakes on each of the next two holes to quickly fall three shots behind again.

Then, in the final stretch, his old distracted tendencies surfaced.

He hollered at some boys running along the side of the 17th fairway. Then he asked a fan to stop moving because the fan’s head was forming a bobbing shadow over the tee.

By the time he walked down the 18th green, some fans were literally throwing up their hands. Yet when he finally finished with that putt, those hands were struck together, again and again, Montgomerie hearing the roar of a champion, nobody daring to tell him it was the centuries-old wail of the empathetic.

“Who knows what can happen?” he said later when asked about the final round, but, oh, they know, they know.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.