Monty's Induction Sparking Outrage?

I certainly agree with all of Gary Williams' points about the World Golf Hall of Fame voting and criteria, though I'm a little surprised at the outrage expressed on Twitter over Colin Montgomerie's selection when he at least has on-course successes to point to.

It's the cronyism and overall oy factor behind selections like George H. Bush and now Ken Schofield that I find detrimental to the Hall's street cred.

For those who will scream that no criteria will create total chaos I would point to every other Hall of Fame. Outside of removal from the game for a certain number of years there are no benchmarks that players must hit for eligibility. Many things about golf are not analogous to other sports but in this case it most certainly is and leave it up to the voters to know, or at least feel, when it's time for a player to take his place in St. Augustine.

For the Monty skeptics, Daniel Wexler takes a closer look at his record and can't even get excited about the "superhuman" order of merit success cited by George O'Grady.

Third, while one can surely only beat the competition that's put in front of them, a quick glance inside Monty's halcyon 1993-1999 run indicates that in winning his seven straight Orders of Merit, he averaged exactly 20 official E Tour starts per season.  And what of his primary competition?  Jose Maria Olazabal was next with an average of 18 annual starts - but that's not including the 1995 and '96 campaigns which he missed entirely due to injury.  Seve Ballesteros averaged 17.2 E Tour starts during these years, but was clearly well beyond his elite form before Monty's run even began.  Ian Woosnam also averaged 17.2 starts in this period, while Bernhard Langer weighed in at 16.7.  And then there was Sir Nick Faldo, who was also somewhat on the down side by the time Monty got rolling, but had already largely packed it off to America anyway, averaging only nine annual E Tour starts from 1993-1999.

So while seven consecutive Order of Merit titles is indeed impressive, Monty did manage to time them perfectly (peaking just when much of the competition was somewhat on the wane) and was aided in earning the most money simply by making the most starts.