GOLF/Player's Championship: Colin Montgomerie, a man who jumps first and then looks for the parachute, has repented following his latest outburst against American golf and all its works.

The Scot, regularly the target of abuse when playing in the US, said after the Accenture Matchplay Championship in California three weeks ago that he had had enough of US fans and would not be coming back - not even for majors and events like the Players' Championship.

But, of course, Montgomerie is here in Florida for the aforementioned tournament this week and plans to stay in the country for the next month or so.

From never to four weeks on the trot is a pretty big shift, even for a man who in February walked off an Australian course claiming his career might be over because of a bad back then three weeks later was competing in the Accenture, having flown some 18,000 miles in the interim.

So why is he here? The real answer is that mature reflection brought the realisation that it would be utter madness to boycott golf in America. He wants to win majors, and three of the four of them are here. He wants to win the world championships, and three of them are in the Americas; he wants to make money and most of it is here.

But his actual answer was rather different. "I am not going to let a few disruptive fans wreck things for the other 99.9 per cent," he said magnanimously.

He went on: "I've had emails encouraging me to play in America from players, from the PGA and from fans, so I'm delighted to be here. I've had a fantastic reception so far, which hopefully will remain. I need to play because last week in Qatar was the first time this year I've completed a 72-hole tournament."

Ireland's trio of Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley are in the field in the coundown to the Masters. Harrington is out with Bob Tway, Clarke tees off with Fulton Allem and McGinley has Jay Haas and Bob May for company in the $6 million event.

Seve Ballesteros yesterday criticised Sergio Garcia for demanding appearance money to play in next month's Seve Trophy in at Druid's Glen. Garcia said he is unavailable citing commitments to play in the US PGA event at Hilton Head.

But a clearly annoyed Ballesteros accused him of demanding appearance money on top of the €90,000 each player on the losing team is already guaranteed.