Martin Laird didn’t get a mention from Colin Montgomerie in Abu Dhabi -  as the Ryder Cup Captain got all excited about the pack of European rookies, vying to make October’s Celtic Manor clash with  Corey Pavin’s men. Not that it bothered or even surprised Laird. Until just over three months ago, he was flying much too low to be picked up on most radar screens. Monty, however, might now want to cast his eyes across the Atlantic as he ponders who could make his team.

For Laird, his days of being the ‘Invisible Man’ of Scottish golf are very definitely over. If he has his way, he’ll be the there in Wales trying to win back the Samuel Ryder Trophy and he declares, with typically quiet determination “making Monty’s team is my aim and yes, I think it is possible. More than that, I want to do it, or at least give it my best shot. I think that this season I am ready to go for it”.

Laird has every reason to be optimistic. Last October, the only Scotsman on the American circuit, became the first Scotsman since Sandy Lyle’s Masters triumph in 1988 to win a US PGA Tour event. He is also the only Scotsman ranked in the World top 100. He teed up at the fabled Riviera Country Club just $75,000 short of $3million in winnings since he left Colorado State University and turned pro in 2004. At first the Kirkintilloch - born 27 year old, who was raised in Bearsden, Glasgow, struggled to make any impact having won his US Tour card before almost losing it again. Only twelve months ago, indeed, he was still 268^th in those world rankings. However, his victory at the Shiners Hospital for Children Open last October changed all that. He raked in a $463,000 bonanza at the Las Vegas event and last month he began his third season on the US Tour by coming joint fourth at the SBS Championship in Hawaii, picking up another $300,000.

At San Diego’s Farmers Insurance Open he shot a last-round 68 to finish tied 27^th at five under and goes into the Northern Trust Open lying 18^th on the US Tour. “You’re quite right,” he laughs, at the suggestion that he could walk down the middle of Sauchiehall Street in his golf gear, and nobody would have a clue who he was, Monty, perhaps, included………….

“I’ve been pretty much invisible - and to be honest I’ve liked it that way. I’ve got on with my business, worked hard and just kept hoping that it would all click into place. Now, I’m starting to think that it has. I look at someone like Andrew Murray and say to myself that I want to be the same force in golf as he is in tennis. It could get quite lonely at times just plugging away almost on my own over the last few years. I miss Scotland and I still do – one day I’d like to think I can buy a flat in Glasgow – but I never lost belief in myself and now I have to believe that I can get to the very top. I want a lot more. I want more trophies and I want to be in the Ryder Cup team. I’m the only Scotsman out here playing and I want Scotland to be proud of me”.

Not so long ago Laird, 27, could only fight against his virtual anonymity by sporting the Saltire - on his bag, his belt and on his tees, and stresses “so many players come from Europe, from Australia, wherever, and tend to just merge into the background, if you like. I didn’t want that to happen, so I always flew the flag as best I could for Scotland and now I’m glad to say I’m flying it in an even better way”.

While Monty may not yet have publicly registered that he could have a new Scottish star to reckon with, Laird is delighted to report that Europe’s top men are starting to sit up, take notice and encourage him. “It might take a while yet for most of the Scottish sporting public to see what I’m doing – and that’s down to me, not them – but what happened at the HSBC in Shanghai last November really got through to me that I’m making progress. I’d never met big European stars like, for instance, Lee Westwood before. And I had reckoned that if I could ever realise that Ryder Cup dream most of them wouldn’t even know who I was. Yet Lee, Rory McIlroy and a few others all made a point of coming up to me and congratulating me for winning in Vegas as well as encouraging me to keep it all going. I might still be something of an unknown back home, but as I say I’ve never minded about that because I have always known that I had to deserve any the attention by winning. So to get the kind of recognition I got from Lee, Rory and the rest of the boys meant a lot to me! Getting it from the public is one thing and it would be nice to think that when I play at the Scottish Open, for instance, more people will be aware of me because that will mean I will have kept making progress. But to get such recognition from my peers - that was what I always really wanted and their words that day helped give me the extra confidence to build on my first success…something I think I am doing”.

Monty, last week, enthusiastically discussed his Ryder Cup wannabees, saying “I'm glad to see Alvaro Quiros, Kaymer and McIlroy up there. You add Ross Fisher into the mix and you have four fantastic rookies…they all want to make the team so badly. I know that, they've told me. It's very exciting".

Laird, even if he only still sits in 50^th place in the Ryder Cup World points list right now, is telling him the same thing. Soon his fellow Scot may be forced to listen.