Twelve months ago Montgomerie and Marc Warren defeated the United States pair of Boo Weekley and Heath Slocum in a play-off to claim a first World Cup title for Scotland.

The 45-year-old performed well at last week's UBS Hong Kong Open, where he w as in contention for the vast majority of the tournament before a poor finish saw him end up tied 15th.

Montgomerie returns to Shenzhen this week with a different playing partner in Alastair Forsyth but is confident Scotland can be in contention once again come Sunday.

"I had a very good chance of winning last week," he said. "There was a putt that should have been in on the ninth but it lipped out. 'd have been two behind the lead with nine holes to go but it didn't go in and I bogeyed the tenth which is disappointing.

"So I had a very good chance of winning last week with ten holes to go, that's a huge improvement from how it has been going.

"I enjoy this format. Any team golf I tend to perform better in than I do on my own."

While Montgomerie may be happy with his recent form the same cannot be said for Forsyth.

The 32-year-old secured his second European Tour title in March at the Madeira Islands Open but has since endured a disappointing second half to the season which saw him drop out of the world's top 100.

Forsyth took drastic action last week in a bid to improve his golf by splitting with top coach Bob Torrance, and the Glaswegian hopes a solid performance could signal the start of a change in fortunes for the new season.

"You've just got to do what's right for yourself, and my golf has not been good enough," said Forsyth. "It's nowhere near as good as I know it can be, and I've been trying to improve that and it has not happened. There will always come a time where you have the feeling that it's not going the direction that you want to go, and I had to look at a video of myself and I didn't like a few things. I felt it was time to work with someone else."

Scotland face a tough task in staging a successful defence with a number of other strong contenders amongst the 28-team field. Most notable is the Swedish side with 2008 European Tour Order of Merit winner Robert Karlsson alongside world No12 Henrik Stenson. But the pair played down their favourites tag with Karlsson insisting anything could happen this week.

"We are the highest ranked players but there's only 28 teams, it's a team event, so a lot of things can happen," said Karlsson. "I'm definitely going to enjoy playing with Henrik and then we'll see what happens."

England's challenge is led by Ian Poulter, who finished fourth alongside Justin Rose last year but partners Ross Fisher this time around. Both players head into the tournament on the back of impressive performances over the last year, with Poulter finishing as Europe's leading points scorer at the Ryder Cup in September while Fisher won the European Open in July on the way to a career-best sixth place on the European Tour's Order of Merit.

"I'm happy with my golf game right now and Ross has been playing exceptionally well," said Poulter. "I like the way Ross plays. He hits the ball a long way off the tee, which I think is great in foursomes.

"He is also an aggressive player and that's great in four balls. I think how straight he hits it is a big bonus in foursomes."

The four rounds will alternate between fourballs and foursomes, with today's opening round in fourballs.