38 years on, the ‘Duel in The Sun’ isn’t far from golf fans’ thoughts right now.
The man who won it, Tom Watson, has just revealed his plans around bowing out from The Open Championship at St Andrews next month.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump, the new owner of Turnberry venue for one of the most famous battles in golf history will unveil a new clubhouse at his Aberdeenshire course.
And the man who lost out that afternoon at the 1977 Open, Jack Nicklaus, has just had a room dedicated to him at the US Golf Association’s headquarters in New Jersey.
It is packed full of memories from The Golden Bear’s career.
But in my book, pride of place goes to an ‘ancient’ putter made by Ben Sayers of North Berwick that Nicklaus now admits helped him hole the most important putt of his career.
“I didn’t realise it at the time, but when I holed an eight-foot putt to beat Charles Coe on the 36th hole of the US Amateur Championship in 1959, I was 19, with my first opportunity to win a Major.
“We were all-square playing the 36th hole, and I had an eight-foot putt to win.
“It was, I suppose, something that I was supposed to do. I had to hole it if I was to win and I put it right in the back of the hole.
“The next time I was in that situation, I said to myself: ‘I can do this. I’ve done it before.
“So winning breeds winning.”
Jack smiles as he recalls how the Ben Sayers club (right) found its way into his bag, and admits it would hardly merit a look-in among today’s assortment of putters that look more like branding irons than the old conventional blade of days gone by.
“A couple of us went over to the Ben Sayers factory when we were playing the Walker Cup at Muirfield that year, and we each had a putter made for us,” The Golden Bear recalls.
“We didn’t pay any attention to the weight of the putter, or anything else. I didn’t even weigh it until around 1962.
“It was 13 ounces, whereas putters today are around 16, 17, sometimes 18 ounces. It was so off-balanced for me but I liked it.”
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