At the age of 63, Sam Torrance is one of the older guard so when talk turns to the various gizmos, gadgets and general paraphernalia that can be used to help you get a golf ball in a hole, it tends to be greeted with a nonchalant shrug.

The current bletherings in the golfing steamie surrounds the increased use of greens books, which resemble some complex Haynes Manual for putting surfaces. So have you ever tried one, Sam? “Oh no, no, the crossword is hard enough for me,” said Torrance with a chuckle. See, he does read the Herald after all. “What’s wrong with just looking at the green and seeing it?,” he added with a sigh. “It’s about feel. But that’s modern technology. They use it for everything now. There’s a skill in putting but it’s nothing to do with reading the greens. The skill is hitting on the six inches left with the dead weight for it to fall in. It’s not someone telling you that it’s going to come from six inches left.”

Torrance, speaking in the resplendent sunshine of his ain gate en’ in Largs where he was unveiling Gillian’s Saltire Appeal and Maggie’s as the official charity partner of this year’s Scottish Open at Dundonald, was quickly cajoled into the next item of debate which remains pace of play. At the weekend, officials on the European Tour and the PGA Tour dished out penalty shots for slow play to a couple of creeping players. “Unless they start shooting them, shots is the only way to stop it, and it should be two shots” insisted Torrance. “Look at Bernhard Langer? £1,000 means nothing to him. Give him two shots and he goes from second to 20th. Then there’s no chance of winning. That’s what hurts them. But we’ve been talking about this for 45 years.”

It’s 45 years since Torrance started out on the main European Tour. The Spanish Open of 1972 was his first event as a fully-fledged touring professional and it will always be seared on the mind. “I got up in the morning, the wee Scotsman who didn’t speak any Spanish and thought ‘where’s the course?’, he reflected. “Well, it was a three hour drive away. It wasn’t the best start. I had to change hotels and get to the course.”

It was perhaps not surprising that he opened with an 80. “I had a look at that field recently and all my mates, from all these years, were in it,” he said. “It’s quite emotional looking at it now.”

After 706 events on the main European Tour, Torrance is still battering away on the European Senior Tour although the various niggles, strains, hirples and hobbles of the advancing years, plus a lack of playing opportunities among the over-50s, have reduced his outings.

“I’ve been playing bloody well at home but I’ve just no place to show it off,” he said. “That’s a nightmare.”

Torrance continued his enduring relationship with the Ryder Cup last year when he was a European vice-captain at Hazeltine. He concedes it’s “too early” to say whether he will be involved in Paris in 2018 but he’s desperate for Europe to win it back as quickly as possible. European stalwarts Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington, meanwhile, appear to have kissed and made up but Torrance merely brushed aside any talk of bad blood between the pair. “I didn’t know they weren’t speaking,” he said. “I didn’t see any friction at the Ryder Cups between them. I think that says everything about the Ryder Cup.”

The work of Gillian’s Saltire Appeal has helped purchase an apartment on the front at Largs which can be used by cancer patients and carers alike for spells of respite. "It's a great gift to the people, to come here and switch off in what is a little bit of paradise,” said Torrance.