It was on the beach at Sandwich that he ended Scotland’s long wait for an Open champion in 1985 and from a bunker on the final hole at the US Masters three years later that he played his most famous shot but, for by no means the first time, sandy lies were by no means kind to Sandy Lyle at Carnoustie yesterday.
For those who have followed his career there has long been a sense that, in contrast to the way he comports himself, the career of this most affable of Major champions has been spent teetering on the sporting brink, casually falling over its edge, dusting himself down, then returning to take more punishment.
Read more: The Open: Knox aims to bury and praise Tiger
Yesterday was a prime example as, having been invited to get the 147th Open Championship underway by striking the opening tee-shot, he sauntered along quite happily for a dozen holes, his name featuring on the leaderboard after he settled to his task following an uneasy night.
“I was nervous last night, never mind this morning,” Lyle admitted. “I woke up about one with one eye on the alarm clock thinking. Then your mind starts thinking about the opening shot and things. For a pro, it wasn’t too bad hitting a four iron off the tee peg with no wind, though. It was a pretty nice opening tee shot for the Open.”
Out of nothing, though, a minor calamity befell him, the 59-year-old failing to see this sand-bagging coming for all his awareness of the myriad dangers on this course.
Having taken the front-nine money from much younger playing partners, fellow two-time Major winner Martin Kaymer and Andy Sullivan, who was born the year after Lyle became an Open champion, he had, having bogeyed the 10th, avoided another after driving into a bunker at the 12th, saving par with a 15-foot putt.
That done, as he stood on the next tee, just 175 yards from his next target, his mistake was to anticipate a moment’s respite ahead of confronting Carnoustie’s fearsome five closing holes. “I did an outing there about a month ago [and] played that hole for nearly two and a half hours and never missed a green. I thought, well, this’ll be easy,” he said of the moment his luck ran out at the 13th.
Read more: The Open: Knox aims to bury and praise Tiger
This time there was no prospect of salvation after his ball burrowed into a corner of one of the more hellish of this venues green-side sand traps, leaving no room for him to take a stance that would allow him to re-route it in the right direction.
Showing a level of agility that would defy many his age – his left leg in the hazard, the other grounded from the knee down on the turf outside it – his attempt to bring the club up and down vertically resulted in only the slightest movement of the ball which, still on a downslope, he nudged a couple of feet forward at the second attempt before blasting out to within a foot to reduce the damage.
It could all have unravelled from there, yet in spite of visits to two more bunkers at the next two holes, he managed to avoid dropping any more strokes until being one of more than a few to do so at each of the last two holes, leaving considerable work to be done if today is not to be Sandy’s final Open Championship saunter.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here