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.