As ever at Royal Troon there was fascination in what might happen at ‘The Postage Stamp’, the eighth hole which is the shortest in Championship golf and it had its moments.

Among the early starters, for example, Sandy Lyle, in the midst of an ugly round of 85 which matched his worst ever at an Open, rammed his tee shot into thick rough less than 20 feet from the pin but to its left and with no possibility of getting onto the green in two. His recovery effort duly raced across the green and into the bunker at the other side from which David Duval had just extricated himself.

In the end their brace of bogey fours was by no means the former Open champions’ worst combined effort, however, because around half an hour later they confronted this course’s true monster ‘The Railway’.

Converted from par five to par four for the 1997 Open it already had a ferocious reputation, Arnold Palmer, when winning here in 1962, describing it as ‘the most dangerous hole I have ever seen,’ while on his Championship debut that week Jack Nicklaus ran up a quintuple bogey 10 after driving into the whins, having an air shot, then hitting onto the eponymous railway line.

That even the greatest golfer of all could have such a traumatic experience on ‘The Railway’ speaks to its intimidatory quality from a tee on which it feels as if the ball has to be threaded through a needle’s eye between those impenetrable whin bushes and a wire fence marking out-of-bounds between course and the Ayrshire Coast Railway Line.

By the time Lyle and Duval completed it they probably wondered whether they were still up to such challenges, recording a seven and a nine respectively, but it had an even more unsettling effect on the youngster in their midst. Playing in his first Open, Scott Gregory, who was born more than nine years after Lyle’s Open win and was only six when Duval claimed his in 2001, was entitled to feel extremely proud of himself as he stood on the 11th tee, leading the tournament on four-under-par as his famous playing partners struggled.

He was, however, to match Lyle’s seven, meaning the trio had taken 23 shots, a combined 11 over par and that carnage clearly had an unsettling effect on the 21-year-old who qualified for the Open by winning this season’s Amateur Championship since he followed that with another bogey and another triple bogey seven on his way to an inward nine of 45, one better than Duval, one worse than Lyle.

They were by no means the only victims of ‘The Railway’, Australian Steven Bowditch and Swede Kristoffer Broberg matching Duval’s quintuple bogey nine and triple bogey sevens abounding, while it yielded but a single birdie - to South Africa’s Richard Sterne - until Justin Leonard and Mark Calcavecchia, who both won this title at this venue, curiously produced a brace of them while playing together in late afternoon.

A few more birdies would be scored as conditions eased in the evening, but there were many more double bogeys and higher on a day when the world’s finest players were operating in weather conditions that local authority Colin Montgomerie rated three out of 10 in terms of difficulty. He expects day two to be closer to eight out of 10. Golf fans with a sadistic streak who are prepared to brave the elements know which vantage point to choose.