Sent out by our senior man to follow Nick Faldo's bid to keep the Claret Jug in Britain for the second time in three years, I witnessed first hand what has gone down in history as the "Par-fect"round.
The Englishman's unique achievement in registering 18 straight pars in a final round to win a Major title was an extraordinary triumph of technical proficiency and indomitable will, but it also represented vindication for a process that had seen him heavily criticised.
He was dubbed Nick "Foldo" by some tabloids after his failure, in 1983 and 1984, to turn promising situations into Major wins. That's all the more remarkable when the fawning over what is considered to be the current golden generation of English golfers – yet to win a Major among them – is taken into account.Yet Faldo went through a process that demonstrated him to be one of the mentally toughest sportsmen of all time.
The criticism rained down as his form dipped over the next couple of years. Only those in the know were fully aware of the extent to which he was rebuilding his technique under the guidance of David Leadbetter and even among that more knowledgeable group, extreme doubts were raised as to whether someone who had already won a dozen titles around the world, including on the US Tour, was doing the right thing.
At Muirfield that Sunday afternoon in July 1987, Faldo showed that in overhauling a stylish but unreliably willowy swing and using his considerable talent to turn it into a robotic, repeatable method that held up when it truly mattered, he had done exactly the right thing.
In effectively taking two years out of his 30-year professional career, he gave himself the chance to have a decade of near dominance during which he won six Major titles, twice as many as any of his rivals in that period between 1987 and 1996 and established himself as the leading British player of all time.
For Andy Murray, no such luxury was available in terms of being able to take that kind of break from a much shorter career at the top of his sport.
Yet having long since established himself as the leading British player of the modern era in his own sport, Murray had to have a serious look at what he needed to do in an era populated by arguably the three best players the world has ever seen if he was to improve on the feat of being one of only seven men to reach the semi-finals of all four grand slams in a single season.
The difference with Faldo is that the environment Murray is operating in means he has been actively encouraged to make all sorts of changes, from every aspect of the way he plays the game to his entire mental approach. It has been the ultimate demonstration that in sport opinions are like mouth-holes (I'm sure that's the expression, isn't it?)... every blighter has one!
After a long search for the right help, the recruitment of Ivan Lendl, perhaps the finest player never to win Wimbledon, was a surprise to most, but the early signs have been largely encouraging.
Admittedly his run of grand slam semi-final appearances ended at the French Open, but as John McEnroe rightly pointed out yesterday, Lendl was not appointed to help him get to semi-finals or even finals, because Murray has already done that.
From the outset it has been clear that the great Czech has been working on Murray's forehand technique and, concomitantly, his on-court aggression. As part of the process of bedding those changes in, there were bound to be some setbacks, doubtless explaining the shock defeats on grass in the build-up to this Wimbledon.
It is one thing knowing what has to be changed and another believing in it and so being able to commit fully without reverting to the bad old ways when under pressure.
In the many discussions I have had in recent weeks with our tennis-daft sports editor my own opinion, for what it is worth, has been that I believe his optimum chance of winning Wimbledon or any of the other grand slam events will be next year, when he has full confidence in the new methods.
It would be quite fabulous to have those words rammed down my throat on Sunday afternoon. However, whatever he does, can we please stop the carping about Murray's supposed attitude problems, or his "failure" – like that of every other person in the world barring Juan-Martin del Potro's solitary success at the US Open – to do anything about the unprecedented seven-year hegemony of the big three.
Our Andy already deserves to be acknowledged as one of Scotland's greatest individual sportsmen, if not the greatest we have ever produced.
