'ROYAL ST GEORGE'S WAS A CASE OF HANGING IN, SURVIVING' - SANDY LYLE

He’s just mending a tractor that’s broken down in the paddock, can you call back in 30 minutes?” says the friendly voice at the other end of the phone.

- CHRIS BERTRAM

Of course ‘he’ is. Of course Alexander Walter Barr Lyle, one of the greatest players in the history of European golf, rolls up his sleeves, reaches for his toolbox and fixes the machinery on his Stirlingshire farm. Almost as predictably, when we do speak the two-time Major champion begins by apologising sincerely for putting our call back half an hour, as had his wife Jolande earlier.

When the questions begin, he is as candid, friendly and intriguing as ever, my mind constantly wondering what gem of an untold story he might casually drop in next. Conversations with most current pros aren’t like this, but Lyle’s generation was different. And Sandy is also different from his peers; even less guarded and even less affected by being a superstar of the game.

A superstar is what Lyle was and, to anyone who is now over the age of 45, what he remains. Make no mistake, at a time of unprecedented European glory in the 1980s and ’90s, Lyle was right at the front of it.

He was the first British player to win the Masters and the third European to triumph at Augusta after Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer. He was the first Briton to win The Open for 16 years and the first Scotsman to win a Major since 1931. He was central to Europe’s 1980s Ryder Cup renaissance.

Sir Nick Faldo might have the reputation as the ‘mentality monster’ of that era for European golf, but it was Lyle who was the first British player to beat the Americans in America. He was a player of prodigious natural talent, as per the entirely accurate story of Seve saying that if everyone was playing their best from that era, the victor would be a fight between him and Lyle.