30 January 2012 15:04 GMT

It is sometimes said the quality of a golf course can be gauged by the calibre of champions it produces and if that is the case there can be few better tests than the links at Royal Lytham & St Annes.

It is a little known fact that Seve Ballesteros(1988), Tom Lehman (1996) and David Duval (2001) were all No. 1 on the official World Ranking at the time they won The Open Championship at Lytham and the historic Lancashire course has also spawned other bone fide champions of the quality of Bobby Locke (1952), Peter Thomson (1958), Bob Charles (1963) Tony Jacklin (1969) and Gary Player all of whom, except Charles, won more than one Major title during sparkling careers.

Indeed, among the great golfers of the second half of the 20^th century, it is perhaps only victories by Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson which would have enhanced that impressive list and it was not for want of trying on the part of the legendary Golden Bear who finished tied second to Ballesteros in 1979, third in both 1963 and 1974 and tied 6^th behind Jacklin in 1969.

Lytham has proved itself to be a breeding ground of true champions and it is a trend that was started back in 1926 when the great American amateur, Bobby Jones, won Lytham’s first Open against a stellar field that included Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour, Joe Kirkwood, Abe Mitchell, JH Taylor, Ted Ray and defending champion Jim Barnes. Only MacDonald Smith and Gene Sarazen among the upper echelon of golfers were absent that year, when the first prize on offer was £75 and over the three days of the Championship (in those days the last to rounds were played on one day) the organisers sold 10,923 tickets priced at two shillings and sixpence each.

The great irony of Jones’ victory was that he had not intended to enter the Championship until an unexpected defeat at the hands of Scot, Andrew Jamieson, in the fifth round of the preceding Amateur Championship, staged at Muirfield, persuaded him to change his plans.

Jones had sailed across the Atlantic on board the Aquitania primarily to take part in that year’s Walker Cup, staged over the Old Course at St Andrews, where he lived up to his burgeoning reputation by thrashing the esteemed Cyril Tolley by 10 & 8 in the second singles. The subsequent defeat at the hands of Jamieson was an undoubted setback but it was soon forgotten when the debonair American amateur carded a 66 to lead the field at Regional Qualifying for The Open over the Old Course at Sunningdale.

It is necessary to pause for a second to reflect on that round if, for no other reason, than it confirmed the extraordinary talent of a man who in the space of eight years starting in 1923 was to win three Open Championships (1926, ’27 and ’30), four US Opens (1923, ’26, ’29 and ’30), five US Amateurs (1924, ’25, ’27, ’28 and ’30) and one Amateur Championship (1930). His crowning achievement was to complete the Grand Slam — or Impregnable Quadrilateral as it was called in those days — after which he retired from competitive golfer at the tender age of 28 with no world’s left to conquer.

Jones was reaching the peak of his powers that summer of 1926 and there is no better illustration of his immense talent than his performance at Sunningdale where a large crowd watched transfixed as he hit every green in regulation and visited just one bunker in an almost flawless round featuring near identical nines of 33.

The normally reserved golf writer, Bernard Darwin, was just one of many onlookers to realise he was watching something very special unfold.

“The crowd dispersed awestruck,” he wrote in the next morning’s edition of The Times. “They had watched the best round of golf they had ever seen, and what later players did, they neither knew nor cared.”

Jones was immediately installed as an unprecedented 3-1 favourite to win the inaugural Open at Lytham but even at that late stage his participation in the Championship was still in some doubt.

That summer, the country was in the grip of a general strike which made travel from the south east to the north western seaboard of England somewhat difficult. Nevertheless, Jones elected to make the gruelling journey by car, which was more than can be said about H.R.H Princess Mary who aborted her plans to attend.

Once at Lytham, Jones found himself as the centre of attraction of the media, not least a sizeable cadre of US journalists who had assembled to watch him play.

America was in the middle of the Prohibition era in 1926 which might well explain why one of the visiting American writers elected to cover the Championship exclusively from the confines of the club’s Dormy House and clubhouse bar. He was forced to rely on his colleagues for regular updates and, in hindsight at least, it is clear he missed a great deal of great golf as Hagen opened with an impressive 68 to lead the field by two shots from compatriot Bill Melhorn.

By his own admission, Jones played terrible golf during his opening round and needed to one putt the last four greens to scramble to a 72 before duplicating that total to tie Melhorn for the halfway lead on 144. Out of a starting field of 117 players, 52 survived the cut, with the remainder, all 15 or more strokes behind the leading duo, automatically retired. Hagen, who added a 77 to that opening 68 was third with another American, Al Watrous, one shot further behind on 146.

The final day dawned with a fresh wind blowing from the north west and with Jones paired with Watrous, a professional from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who won 34 tournaments and made two Ryder Cup appearances before carving out a fine career as a coach.

Watrous claimed a two-shot lead over Jones with a third round 68 before the American duo retired to the nearby Majestic Hotel for a rest and a bite to eat. Hagen was still out on the course on his way to posting a 74 but Melhorn slipped to a 79 and dropped from second to a share of fifth place alongside another US amateur, George Von Elm, who had defeated Jones earlier that year in the US Amateur and who had also travelled across the Atlantic to play in the Walker Cup.

The final round had all the makings of turning into a two horse race between Watrous and Jones but, even before it started, the latter had another unexpected hurdle to overcome.

When he was making his way back to the course after his short break, Jones realised he had misplaced his player’s badge and, in the end, he had to queue up with the general public and pay the 2/6 admission after a security guard refused to believe he was a competitor. It was probably the only time in history that a Major champion had to suffer such an indignity but it proved to be a sound investment as little by little he began to overhaul his compatriot’s slender advantage.

Darwin once wrote that New York born Watrous “had no tremendous power but all the American virtues of smoothness and rhythm,” but, on this occasion, those qualities were to be no match for an opponent who putted erratically but regularly outhit him by more than 40 yards.

Jones started the final round knowing he needed to gain three shots over his partner to win the title and his first success came at the 3^rd where Watrous bunkered his approach to drop his first shot of the round. Jones was still two shots in arrears with five holes to play but drew level with successive pars on the 14^th and 15^th and then hit the decisive shot out of sand on the 17^th to set up a one stroke advantage that was to be doubled when his rival went from bunker to bunker on the closing hole.

Nowadays the wondrous 175-yard mashie niblick shot Jones struck out of a bunker, over deep rough to the centre of the hidden green on the 17^th is commemorated by a plaque at the site (pictured, right) and it was all the more impressive because moments before Watrous had made his own bid for glory by hitting his approach onto the putting surface.

One Scottish writer, who we can assume was closer to the action than his US colleague back in the clubhouse, described Jones’ remarkable bunker shot as “the greatest shot in the history of golf”. Darwin, meanwhile, elected to concentrate on the expert manner Jones had been able to pick the ball off the top of the sand. “A teaspoon more (sand) would have meant irretrievable ruin,” he argued.

Sometime after securing victory, two shots ahead of Watrous and four in front of Hagen and Von Elm, Jones generously handed his mashie niblick — similar to a 4-iron in today’s nomenclature — to Charles B. McFarlane, golf writer for the London Evening News “because he was very kind, in what he said about the shot.” McFarlane, in turn, donated it to Lytham and it still hangs in the Clubroom beneath an impressive portrait of the 1926 champion (pictured, above).

Another writer, putting Jones’ performance into perspective commented: “His victory…was one of the most popular in the history of athletic sports. He not only won the cup with his golf, but the heart of the Britishers by his demeanour and character.”

Jones returned to America shortly afterwards receiving the traditional hero’s welcome, a ticker-tape parade up Broadway (pictured, left). Later that summer, the first of Lytham’s great Open champions made further history, winning the US Open at Scioto to become the first ever golfer to claim both national Championships in the same calendar year. Little did he know then, but with his earlier victory at Lytham he was also starting a trend that endures to this day.