22 February 2012 13:42 GMT

Arthur D’Arcy (Bobby) Locke was a man who knew how to handle himself in a crisis.

The stocky South African flew more than 100 bombing missions for the Allies during World War II and excelled during a sparkling golf career spanning more than two decades. But even he must have endured a moment of panic when he found himself separated from his golf clubs while challenging for the lead heading into the final two rounds of the 1952 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes.

Locke arrived in Lancashire that summer having already accumulated a formidable record in the world’s oldest Championship. He had won two (1949 and 50) of what was to become four Open titles and had also finished in second place behind Sam Snead in 1946. However, none of these feats could have prepared him for the drama that was to unfold on the final morning at Lytham as he prepared to overhaul a four stroke lead held by 1947 champion Fred Daly.

Locke recounted the scarcely creditable details of what happened in his entertaining autobiography Bobby Locke on Golf which was published by Country Life some years later.

“Two rounds to play on the final day and my teeing-off time was 8.50am,” he wrote in the 1950s after becoming the first man since the Great Triumvirate to claim four victories in the Championship.

“After an early breakfast at my Blackpool hotel, I walked the hundred yards to the garage, where my car was parked with my clubs secure in the box at the back. The garage door was locked and there was no one about. It was 7.45am. I looked around; everything was closed. I found a milk delivery man, enquired where the garage owner was, and was told he would be arriving at 9am and that he lived 15 minutes away.

“I gave the man 10/- (shillings), scrambled in amongst the milk bottles and after a bumpy ride got to the garage owner’s house at 8.20am. I got my car raced to the course, arriving at 8.30am, and with no time even for a few loosening swings, walked straight to the first tee.

“I was really strung up,” he added. Happily, my tee shot, after landing short of a bunker on the right, hopped over onto the green and I holed a 30-foot putt for a birdie 2 (and) this cooled me off.”

Unfortunately that was not to be the end of the South African’s problems that memorable morning as winds registering 40 miles-an-hour buffeted the course and intermittent showers soaked the competitors and the large crowd that watched them perform.

“It took me three and a half hours to play the third round and an official complaint alleging slow play was lodged against me,” Locke recounted. The Committee told me at lunch time so I asked for more stewards to control the biggest gallery I had ever seen on a British course.

“It was over 10,000 strong and I helped to control it myself. Often it had taken up to five minutes to clear the fairways so that I could drive. I was annoyed because I felt I was not to blame. My partner, Mr J.W. Jones, the leading amateur, was given no chance by the crowd (and ballooned to closing rounds of 78 and 83).

Under all those circumstances the Sphinx of the Links, as he was called in contemporary report in Golf Monthly, did well to record a 74 which saw him close within one shot of Daly and he was to claim a three shot lead after starting the final round with an outward nine of 34 before closing in a somewhat untidy fashion to cast doubt over the outcome until the very end of the day.

“On that last round I went out in 34 and Daly 38,” said the man who preceded Gary Player as the first great South African golfer. “(I had) a three stroke lead with nine to play (and) everything went well until the 440-yard dog-leg 17^th. After a perfect tee shot heading into the wind, I had to play my second into a three-quarter gale from right to left. I took a 2-iron and played the finest shot of my career, the ball finishing 20-feet from the flag. (But) to my disappointment, and to the surprise of the spectators, I took three putts, missing a four from 18 inches. Then, after a picture tee shot at the 72^nd hole along the tightly-trapped fairway and through the left to right gale, I played my only bad shot, missed the green and finished with a 5 for a total of 287.”

At that time, unlike nowadays, the leaders did not go out last and, as it happened, Locke was one of the first competitors to finish so faced an anxious wait to see if anyone would catch him. “I spent the next hour on edge — waiting,” he admitted. “Daly was having his troubles and could do no better than 76 to finish two strokes behind. Then news came in that Peter Thomson had struck top form in the last nine holes and needed a 33 to tie. He sank a tremendous putt on the 18^th for a birdie three to be home in 34 for second place, just one stroke behind me.”

“It was over and my ambition to win the British Open three times had been achieved,” he said after collecting a winner’s cheque for £300, which compared favourably with the £6 7s 6d the BBC spent transmitting their regular reports compiled by commentators Henry Longhurst and Tom Scott. “I cannot describe my feelings at winning what is the blue riband of golf or what it meant to see my name inscribed on the Open Trophy alongside names dating back to 1872, names that are golf history.”

Locke and Thomson were to go on to dominate the Championship throughout the period, with the former posting four victories (1949, ’50, ’52 and ’57) and the latter five (1954, ’55, ’56, ’58 and ’65) during a 17-year spell during which timeother winners included Max Faulkner (1951), Ben Hogan (’53), Gary Player (’59), Kel Nagle (’60), Arnold Palmer (’61-’62), Bob Charles (’63) and Tony Lema (’64).

Locke’s 1952 triumph at Lytham is sometimes downplayed because the field included just five American entries, including a 50 year-old Gene Sarazen and the amateur, Frank Stanahan. However, that is scarcely fair and nor was the contemporary reporter who wrote: “To Thomson, the glory; to Locke, the title.”

The poker-faced South African might not have been as charismatic as his Australian rival, and his golf tended to be somewhat one dimensional, hitting every shot from right to left, but he was one of the game’s great putters and a dogged competitor whenever he found himself in contention.

Locke’s exemplary record speaks for itself. During an extended period, stretching from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, he won well over 50 events worldwide. He was the first golfer ever to win at least one tournament on four different Continents and also one of the few players of the time who won a tournament on both sides of the Atlantic in a single season.

The South African’s performances in America matched those in The Open. In the late 1940s the US Tour was not the financial magnet it has become nowadays but that did not stop the itinerant Locke sailing westwards in early 1947, immediately after defeating the great Sam Snead 14-2 in a series of exhibition matches in his native country, and then winning the Canadian Open and five other events on his way to claiming second place on the money list. The following year he won twice, posted five second place and had 15 other top-10 finishes while accumulating $22,000, a huge sum in those days. He was also to collect a further two titles at the start of 1949 before the authorities elected to alter their tournament rules to ensure he was not eligible to play.

“(Locke) is one of the greatest golfers of our time and his contribution is all the more remarkable because he has never hesitated to travel the world to compete,” wrote Leonard Crawley in Golf Monthly after his triumph in The Open at Lytham in 1952.

“…None of his three Championships have been won without toil, sweat and an extraordinary capacity to hold on in the darkest moments.

“Those who like to imagine that he has won just because there was no one better, must, in a sense, be right, but they would be well advised to remember that his scoring in those three Championships has been quite exceptional. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that he would have won even if Hogan and his nearest rivals in America had been in the field.

“Like other great champions before him, Locke has the facility of being able to pull out a telling shot when it is most wanted and that is why he keeps winning.”

That, and as far as his 1952 victory was concerned, thanks to a bit of help from a local milkman as well.