Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller – past winners of the Open Championship when it has been staged at Royal Birkdale include some giants of the game. However, only one man has walked off with the Claret Jug twice at the Merseyside course. That man is Peter Thomson, one of the greatest Australian sportsmen, who won The Open five times in all between 1954 and 1965. The first and last of those triumphs came at Birkdale.

When I spoke to him last month, Thomson, now a straight-talking 78-year-old, was planning to return to Birkdale this week for the course’s ninth Open Championship.