Five-time Open champion Peter Thomson.

Australian Peter Thomson, who is best remembered for winning the Open Championship five times in 12 years, has died at the age of 88.

Thomson, who was one of just four men to lift the Claret Jug in three consecutive years, also won two Senior major titles and captained the International Team to their sole Presidents Cup victory to date in his native Melbourne.

Born on August 23 1929 in the Melbourne suburb of West Brunswick, Thomson’s first experience of golf was on a nine-hole course near Melbourne Zoo called Royal Park.

Virtually empty during the Second World War, Thomson would sneak on to the course to hone his skills with whatever equipment he could borrow or find.

“I scrounged a set of hickory clubs and found golf balls between the hedgerows and the railway line,” he said. “That was my treasure trove. I became hooked.”

His reputation for preferring playing to practising on the range was born of pragmatism – “I didn’t have any more than two balls at once” – but ultimately paid off when his talent was discovered by club members and he was given playing privileges.

By the age of 15 Thomson was the club champion and after a two-year apprenticeship as an assistant pro around Melbourne’s famed sandbelt, Thomson turned professional in 1949 and won the first of more than 80 tournaments worldwide in the 1950 New Zealand Open.

Between 1952 and 1958 he finished no worse than second in the Open, winning it four times, including becoming the only player in the 20th or 21st Century to win three years in succession.

Thomson won by a shot from Bobby Locke, Dai Rees and Syd Scott at Royal Birkdale in 1954. The following year he prevailed at the Old Course by two shots. The hat-trick was completed at Hoylake in 1956.

Getty. Peter Thomson suffered from Parkinson’s disease.