Nicklaus won the 1970 Open at St Andrews

TED Heath, the Prime Minister, gave his support to Tony Jacklin as the defending Open champion and Lee Trevino, the former US Open winner, began their third round on the Old Course at St Andrews on July 10, 1970.

But not even the backing of the visiting PM could sway victory in favour of the Englishman at the Open and victory instead went to Jack Nicklaus.

In a thrilling climax Nicklaus defeated Doug Sanders by one stroke in the play-off when he sank an eight-foot putt on the last green. When the ball disappeared into the hole he threw his putter into the air in jubilation. “I don’t think I have ever been so excited in my life”, he said later.

For Sanders, it was heartbreaking. He had played the best tournament of his life but, on the Saturday, on the very cusp of victory, he had famously missed a putt of three feet on the home green. As the ball trickled past the hole, the BBC commentator Henry Longhurst remarked: “There but for the grace of God...”

“Seldom can a shot of such little length have caused proportionately greater relief to Nicklaus, more inconvenience to hundreds of people, or deeper anguish to Sanders,” wrote the Glasgow Herald’s Raymond Jacobs. “Except presumably for Nicklaus, the congregate sensation was of having had a handful of cold mud slapped across the heart.”

Sanders finished on the same aggregate score as Nicklaus, but lost the following day’s 18-hole play-off. The two men are pictured here, leaving the last green.

In later life, Sanders, who died in April 2020, was asked if he had ever thought about that crucial missed putt. “Only every four or five minutes,” he responded.

For Nicklaus it was his second British Open triumph – he had won the title previously at Muirfield in 1966. Aged only 30, he was part of a select band who had won the British and US Opens, the Masters and the US PGA; and he had won all but the last more than once.