From a stormy night in the

The champagne – if there’s any left – has gone flat, and now a man who helped bring the Ryder Cup to life for armchair viewers is taking his leave. For the last 25 years, David Livingstone has been the face of Sky’s golf coverage. He was there from the start as the channel ventured into new territory, before leaving the BBC in its wake. In his understated manner, the presenter knew the key questions to ask the likes of Butch Harmon and Paul McGinley to augment the channel’s innovations in the way golf is now covered. Now he is stepping away to enjoy retirement at his home in Glasgow’s Newton Mearns. As the sun set in Paris, over arguably the biggest and best Ryder Cup of all time, it was a far cry from how his journey into TV golf started. “I was working on football at the time and I was doing a game between Stoke City and Port Vale,” he recalls. “It was a terrible, stormy night, with mud lapping over my shoes. “Right out of the blue, my boss, Andy Melvin – a fellow Scot – asked me if I would like to present Sky’s coverage of the PGA Tour, which they had acquired. “I was shivering and looked down at my shoes and thought: ‘Why not!’ It didn’t feel like it but I was in the right place at the right time. “The first tourney was the Tournament of Champions from La Costa in California, in the first week of January in 1993, the day after my 40th birthday. “It was a cold, miserable evening and it was myself and Ken Brown in the studio in