As a testament to Torrance’s support, he was on the range at 6.30am yesterday to supervise McGinley’s practice. “My luckiest break was when I met the coach there, Gordon Severson I learned more from him than anyone else He took me from a shabby amateur to a golf professional. Now I work with Bob Torrance and he has taken me from a shabby professional to a good professional. Then he got a scholarship to study marketing at the US International University in San Diego.”That’s where my golf took off,” McGinley said.

Gaelic football was what I was best at and loved most.”McGinley was on crutches for nine months and only after recovering did he turn his attention to improving his four-handicap game. First, he worked for a year in Brussels on the Year of the Environment project, and with an investment broker. Nicklaus turned to him and said: ‘Now, I’d like to see you play the back nine in 29′.”

McGinley could not quite manage that, but level par on Lytham’s harder half is no disappointment The 29 year old from Dublin has known plenty of that. Such as missing the cut in each of his three previous Opens and finishing second four times on the European tour.
But the biggest disappointment of all came in 1988, when he smashed his left knee in a training accident while playing Gaelic football. “When I was young, I never played boys golf for Ireland or anything like that,” he explained. “I did not have much interest in golf and only played in the summer In the autumn I’d go back to Gaelic football and hurling.

“When DJ Russell played the front nine in 29 here,” Jimmy Rea recalled, “he was playing with Jack Nicklaus. A one on his scorecard at the short ninth gave McGinley an opening half of 29. “You see those three down there,” our man asked, pointing to a slim Caledonian with a moustache, a squat Oriental and a legend “Which one is Jack Nicklaus?”. Paul McGinley has never won a thing for his six holes in one, and he did not earn much in the way of words of comfort from his caddie. A rail worker, a middle-aged chap with glasses and a ponytail he must have borrowed from a younger relative, was recording the caravan of players tramping before him on a video camera.As he ushered visitors across the line he wore a luminous orange jacket, which was strange, firstly because there were no trains, and secondly there was the sort of stunning brightness around that attacks the eyes when you emerge from a summer matinee at the cinema.

But for the tens of thousands who have congregated at the Royal Lytham shrine this week, there was at least one salutary message yesterday suggesting the infuriating game is not the fulcrum of everyone’s lives.It came on the par-four eighth, where the bordering Preston to Blackpool South railway line had been closed down for the morning. I thought I was getting close, but ceremonial golf is far off this week.”Even when Nicklaus does go, he will leave behind the legacy of 18 majors and the most successful golfing career the world has ever seen. “Jack may be 56, but he is by far the best golfer I have ever played with and the nicest man,” he said. “Any golfer, of any age, would have been proud of that round today.”Others, it seems, will continue to get the privilege of his company. “When you are playing well and in contention, and that’s what I come over for and have done for 40 years, it’s good,” Nicklaus said. “I enjoy coming if I can compete and that has always been my criteria I don’t think I will play when I am a ceremonial golfer.