When Christy O'Connor senior led the Order of Merit for a second successive year in 1962, his season's earnings were £4,709, which would still be only £44,735 at today's values. Yet it must have seemed a fortune to him compared with his life as a groundsman at Tuam golf only 12 years previously.

Those times were recalled to me this week by Eil∅s Buckley (nee O'Sullivan), a nine-handicap member of Killiney. As it happens, her mother Rita, now aged 90, was lady captain of Tuam in 1950. "Christy got up at 5.0 in the morning to cut the greens for her captain's prize," said Ms Buckley. "And when my mother gave him 30 shillings (£1.50), he didn't want to take it, protesting that it was too much."