Echoes of the Open Championship. In 1995, Costantino Rocca holed from the infamous Valley of Sin in front of the 18th green at St Andrews to get into a play-off - one that he eventually lost to John Daly.
Yesterday, Paul Lawrie did rather better than that. Having made a mess of his 80-yard pitch to the green and seen the ball trickle back into golf's damnedest dip, he took a putter and, from 40ft, holed for a winning birdie.
It meant that he had won the inaugural Dunhill Links Championship - not to mention £551,000 sterling - and dashed the hopes of a watching Ernie Els, who was bracing himself for a play-off.
Lawrie finished on 18-under, 270; one better than Els, two in front of David Howell and three ahead of the South African Jean Hugo.
Lawrie's victory was also helped after the wickedest little sand trap in the west had worked it's evil on Els.
The 17th at St Andrews is arguably the hardest par four in world golf and a large part of the reason is the Road Hole bunker. Els, one behind Lawrie at the time, felt he had to go for the pin and, in so doing, found sand.
He was lucky in that the ball was not close to the face, nor plugged, but he still decelerated badly on the shot and left it in the trap. His second attempt, fuelled by anger, was more positive.
It came out cleanly, hit the pin, and the South African holed from 10 feet for a bogey five. It was a great recovery, but it meant that Els had to birdie the last to have any chance of victory - and he did exactly that, holing from 12 feet.
By this time, Lawrie was having his own problems with the 17th. Determined not to find either the bunker or the road at the back of the green, the Aberdonian barely made the front of the green, leaving himself with one of the hardest putts in creation.
His first attempt was 12 feet short, the next dribbled away on the low side, and now he found that he also had to birdie the last to triumph.
He did so, but by the hardest route imaginable, and now has the satisfaction of having won his first tournament since that epic 1999 Open victory at Carnoustie.
One of the aspects of this tournament has been the performance, in discouraging conditions, of the younger emerging players.
Paul Casey's talent has been obvious since his magnificent display against the US in the 1999 Walker Cup, when he became one of only three players ever to get four points out of four for Britain and Ireland, and he has been able to take that level of performance into the professional ranks. He has won on the European tour already - the Scottish PGA Championship at Gleneagles.
Nick Dougherty, still only 19, reckoned at the start of the week that a top-eight finish would save him the bother of having to go to the European tour qualifying school.
That did not happen. Like Els, he ran foul of the 17th, running up a seven and dropping back to 35th. But he impressed his amateur partner, Michael Bonallack, to the extent that when asked how he might fare against Dougherty, he replied: "It might be a 10 and 8 job."
The pro-am was won by the Australian Brett Rumford and Chris Peacock, a three-handicapper who works as an air traffic controller at nearby RAF Leuchars.
