The eight march, almost like prisoners under guard, accompanied by four members of the gentry whose role it is to make sure that none among them shall transgress in the events to follow.

They are about to make history. They are about to play the first ever round of the Open Golf Championship.

To place the event in historical context, Tom Morris of Prestwick and Bob Andrew from Perth, the man they called ‘The Rook’, teed off as the first pairing on that historic day, 28 years before John Reid and the Apple Tree Gang teed it up for the first time in Yonkers and brought golf to America. It was more than 35 years before the first US Open was played at the Newport Club, Rhode Island.

The Open Championship in Britain has moved a long way since Old Tom and The Rook first set forth at Prestwick 143 years ago. And, likewise, by whatever standards are applied to it, the success that it enjoys today owes a very great deal indeed to one Arnold Daniel Palmer who was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on the 10th of September 1929, 21 years after the death of Old Tom Morris himself.

Now, Arnold Palmer would be the first to admit that it was not he alone who was responsible for the amazing success that the British Open now enjoys, but history tells us that it was Arnie, with his swashbuckling style, his magnetic personality and his capacity to captivate the entire golfing world that was the catalyst for the Great British Open revival.

Back in the 1950s, before Arnie came to Britain, professional golf in the United States was forging ahead at a remarkable rate. The prizemoney was escalating to an unprecedented level and at a rate that the game in Britain could only wonder at. The players were after the crock of gold and weren’t much interested in traveling across the Atlantic for an event historically important of course, but hardly very lucrative in terms of money.

There was one exception. William Benjamin Hogan had listened to two great Americans, Charles Evans, a distinguished and gifted amateur of his day, and the great former British Open Champion, Gene Sarazen, who impressed on him that if he wished to set the hallmark on his great career he must add the British Open title to his list.

In 1953 Hogan made the journey, not for the money but for the prestige and, of course, he won, adding the British Open to the Masters and US Open titles the same year. But he didn’t come back either to defend or to play in the British Open again, and his contemporaries didn’t come either. Money was more important than prestige.

The dilemma for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, who stage the championship, was that they could not afford to spend more money to attract the overseas players to increase the competition and therefore the credibility of the event as the world’s oldest professional championship. The British Open was in a downward spiral through lack of money and lack of players and this was not being helped either by growing complaints from spectators about the amenities at the event itself.

To their credit, the R & A was endeavoring to improve the championship wherever possible within its limited means, but it could not even afford, for instance, to provide stands for better viewing by spectators. The Championship Committee had no objection to them being erected but they would have to be the financial responsibility of the host club!

The Championship Committee at that time, under its Chairman Mr N.C Selway, did however make a shrewd and significant change to the event. They decided that the order of play on the final day should be determined by the scores after the first 36 holes so that the leaders went out last, as was already the case in America.

It was a pivotal decision because it almost guaranteed an exciting climax and it was welcomed by television, which was then in its infancy in Britain and at that time not greatly sympathetic to golf.

While the British Open was struggling through the 1950s, formidable forces in the shape of two men were gathering in the United States and between them they would transform the British Open for all time to come. One was a young lawyer, a graduate of Yale, by the name of Mark McCormack and the other was Arnold Palmer.

Not since Ben Hogan had won the British Open in 1953 had the arrival of a golfer for the world’s oldest championship created such a stir as did that of Arnold Palmer at the 1960 Centenary Open at the Old Course at St Andrews. When he arrived, Arnie had already been crowned Masters Champion and US Open Champion that year, just as Hogan had been. Five-time Open Champion, Peter Thomson, remembers just how important Arnold Palmer’s decision to play in the Centenary Open at St Andrews was.

“The fact of his coming to St Andrews, was a blessing for the Championship,” he recalls. “Arnold dragged the US media with him and therefore the whole world of golf, and it changed many aspects. For one thing it led to a new attention to the US participation, which led in turn to the change of the ball size to the US 1.68ins, and in other minor matters like giving the championship course a par rating. Prior to 1961, the Open course just had a distance figure at each hole but nothing else!”

When the R & A counted the gate receipts for the 1960 Open they found that they had almost doubled from the previous year. They had made a profit of $10,000! Arnold Palmer didn’t win - he lost to Australian Kel Nagle by a single stroke - but it was Palmer who had made the difference.

The Scottish crowds loved him, they loved his style, they loved the way he hitched his trousers, they loved the way that powerful swing ended in a signature flourish and most of all they loved the way he played. Arnie always went for the pin and the Scots, perhaps more than any other nation on earth, could identify with that. Suddenly Arnie’s Army had troops in a foreign field.

Thomson admits to have been amazed at just how aggressive Arnold Palmer was. “Coming from the ‘old school’ of swingers and two putters, I was at first shocked that someone could be so golfingly aggressive and get away with it, but then I succumbed like everyone else. His golf was infectious and so was his swagger. Golf needed him or someone like him, just to shine out amongst the mob, and bring new spectators and new players to the game.

“He deserved his wins at Birkdale and Troon. In those two years there was no one near him."

The following year Arnie was back again, this time to Birkdale in the north of England, and this time he did win, but there was a big question after his victory. Would he have come the following year if the torrential rain that marred the event hadn’t relented and allowed the championship to be concluded on the Saturday? Remember, Sunday in those days in Britain was inviolate and a hold over to the Monday would have caused massive inconvenience.

Typically, Arnold’s reaction was to say he would have waited for days if he’d had to. He’d come to win the Open and he was prepared to stay until he did. The following year the most powerful entry since 1937 accompanied Arnold Palmer on his journey across the Atlantic to defend his title. He was the golfing equivalent of the Pied Piper. However, the American entourage suffered the same fate as every other hopeful that year. They were scattered to the four winds like confetti when the King produced a masterful performance on the rock hard, bouncing fairways of Troon, just across the fence from Prestwick, where Old Tom and Willie Park had first teed it up in the Open Championship all those years before.

Arnold’s total of 276 was a record for the event and not matched until Tom Weiskopf did just that 11 years later on the same course. It was not beaten until Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus fought out their ‘Duel in the Sun’ at Turnberry in 1977.

Arnold Palmer was a hero to the British crowds. He still is. He was supreme. He had given back this oldest of all the great championships its respectability and, importantly, thanks to the coverage of television, many more saw him do it in their own homes than had gone stampeding up the final fairway to acclaim his victory. Palmer and television had arrived almost simultaneously. The young Yale lawyer, Mark McCormack, was standing in the wings to do the rest. The British Open was back.