When current European Senior Tour pace-setter Sandy Lyle looks at the remainder of the season ahead of him he could be forgiven for wondering if he has been taken back in time to 1985.
The Scot, who turned 53 on February 9, is back on top of the Order of Merit – albeit on the Senior Tour rather than The European Tour – and is preparing to play in The Open Championship at Royal St Georges, just as he was 26 years ago.
It was at the Kent venue that Lyle became the first Briton to lift the famous Claret Jug since Tony Jacklin in 1969, before going on to win the 1985 Order of Merit – his third Harry Vardon Trophy having previously finished as Europe’s Number One in 1979 and 1980.
Now the 1988 Masters Champion is bidding to join his former Shropshire county rival Ian Woosnam as the only other former Harry Vardon Trophy winner, and Major Champion, to win the Senior Tour Order of Merit.
Lyle resumes his Senior Tour campaign at next month’s Aberdeen Brunei Senior Masters presented by The Stapleford Forum having already earned €66,575 in 2011 – meaning he has nearly matched the €72,223 he amassed in his first three seasons on the Senior Tour in just two appearances this term.
Consecutive top five finishes in Australia and Japan have given Lyle a €12,076 cushion over Peter Senior and he will look to extend that margin at The Empire Hotel and Country Club in Brunei with a maiden Senior Tour title and first tournament win since 1992.
Lyle finished tied sixth in Brunei in 2009, which remained his best Senior Tour finish until he began the 2011 season by finishing runner up in the Handa Australian Senior Open and tied fifth in the Handa Cup Senior Masters in Japan in November.
With a return to Royal St George’s also on the horizon in July for The 140th Open Championship, Lyle can expect a trip down memory lane in 2011, a week before he will attempt to add a Senior Major to his CV at the near-by Walton Heath Golf Club, which hosts this year’s Senior Open Championship.
That will represent another sentimental return for Lyle, an 18-time European Tour winner, who made his home debut in The Ryder Cup at the venue 30 years ago as part of the first combined European Team to take on the United States on European soil.
His teammate from The 1981 Ryder Cup, Bernhard Langer, will defend his Senior Open crown at Walton Heath from July 21-24, and is expected to form a strong challenge for this year’s Senior Tour Order of Merit.
For the time being however, it is Lyle who remains the man to catch, just as he was more than a quarter of a century ago.
