Michael Lunt

Born: 20 May, 1935, in Mosely, West Midlands.

Died: 22 May, 2007, in Surrey, aged 72.

MICHAEL Lunt was a former Walker Cup golfer and a past winner of the Amateur Championship. He was nine months into his year-long captaincy of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews at the time of his death, and flags at the club were flown at half-mast as a mark of respect.

When Lunt was officially installed into the post last September for the 2006-7 season, it marked a return to the scene of one of his greatest triumphs - St Andrews was where he had won the Amateur Championship more than 40 years earlier.

He was inaugurated into office during a historic ceremony when he drove off a ball on the final day of the club's three-week autumn meeting on the championship Old Course.

Lunt followed his father, Stanley, the English Amateur champion of 1934, into a hugely successful career in amateur golf.

Included among his many tournament successes was the Amateur Championship title in 1963 - he was a beaten finalist the following year - and the English Amateur Championship in 1966 at Royal Lytham and St Annes.

He played in four Walker Cup matches between 1959 and 1965, with his final appearance at Five Farms in Maryland when the match finished all square at 11-11. In 1964, Lunt was a member of the Great Britain and Ireland team that won the Eisenhower Trophy in Italy, at Olgiata in Rome.

In addition to representing England for a decade until 1966, he was the non-playing captain of the squad for four years from 1972 to 1975.

Educated at Uppingham School, Lunt was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, with which he served in Egypt from 1953 to 1955.

Following that brief spell overseas, he became a director of the family's wholesale textile business in Birmingham. When the company was taken over by Courtaulds, Lunt took up the position of European golf sales manager for the sports company Slazenger.

In 1998, he retired after 11 years as the secretary/manager of Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club.

He joined the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 1963 and served on its championship committee and the rules of golf committee. He was a member of several golf clubs and played most of his golf at Walton Heath.

Mr Lunt, whose home was in Surrey, had been due to retire as captain of the R&A in September.

He is survived by his wife, Vicki, a son and daughter and two grandchildren.