Sandy Lyle admits golf was no picnic, even in the glory years

IT'S a cruel world which cannot accommodate Sandy Lyle. Earlier this year, in South China of all places, the Scot finally won a maiden Senior title.

It is an environment in which he has found a shelter of sorts from the more mean-spirited, ultra-professional regular tour, where he had been reduced to battling from pillar to post.

"It's a social event as well - competitive but social, and that's the way I like it," Lyle explained earlier this week in St Andrews, on the eve of his first appearance in the Cleveland Golf/Srixon Scottish Senior Open.

"Playing on regular tour events, people seem to me to be a bit more single-minded. They have the coach, the nutritionist, the physios, the trainers. They walk past you and you don't even get eye contact a lot of the time."

Mind you, this can happen anywhere, including corporate events at Sunningdale, where Lyle ran into Colin Montgomerie a few weeks ago. No conversation with Lyle can avoid the tricky subject of Monty. The two men are linked by more than just their Scottish roots after Lyle's possibly injudicious raking up of "Jakartagate", when Montgomerie incorrectly replaced his ball in a better position at the Indonesian Open. But it was two years ago, since when Montgomerie has shown exactly why Lyle described him as a "drama queen" at Turnberry, as reporters sought to keep stirring this delicious pot.

"That's still unresolved," explained Lyle. "There is obviously a lot of sore wounds on Monty's side of it. Whether he will come out of it I don't know. He had a chance a few weeks ago when I was doing an (Aberdeen Asset] outing with Colin at Sunningdale, but there was no eye contact. He was in one corner of the room and I was in the other corner. I have left myself reasonably open. I have tried to talk to him. But it just hasn't happened."

It breaks the heart to think of the generous-spirited character being made to feel uncomfortable, whether socially or out on the fairway, the area the title of his autobiography - To the Fairway Born - suggests he should feel most at home. But this hasn't always been the case, sadly. For 19 years, between 1992 and 2011, he didn't land so much as a title, when, during his pomp, he might have won as many as four or five times a season - including majors.

"I needed that win, to get it off my back and to remind myself that I am still capable of winning," he said.

He was glad to have an excuse to creak open the trophy cabinet at his home in Callander."It looked like a silvery fruit bowl, quite a big thing," he said, when asked to describe the trophy he was happy to have to lug back from the Far East. "There was nothing in gold on it, or anything to make it particularly valuable. But it's what it means."

Lyle had struggled for so long it had almost become to seem like second nature to him. And, surprisingly, he says he never felt in the groove even in the mid-Eighties, when he was in the form of his life. He is among his old gang now, including the likes of Ian Woosnam and Sam Torrance, people he can share a jar with at night and then accept constructive criticism from in the morning.

The heart can ache a bit on hearing this too. Surely a two-times major champion, once memorably described by Seve Ballesteros as having pushed him into the runners-up spot when it came to best natural golfer, has not been reduced to cadging tips from his colleagues? Yet Lyle has never felt at one with himself, and could never emit the air of serenity which someone like Tom Watson manages as he goes about his work in a last brilliant chapter of his career.

"I don't think I ever have been comfortable," said Lyle. "People think I have a simple swing but I have fought with the game right from the early days when I was a boy. I have always had a head movement which tends to bite you back.

"When it's good, it's good. In the mid-Eighties I had a little run when I seemed to get comfortable with things, but I was never really totally happy. I would see things on video and almost go into a sulk because I just didn't like what I saw of the swing. But that's what the game of golf is like."

Who does ever make it to golf's Shangi-La? Watson, possibly, is one. "I think he is very comfortable with himself," agreed Lyle. "It's nothing spectacular, he just plays the game. He doesn't put himself under a lot of pressure because his golf game pulls him through.

"He has high personal standards and he plays to a high standard. He is not gifted in the way you would say someone like Sam Snead was gifted, with his wonderful long swing which was meant to last.

"Tom has just worked away at it, has battled alcoholism and all sorts of things over the years and has come through them, and he just seems to have found a niche in the game which other people look to find and yet never find."

From Lyle one can sense vulnerability. Yet even now, 23 years on from his triumph at the Masters, there is a still-unmistakable quality of the champion about him. He continues to be a popular attraction, and was included in yesterday's group of the day, alongside Barry Lane and Costantino Rocca, in the first round of the Scottish Senior Open, at Fairmont St Andrews. However, Lyle dashed the hopes of those who turned out to offer him support by posting a two-over par round of 74.

It left him out of the running. Time, possibly, to turn to Woosie again for guidance.The Welshman, incidentally, is riding a bit higher, having posted a two-under par 70. Perhaps he was right to dismiss the possibility of Lyle being a threat, as he did on Thursday.

"That's what friends are for," smiled Lyle, who had a coaching clinic with Woosnam on Wednesday. "Even though we don't live close, in fact we are thousands of miles apart, he has always been around. We are good friends, and that's what friends do. If one is in trouble then you try and give good advice. Golf is one of those crazy games where you can't see yourself. Even video can be misleading if taken at the wrong angle. Someone like a good friend can give you that little bit of spark and tell you what to do if you do not have the right rhythm.

"With Woosie, a Masters champion and someone who has won many, many tournaments, you are going to take more heed of what he says than someone just passing by, even if they might be right. With Woosie you know you will get a good decision. He says it from the heart."

Lyle had been expected to tear up the Senior tour, when he first became eligible in 2008. It hasn't worked out that way, however. "A lot of people who turn 50 are uncanny," he said. "They don't look 50, they have this youth...they look like 30. I look like 50 half the time, and I feel like 50 - or 50-plus.

"I don't think (Bernard] Langer has gained an ounce in the last 20 years. He is playing golf like he has never been away."

Lyle was also made to feel old at Sandwich earlier this summer, when he returned to the scene of his Open triumph for the last time as a player in this particular tournament.

"I was playing with Anthony Kim which was quite a thrill, and Rory Sabbatini," he recalled. "Two very good young players, obviously, who can hit the ball a million miles, which I could never hope to do."

Something else seems beyond him right now, and that's skippering the European Ryder Cup side. Much, of course, has been said about Lyle's candidacy having been overlooked to date, although his most appropriate venue, surely, would be Gleneagles in 2014.

"Obviously having the Ryder Cup close to my home it would be silly not to be involved in some way," he said. "But the phone has to ring. I can't go and push myself in there. They all know I am available, even if just to provide a shoulder to cry on."

Everybody hurts, something Lyle understands as well as anyone.