1 JEAN VAN DE VELDE CARNOUSTIE, 1999

When a six would have won him the Open championship, we all know how the Frenchman frittered away a threeshot lead at the final hole before somehow ramming in a 10-foot putt to make the play-off with Paul Lawrie and Justin Leonard.

However, what is not widely known is that a few months later, Van de Velde played Carnoustie's 18th in six strokes, with his putter.

"At the end of the day, it's a game, " he said, just a few weeks after his infamous meltdown.

"Okay it's not a friendly game, but it's still a game. So I played that second shot because to me it was in the spirit of how I see the game and how I like to play it."

Some loved his perspective on such a calamitous defeat, others thought he was a complete headcase.

2 DOUG SANDERS ST ANDREWS, 1970

It came down to one putt of two and a half feet, but for the flamboyant Sanders from Georgia, it might just as well have been two and half miles.

Faced with the tiddler to defeat Jack Nicklaus, the best player in the world at the time, and to win the Open at the home of golf, Sanders crouched paused, paused again as the breeze tugged at his trousers, and then for some reason he bent forward to pick up a piece of grass that he had seen in his line.

The story goes that Ben Hogan, who was watching on TV, implored Sanders to step away and start his routine over again, but he remained frozen over the ball as the putt predictably slid by for a dramatic miss to which BBC's commentator Henry Longhurst added: "There but for the grace of God."

The following day, Sanders, who never did win a major championship, lost an 18 hole play-off to Nicklaus and was later reputed to have said: "I'm better now. Sometimes I can go 15 minutes without thinking about it."

3 THOMAS BJORN ROYAL ST GEORGE'S, 2003

Standing on the tee of the short 16th tee, it seemed as if Thomas Bjorn couldn't lose the Open. He had finished a distant runner-up to Tiger Woods at St Andrews in 2000, but with a two-shot lead, this was surely to be his moment.

The tee shot looked fine, but it drifted to the right and trickled into one of Sandwich's deep greenside bunkers. Attempting to get his bunker shot close, he took too much sand the ball returned from whence it came. Again he tried, and again the ball rolled back into the bunker. Eventually, he extricated himself and holed out for a double-bogey five.

He bogeyed the next and failed to record a birdie at the final hole which would have got him in a play-off.

The pain was even greater for Bjorn when he realised that the unknown Ben Curtis, and not Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh, had stolen through for victory.

4 HARRY BRADSHAW ROYAL ST GEORGE'S, 1949

He could have, he should have, but he didn't. If it hadn't been for a broken bottle, as well the trend at the time of not asking for a ruling and getting on with the game, Harry Bradshaw would be etched in history as an Open champion.

The story goes that at the fifth hole in his second round at Sandwich, the Brad found his ball in a broken beer bottle, and although he believed he was entitled to a free drop, he decided to play the ball as it lay. He could only advance the ball a few yards, and he ended up taking a six.

In fact, the ball was lying against, and not in, a broken bottle, but his virtual penalty shot meant that he tied for the championship with the South African Bobby Locke.

There was to be no reprieve for Bradshaw in the 36-hole play-off which he lost by a massive 12 strokes.

5 IAN WOOSNAM ROYAL LYTHAM, 2001

When Ian Woosnam almost holed his six iron tee shot at Lytham's first hole, the tap-in birdie gave him a share of the lead. "It had been a great start, a clear statement of intent, " he later wrote in his autobiography. "Anyone could see I was fit and ready to launch a concerted bid for the title."

But on the second tee as Woosnam was ready to ask for his one iron, he saw his caddie Myles Byrne walking towards him, hands raised, palms upwards. "You're going to go ballistic, " said Byrne from Bray in county Wicklow, and the Welshman did when he was told he had 15 clubs, instead of the regulation 14 in the bag. "I give you one fucking job to do, " he said to Byrne, "and you can't even do that."

Woosnam was penalised two strokes, and eventually tied for third behind the winner, David Duval. A couple of weeks later, Byrne turned up late for an early tee time at the Scandinavian Masters, and Woosnam sacked him.