Golf Central

Doug Sanders, who won 20 tournaments on The PGA Tour and a cruel tally of four second places in major championships, was born on this day in 1933 in Cedartown, Georgia. As you can see from the photo above - taken when we met him at this year's Open - he was renowned as the fairway dandy of his time, once taking the supreme effort of painting his white golf glove pink using his wife’s nail varnish to complement his salmon outfit.

With one of the shortest backswings on tour, he was an inveterate gambler, counted Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Evel Knievel as mates and once offered a hitman $40,000 to have him murdered if surgery on his neck wasn’t successful (it was). A colourful character who has lived a fascinating life, he will, however, be immortalised for missing a two foot in a play-off for the 1970 Open Championship, gifting the title to Jack Nicklaus.

On this day in 1974 president Richard Nixon was ordered by The Supreme Court to hand over tape recordings of White House conversations about the Watergate affair. When the tapes were finally released, more than 18 minutes of a crucial meeting were found to be missing.

The official explanation was that the president's secretary had accidentally erased it by pressing the wrong foot-pedal while answering the phone, but the House Judiciary Committee were having none of it and on July 27 it recommended that the president be impeached and removed from office. Nixon resigned before the House debate on his impeachment could begin.

Meanwhile, it’s Lihkos Riegadanbeaivvis! as they say in Lapland to European Tour member Steven Richardson (42), Latino pop actress Jennifer Lopez (39), Wonder Woman herself Lynda Carter (57) and Amelia Earhart (who would have been 111).