What a year 1974 was for golf. Johnny Miller and Gary Player were dominant, each winning nine tournaments. Johnny started the year with wins at the Bing Crosby at Pebble Beach, the Phoenix Open, Tucson Open and the Heritage, all before The Masters in April.

Gary won The Masters, beating Tom Weiskopf by two shots. That same week I played at the Portuguese Open and shot a record 62 in the second round. I still only managed to finish in a solid 27th position.

Peter Oosterhuis, who recently passed away, led the European Order of Merit that year with some excellent and consistent golf. Although I only won one tournament in 1974, I had top-10 finishes at 14 of the 19 tournaments I played, which allowed me to finish second in the Order of Merit.

Gary also won The Open Championship that year. I had an interesting Open; I was playing well going into the tournament and I’d won the Coca Cola by eagling the last hole to beat Jack Newton by one shot. I always enjoy the way Ewan Murray describes how I played the last hole: “Hayes topped his second shot with a 3-wood, it went 260 yards and finished 12 feet from the hole. He luckily holed the putt.”

At The Open I played the first two rounds with Jack Nicklaus and Brian Barnes. Only seven players shot in the 60s, thanks to the weather. On the 17th hole I pulled my second shot into the left rough and we started looking. After a couple of minutes I asked the others to please keep looking and I walked back to play another.

I got back to the position where I’d hit my second shot from, dropped a ball over my shoulder, as were the rules then, then looked up and saw them waving at me. I picked up my ball and walked back to where my first ball was. An R&A official who was standing nearby said he’d seen everything, the ball had been found in under five minutes, and confirmed I could play it. I made the cut.

I played the next round with Ben Crenshaw and shot a 73 to make the final day; in those days there were two cuts at The Open. As I walked off the green after the third round, I was called into the R&A office. They asked me what had happened on the 17th hole the day before and I told them I’d dropped a ball. Correctly, they said once I’d dropped the ball it was in play. I tried to argue that I had got a ruling which Jack had asked for. They said unfortunately the R&A official never saw me drop the ball. As you can imagine, I was devastated, but the R&A were correct.

Fortunately I carried on playing well, with a fourth at the Scandinavian Open, a third at the Swiss Open and the German Open, and fifth at the Dutch Open. Back in South Africa I won the Holiday Inn tournament in Swaziland, the PGA Championship at the Wanderers, finished fifth at the Western Province Open, fourth at the Transvaal Open and second at the Rhodesian Masters.

I had two of my most memorable wins in November. In the middle of the Sunshine Tour, Bobby Cole and I travelled to Venezuela to represent South Africa at the World Cup of Golf, which Gary and Harold Henning had won in 1965. I'd won the PGA Championship the week before, beating Gary by one shot, so I was on a high. Bobby had also had one of his best years. I was 22 years old and Bobby was 26, by far the senior partner.

Bobby played superb golf over the four days, shooting nine under par to win the individual trophy by a massive five shots over Japan’s Jumbo Ozaki. American Hale Irwin, Japan’s Isao Aoki and I tied for third. On day three we played with the US and on the final day with Japan. Bobby outplayed the four members of those teams, from tee to green and on the greens. All I had to do was not make a fool of myself and mark the scorecard correctly.

That was one of the highlights of my playing career and the smallish gold-coloured trophy stands in the clubhouse at Zwartkop.

With two Major wins and a total of nine victories, Gary was possibly the best golfer in the world and was the standout favourite to win the event. He always supported the Sunshine Tour, playing at least four events a year. John Schlee, who’d won the 1973 Hawaiian Open and was the runner-up at that year’s US Open, was in the field.

Two-time Major champion, Tony Jacklin, was also in the field along with a young Severiano Ballesteros who was only 18 years old and playing on his first Tour. Seve finished 26th at the PGA, 42nd at the General Motors Classic, with his best finishes of eighth at the Western Province Open and 12th at the Transvaal Open.

I was four ahead of Gary with the final round to play and by the time we got to the 17th he’d caught me. It ended up being a two-horse race with the two of us playing together in the final group. Gary missed the green and I was on. He chipped it up to about six feet, I two-putted for a par, so Gary had to make the putt to keep us tied. He hit a perfect putt that somehow stayed out of the hole.

This was before we had TV in South Africa so the crowds were huge. Some of the people in the crowd applauded after Gary’s putt missed. As he tapped it in he said: “I guess every shot pleases someone.”

We both parred the last hole, so I’d won my first “biggie” in South Africa.

IMAGES: AUGUSTA NATIONAL/USGA ARCHIVES