It is grey, damp and drizzly, the last day of June, and I’m talking to a gatepost. I’m not exactly an expert in this department, but as gateposts go it seems friendly enough. “You’re a little early,” it crackles through the tiny metal grille set into its brickwork. “But come on in anyway.”

A couple of clicks, the low hum of electric motors, and the high wooden gates swing open. By the brash standards of the exclusive Wentworth estate — exclusive in the sense of being restricted to the seriously loaded — the scene they reveal is tastefully understated: an elegant and convincing mock-Tudor house, emerald lawns, a sweeping drive shaded by rambling bushes and tall pine trees. A large dog gnaws lazily on a bone near the front door, and only the thought that it might be lunching on a previous interviewer intrudes on the sense of contentment generated by the scene.

We are near the conclusion of a process that started little more than a month earlier. The conventional approach would have been to channel requests through agents or sponsors, to give assurances and accept restrictions, to finally meet on a neutral venue for a few minutes of stilted conversation beneath the steely gaze of a PR executive. But when Ernie Els walked from the scorer’s hut at the Volvo PGA, there was something about him that suggested a more direct route.

“Ernie, is there any chance we might be able to do something before The Open?” “Sure,” he had said, scribbling a few digits on a scrap of paper. “We can do it at the house. Here’s my number. Just give me a call nearer the time.”

Ever wonder why he’s called the Big Easy?

ELS is sitting on a low chair beside the fireplace in a drawing room that would appeal to Loyd Grossman’s detective instincts. The television is tuned to a sports channel, there are some golf guides lying on a coffee table and a sculpture of a lion sits on the mantelpiece beneath a painting of a bright Scottish landscape. The scent could scarcely be stronger if the Claret Jug itself was artfully positioned among the collection of photographs on the desk by the window.

“I had to give it back,” he says. “The R&A wanted to put another base on it so that there would be enough space for more names, but it was good having it around. It’s pretty amazing to see some of the names there, to see your own name among them.”

The trophy led a quiet life in Els’s custody. Or rather, it settled down to a quiet life after a boisterous start. On its first evening in his hands, it was the star guest at a party for friends and fellow players at Muirfield’s Greywalls Hotel; the following day — and at this point the gentlemen of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews might be advised to look away now — it was taken on a pub crawl round Surrey. “We went round a few places,” says Els sheepishly, “then gave it a good cleaning when we got back. After that it never had a drop of anything in it.”

Was irreverence borne of relief? His body language did not betray it at the time, but the closing holes of the 2002 Open put Els through forms of torture that he had never encountered in his life. He was three clear when he left the 12th green, but one stroke behind when he reached the 17th tee, most of the damage having been done at the short 16th where a potentially ruinous double-bogey was the consequence of a nervous tee shot pulled to the left of the green.

We remember that he went on to survive a four-way, four-hole playoff before winning the sudden-death contest against France’s Thomas Levet. But in the short walk from the 16th green to the 17th tee, Els had been forced to confront and overcome the self-doubt that was racing through his mind. Golfers are routinely advised to think of one shot at a time, but for once this was a moment to look at the bigger picture.

“You don’t want to call yourself a loser,” he says. “You don’t want to be remembered as one of those guys who threw away The Open Championship. The Open means so much to players that it almost hurts to think about it, and if you look back at history it does seem that losing it at the last gasp can be pretty damaging to the rest of a player’s career. To fall flat on your face near the finish line is not the way you want to go out. It’s okay if another guy beats you, but it’s tough when you mess it up yourself.”

Even for Els? Even for a man whose relaxed demeanour could make a hibernating sloth look like the embodiment of angst and hot-headedness by comparison? Maybe especially for Els, and maybe especially then. In the era of Tiger Woods, whose five years at the pinnacle of golf had covered the time since Els had won the second of his two US Opens, there had been enough near misses against his name to suggest an underlying frailty under pressure, an inability to seal the deal on greatness.

“Winning The Open has been career-changing for me,” he explains. “Winning two US Opens is great, but if you really want to go where the greats are then you really have to go a bit further than that. The Open has made it for me. If I had an injury that forced me to give up tomorrow, then I could stop, look back, and still be satisfied with what I have achieved.