In January 1956, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, two of the greatest professionals to play golf, combined in a high-stakes, 18-hole match against Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi, two amateurs, at Cypress Point golf club, south of San Francisco.

It should have been a one-sided affair. At that time, Hogan was near to retirement having won nine major championships, including three in 1953. Like Hogan, Nelson had been born in Texas in 1912 and, though ten years past his retirement, was remembered for his victories in five major championships and for winning 13 of the 23 events he entered in 1944 and 11 in succession the next year.

Facing these formidable figures were Ward, engaging and colourful and once described as being as good as Jack Nicklaus as an amateur, and Venturi, who had been born with a stammer, would go on to turn pro before emerging to win the 1964 US Open and becoming a well-known television commentator in the United States.

It was like a 19th-century bet between two rich men, one of whom backed the pros and the other the amateurs. George Coleman, Hogan’s and Nelson’s backer, is known for being wealthy but Eddie Lowery, the backer of Ward and Venturi, was the tousle-haired kid not much taller than a golf bag who carried the clubs of Francis Ouimet when the American amateur sensationally beat Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, the pros from this side of the Atlantic, in a play-off for the 1913 US Open.

This is a story based in fact, though few knew about the match before this book appeared. It is gripping and exceptionally well researched and written, but the suspense is not guaranteed. You soon realise that there can only be two or three likely outcomes: the pros win, the amateurs win or they halve the match.

Fortunately there is an afterword, a good one at that, and it is here that Frost squares the circle. Using the same narrative skills and displaying his extensive research, he fleshes out the remaining lives of the men involved. Hogan’s, Nelson’s and Venturi’s are well known, Ward’s is less so. It is fascinating.

The match is not, as is portentously claimed on the cover, “The day the game of golf changed for ever” but it is fair to say that Ken Venturi’s words are not so far fetched after all. “Fiction can’t touch it,” Venturi said.

The Match by Mark Frost (Little Brown, £9.99). Available from Books First at £9.49; phone 0870 1608080 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst .