In 1970 I stood on tiptoe behind the back of the 18th green at St Andrews in Scotland to watch as Doug Sanders missed the short putt that would have made him the champion golfer of 1970. That is how the winner is announced each year at the prize-giving ceremony.

Jack Nicklaus beat Sanders in a play-off the next day, winning his second Open. He would win one more, again at St Andrews, in 1978.

1970 was my first year covering the Open. I did not know then that I would go on and cover almost all of the next 40 but I have quickly learned in the days since that the Open is not only the oldest of the four major championships and the only one played outside the US but the best.

It provides a challenge that is most unusual to golfers from outside these shores in that few of them ever play on hard and fast-running links such as they experience more often than not at Opens. Seeing Camillo Villegas deal with the stormy conditions in the Open at Royal Birkdale last year was a revelation, for example. So was hearing Greg Norman say how much fun it is to hit 5 irons only 120 yards or to play a bump-and-run shot from 40 yards off a putting surface.

Muirfield 1987 was memorable for being Nick Faldo's first Open victory. I knew Faldo a little in those days and occasionally had dinner with him. In 1985 I had written a biography of the Englishman in which I had said that he would win the Open before he was 30. I was wrong. He was a couple of days past his 30th birthday when he had 18 pars in his final round to defeat Paul Azinger and win the first of his three Opens.

At Royal Lytham 1988 rain stopped play on Saturday causing the event to go over to Monday. That day I watched Seve Ballesteros hit his second shot to within a few feet of the flag on the 16th green and glance across triumphantly at Nick Price, his playing partner. Price looked straight ahead, knowing that if he had acknowledged Ballesteros's shot he would have seen the light of victory in Ballesteros's eyes. It duly came, by two strokes, after Ballesteros played a deft chip across the 18th green. I know how deft it was and I know how true it rolled because I was directly behind Ballesteros as he played the shot. To my left was a man in a wheelchair. He looked as though he, not Ballesteros, had won the Open when the Spaniard's ball stopped inches from the hole.

Royal Liverpool 2006 was notable for the way Tiger Woods pounded one mid-iron after the other into the distance with power and accuracy. I followed him for much of his second round during which he holed his second on the 14th for an eagle. I later described it in The Times as the best display of mid-iron play I had seen in 50 years of watching and playing golf. I tried to get Tiger to agree later but, modest fellow that he is, he declined.

Carnoustie 2007 featured the Barry Burn and a play-off between Padraig Harrington and Sergio Garcia, the first between two Europeans for almost a century. Harrington and Garcia have little in common other than an ability to play golf to a very high standard and there was electricity in the air during the extra holes. I had stood in the Barry Burn in February in a guileless attempt for The Times to remind readers of Jean Van de Velde's performance in 1999. Unyielding, clean and fast-running, the burn was also cold.

Little did we know when Harrington emerged victorious that it would be the launch pad for him to go on and retain his title at Royal Birkdale a year later and then win the US PGA Championship one month after that.

If we have an Open at Turnberry in 2009 half as good as any of these favourites of mine, then we are in for a wonderful time.