There we were at a golf tournament - the 138th Open - and a row broke out. Nothing new there. There have been rows at most of the 36 Opens I have covered. Usually, though, the Royal and Ancient or some other body is at the centre of it.

This time it was a couple of players with Scottish allegiances going at one another like a pair of jowly fishwives haggling over a side of salmon. Sandy Lyle was born in England but represented Scotland where he now lives. Colin Montgomerie was born in Scotland, moved to England and lived there for most of his life until returning to live in Scotland.

To outsiders, the tempest at Turnberry was baffling. "Can't you keep your men in order?" an American visitor asked. To others it was a bit like watching an army advancing on a Scottish castle and the generals turning round and seeing that fighting had broken out in their own ranks.

Montgomerie is undoubtedly the innocent in this story if not the innocent in the original episode in Jakarta to which Lyle was referring when he accused Montgomerie of cheating. Lyle is undoubtedly the accuser in this story, and was also in the wrong almost exactly one year ago when he walked off the course at Royal Birkdale without completing his first round, complaining of pain in his hands and received a battering from friends and foes alike for giving up.

This was something of a role reversal for Lyle who throughout his career has always been seen as lovable Sandy, a nice man but a bit of a dope, a man given to malapropisms.

The day after he won the 1985 Open he hosted a party at his house and did the washing up himself. Open champion one day, kitchen skivvy the next.

The night before he won the 1988 Masters, a journalist, seeing Lyle's massive golf shoes in the locker room at Augusta, thought it necessary to put a note in them: "Sandy, this is your left shoe."

On winning the 1988 World Match Play title at Wentworth, when it was sponsored by a Japanese whisky manufacturer, Lyle was heard to say: "these Chinese may be small but they don't half give big prizes."

Asked what he thought of Tiger Woods, Lyle famously replied: "I've never played it."

In the seventies, eighties and nineties, when Lyle clashed with Nick Faldo it was always he who came out best, Faldo who came out worst.

Montgomerie has rarely been far from the news and has often been in it up to his hefty ankles. Whether it's glaring at another player, being pilloried in the press, holing in one, being named Ryder Cup captain, advocating golf's inclusion in the Olympics, Montgomerie is a walking newsmaker. He can talk brilliantly articulately, a man who can charm the birds out of the trees - if he isn't complaining about their twittering. For years he has been a journalist's dream to report on. No one has been able to put on such a grumpy face or register such astonishment since the late Dame Sybil Thorndike.

Once Lyle had made his attack on his fellow Scot, Montgomerie appeared to be milking it for all it was worth, at one point chattering into his mobile phone after he had read Lyle's apology, at another huddling with Guy Kinnings, his manager, planning their next move. Legal action against Lyle was hinted at. Montgomerie cancelled his appearance at a golf writers' dinner on Tuesday night, and moved out of the Turnberry hotel as well, believing it better to keep out of the public eye. The moral ground that Montgomerie occupied at this time was so high he must have been looking down at God.