They say that no-one remembers who came second, but golf's Open Championship is the exception to the rule, and as the world's foremost tournament returns to Carnoustie this week, the spectre of Jean Van de Velde looms large.

Van de Velde is currently suffering glandular fever and last night the Frenchman also revealed that he has had tests for bone cancer and won't be at Carnoustie this week. The 41-year-old wasn't eligible to play anyway, but would have been here as a television commentator. He was, however, on the phone to the media centre for a collective intrusion into private grief.

"You get tired answering the same question over and over," he said, "but that's fine. I think it's going to last at least a good 15 to 20 years before people stop asking. There's probably another 12 to go."

So the answer is, of the drive that went right and narrowly missed the Barry Burn, the two-iron second that hit the grandstand and rebounded back over the burn, the third that went in, the fourth a penalty drop, the fifth into a greenside bunker, the sixth an escape to seven feet and the seventh a very good putt, the third is the only one he would replay.

He was conscious of out of bounds over the green and didn't hit it as hard as he would have liked, thus plopping it in the burn on the way to finishing joint runner-up with Justin Leonard to Paul Lawrie after the three-man play-off.

He is in good company. The list of Open cock-ups, tales of players who beat themselves, stretches back to the early days. In 1887, Willie Campbell, three holes from home at Prestwick, found himself in a spot of bother at the top edge of a bunker. In what was reported in the Herald as "a terrible misfortune" it took him five thrashes to get the ball clear.

Campbell finished three behind Willie Park Sr and the bunker became known as Willie Campbell's Grave.

The Barry Burn might yet be renamed the Van de Velde Burn as the pictures of him wading in to look at actually playing the ball as it lay have become arguably the most famous in Open history.

Psychologists say that pressure affects judgment as well as execution, yet Van de Velde insists to this day that a two- iron was the shot for his second and not two safe wedges that would have won the tournament for him.

Tom Watson might be a five-time Open winner, but he wasn't immune to the greatest pressure golf can inflict. Playing the 17th at St Andrews in the final round in 1984, he was prevented from reaching a record-equalling sixth win by the player he feared most - himself.

He played a two-iron second shot which was reckoned to be two clubs too many, overshot the green and finished two adrift of a fist-pumping Seve Ballesteros.

Most recently Thomas Bjorn was two shots in the lead playing the short 16th at Royal St George's in 2003 when he found his golfing grave. In a greenside bunker from his tee shot, he took three shots to get out, trying too delicate a shot twice, and he ended joint runner-up by a shot to Ben Curtis.

Like Campbell, Bjorn and Van de Velde, such "terrible misfortunes" are all the more acute when the victim fails thereafter to find redemption by winning another major, and Doug Sanders most definitely falls into that category.

He jokes that on a good day he can go for 10 minutes without thinking back to that fateful Open at St Andrews in 1970 when, having made a brilliant escape from the Road Hole bunker to save par, he needed "only" a 4 to win at possibly the easiest par-4 in Open Championship golf.

A good drive and an overstrong pitch left him 30 feet from the hole, and he trickled a putt down to three feet for what has become the most infamous putt in Open history. He was looking at a left-to-right break and stood over it for what seemed like an eternity before bending down to pick up something he imagined to be on his line.

Henry Longhurst, the commentator, said simply: "Oh dear," and he was right. An ugly little jab sent the ball wide on the low side, and Sanders lost by one to Jack Nicklaus in the play-off next day.

The list goes on: Tony Jacklin's three putts on the 17th green at Muirfield in 1971 after Lee Trevino chipped in, Jesper Parnevik's bogey 5 at the last at Turnberry in 1994, Bobby Clampett's three shots in a bunker at the sixth at Royal Troon in 1982 when he was leading by seven shots and Ian Woosnam's two-shot penalty for having 15 clubs in his bag in 2001 at Royal Lytham.

The appeal of the Open is not just who wins, it's the car-crash fascination of who, all of a sudden, with the silver claret jug almost in their grasp, becomes vulnerable. For some, the old jug is that most poisoned of chalices.