It is thirty-six years since the sun of a Scunthorpe lorry driver beat the Americans on their home turf in the US Open - and still Tony Jacklin is the last Briton to lift that hallowed trophy. Coming on the back of his success in the British Open the previous year, 1969, Jacklin's triumph marked a seismic shift in the balance of golfing power, and the start of a transatlantic rivalry based on genuine competitiveness that endures to this day. It is no accident that it was under Jacklin's captaincy that the European Ryder Cup team found its edge, and in 1985 regained the trophy from the Americans for the first time since 1957. Incredibly, Jacklin topped this achievement with an even more historic victory in 1987, when he became the first to captain a winning European Ryder Cup team on US soil.

Inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002, Tony is now feted as the godfather of the modern game, and an icon to the young players flocking to courses and driving ranges in record numbers. Now, in his first full autobiography, he looks back on his remarkable life and career and charts his progress from apprentice steelworker to golf legend.

It's a story of success against the odds, of hard graft, but above all of Talent allied with a face determination. Born in 1944 into a Lincolnshire of grey skies and rationing, Tony first encountered the game that would change his life at the age of nine - caddying for his father, who had rather improbably become hooked on golf after being taken along for around by a neighbour. Soon Tony was hitting balls whenever he could, although it would be another nine years - and even more remarkably, a mere seven years before he won the Open - before he had his own set of clubs. After winning the Lincolnshire Cup at the age of 13 he turned pro four years later, and was already set on achieving his dream are playing against the best in America - and beating them. At Hazeltine Golf Club in Minnesota, 1970, he did just that, becoming the first player since the great Ben Hogan to hold both the US and British Open titles simultaneously.

With full and frank accounts of these and other triumphs, and bringing us right up to date with his new career as a course designer, Jacklin: My Autobiography is the essential guide to one of the best loved and most revered players of the modern era.