Jack Pressley is not a man given to blowing his own trumpet. Hand him a saxophone or clarinet however, and the 91-year-old will willingly soundtrack a journey through his remarkable life.

Rolls-Royce employee, jazz musician, businessman, golfer, grandfather to one of Scotland's more prominent footballing figures and a direct descendant of rock royalty - he is not the kind of character one expects to encounter at Fraserburgh Golf Club. Yet that is where the taciturn nonagenarian can be found most days of the week, content to quietly continue his epic tussle with the most frustrating sporting pursuit known to man.

His is a conflict that spans 80 years, a minor skirmish amid a wider battle between man and nature that will include among its innumerable victims those who fail to make the cut at Carnoustie this evening in the Open Championship. Pressley can empathise; he suffered the same fate on that revered patch of Angus links in 1953.

"Aye, I played in the Open from time to time," he says, a fact relegated to an aside as his thick Doric dialect meanders through the memories of his career as one of Scotland's best amateur golfers.

"I played at Carnoustie the year Ben Hogan won - 1953, I think it was. I qualified for the final four rounds but had something like 75, 75 and didn't make the cut.

So, och aye, I did alricht in my time, but in those days only a maximum of 100 players were allowed to play in the Open, so I missed out a fair few times because of that."

Those who scrambled their way around Downfield, Monifeith, Montrose and Panmure in the final qualifying last week know exactly how he felt. Yet while the Challenge Tour regulars, club pros and keen amateurs among them were dreaming of a tee time with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie for the first two rounds, Pressley was already familiar with the golfing icons of his day.

Having watched as a 21-year-old while Henry Cotton lifted the Claret Jug at Carnoustie in 1937, he found himself playing alongside the legendary Englishman just a few years later, but was unperturbed by the whole experience.

"I played with and against a few of these guys back in the day," Pressley muses. "I remember being up against Cotton in a foursomes tournament down at Birkdale in around about 1947. It was a professional/amateur thing and I was with a young English pro, but we lost on the 21st hole.

"Still, it didnae matter to me wha' I was playing against really. I liked the game so much that I enjoyed every tournament. I practised hard and I was always learning, just like I am today."

Indeed, the passing of the years has not wearied Pressley's thirst for red numbers. Since selling the sports shop he established and ran for 25 years - "I retired at 57, which was a grand idea, and since then I've just footered aboot" - he has had plenty of time to spend on the course, and weather permitting, is there for a short time every day of the week.

"I haven't got the strength now that these younger lads have so I don't play competitively, but I still go out a fair bit and practise," he says. "I'm still trying to improve, ye ken. I'll keep going as long as I can manage it and as long as I'm still enjoying it."

That mantra is one Pressley has strictly adhered to throughout his life. Even without his successes on the course, any biography of his would be a quair to rival anything local worthy Lewis Grassic Gibbon could pen. By the beginning of World War Two, he had moved to Glasgow, where he worked for Rolls-Royce by day and was a saxophonist by night in the various dancehalls in the city. All the while, his golf thrived with tournament success and international caps for Scotland fitted around what he fondly recollects as "the greatest life in the world".

As a consequence, Pressley was already a familiar name to some Glasgow music lovers by the time Elvis of a similar ilk gyrated his way into popular culture and into the attention of keen genealogist Jack. "I'd been doing all that family tree stuff for a good while but when Elvis came on the scene it all came to licht," he recalls.

"It turned oot that a couple of his relatives were from Peterhead and that he was from the same crowd as us, although with a different spelling of his name. I'm no liking his music, though, I can't suffer guitars, there's not enough variety and tone for me. I'm keen on Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington, that kind of thing. I never bother with Elvis. He's a different guy, a druggie, and I'm nothing to do with all that. He must have made a right amount of money, mind you, but at least I'm still going."

Aside from his golf, his great pleasure now comes in the achievements of his grandson, Celtic and Scotland defender Steven Pressley. "I'm very proud of him - he's a fine lad and we get on grand," he says. "His golf's gruesome, right enough. He can hit it an awfy long way, but he'd need a big course to keep the ball inside."