Of all the honours and distinctions accorded Christy O'Connor Snr over the years, one stands apart as the product of unique circumstances. Among other things, it was an occasion when some of the world's greatest golfers were involved in a potentially fatal air incident. And it happened en route to the 13th Ryder Cup.

For O'Connor, an enduring memento of the event is a membership card which reads: "J-L (Jolly Lucky) Long Drop Club, 5.30pm October 29th 1959 Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Almost."

Formed on October 30th at the instigation of John Letters of the Letters Golf Company, the club's exclusive membership list included O'Connor, Dai Rees, Peter Alliss, Eric Brown, Ken Bousfield, Norman Drew, Bernard Hunt, Peter Mills, Dave Thomas and Harry Weetman, who were all members of the British and Irish line-up. Doug Ford, a member of the American team, was also on the plane, having hitched a lift.

Barry Nolan of the Irish Independent, Frank Pennink of the Daily Mail and Ronald Heager of the Daily Express were among the golfing scribes on board. And Heager's account in the Daily Express of October 31st, described how "we were tossed around like a cocktail in a shaker . . . It was like falling in a giant lift when the cable had snapped. Only . . . your stomach stayed on the 10th storey. It was the Big Dipper - without the laughs."

Then, from a distance of 18 years on, he wrote in the 1977 Ryder Cup programme: "The date carved indelibly in our minds was . . . seven days before the team was due on the tee against the United States under Sam Snead. Behind them was a planned acclimatisation after landing in New York (on the SS Queen Elizabeth), golf in Atlantic City, Washington and Atlanta and, that morning, the big hop from Atlanta to Los Angeles.

"Next there were just 140 miles and a brief flight to the air-conditioned comfort of the Desi Arnaz Hotel at Palm Desert. That was what we thought as we filed into the plane.

"The reality proved to be the nightmare none of the 29 passengers would forget. `Keep your seat-belts fastened; there may be a little rough weather ahead,' our captain warned us. Rough? A little? A few minutes away, as we approached the jagged peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains, the plane began to toss like a cork as we met the storm that lit the vivid, purple skies.

"The bumps were mild at first, but sufficient to turn bronzed golfers ashen. Heads ducked down between knees. Collars were loosened. In the eye of the storm, the jolts increased in frequency and violence. We were trapped in a big lift racing up and down: berserk. And the climax was still to come."

Heager went on: "It arrived with a new dimension of violence. There was a sickening, downward plunge. We were a stone dropped into a well. Anything not strapped down took off and floated to the roof of the plane. Weightless. A grinding, crunching, agonised sound of metal on metal heightened the horror.

"We didn't know it then, but this was the brink of calamity. From that robots' wrestling match of sound, we inched back from the edge of disaster. The metallic judderings of the aircraft were beautiful noises to the grappling pilot. He had regained command of the ship. He had won his battle with the furies of the elements."

In fact the chartered plane had plummeted from 13,000 to 9,000 feet before the pilot's skills eventually triumphed. Whereupon Weetman was moved to remark: "I bloody near messed my pants." Only to get the reply from a colleague: "I've got news for you Harry, I did."

John Panton was also a member of the visiting squad for the matches at Eldorado Country Club, but he flew out on his own, having answered an SOS from the PGA, requesting cover for Mills, who had back trouble. As it happened, neither of them got a game.

When the pilot righted the plane, it turned back for Los Angeles with a view to another attempt at completing the trip. But as the players disembarked and several of them had gone down on their knees to kiss the ground, skipper Dai Rees insisted they would resume the journey by Greyhound Bus.

In his autobiography, told to John Redmond, O'Connor talked of how the initial bumps were acceptable. Then he went on: "But the jolts increased in regularity and violence, collars were being undone. . . . And once the air hostess reached for the sick bag, she started a trend. This was it, I thought to myself. I said a prayer."

At that point, he turned to Brown whom he would deprive spectacularly of the Carrolls International title with an eagle, birdie, eagle finish at Royal Dublin seven years later. "I asked him if he prayed," O'Connor recalled. To which the Scot replied: "No. Will you say one for me." Later, on the trip by road, O'Connor recalls helping to ease the tension "with a rendering, though not a good one I might say, of `Galway Bay'." He added: "As time ticked by, we slowly regained our senses."

The book goes on to outline the conditions of membership of the J-L Long Drop Club - "Being a founder member . . . you have a high position to uphold. To avoid the risk of dropping low in the eyes of the other co-founders, you must raise your glass and toast each and every one of them at 5.30pm on the 29th of October every year you remain alive, which you are jolly lucky to be at the moment." Sadly, several team members have since gone from us, but according to O'Connor, they met for a number of annual reunions at which they would recall their personal experience of the ordeal. As things turned out, the Americans won by 8 1/2 to 3 1/2 on what was the last time that Ryder Cup matches were contested over 36 holes of foursomes and singles. But the really interesting bit is that it was also the last time a visiting British and Irish team travelled to the US by sea. The future was in the air.