ECCENTRIC and talented golfer Brian Barnes has died of cancer aged 74.

Since retiring from professional golf in 2000, he had hired himself out as a playing partner and coach from his Sussex home course in West Chiltington, which he designed.

At more than 6ft tall, the powerfully built professional certainly stood out on the course, not least because he had a penchant for smoking a pipe as he played, with his golf club in one hand and a drink in the other.

Barnes was born in Surrey to Scottish parents, and later attended Millfield School in Somerset, which counts many sports stars among its former students, including Welsh rugby legend JPR Williams and cricketer Simon Jones.

From the age of nine he was taught to play golf by his father Tom, who was secretary at Burnham and Berrow Golf Club.

At 19 Barnes won the British Youth Open Amateur Championship in Harrogate, Yorkshire in 1964, and turned professional soon afterwards.

He honed his game as a “Butten boy” at the Sundridge Park golf club in Kent, one of a group of young golfers sponsored by the entrepreneur Ernest Butten.

Under the tutelage of 1951 Open champion Max Faulkner, Barnes learned the importance of accuracy off the tee and also met the woman he would later marry in 1968 – Faulkner’s daughter Hilary. As a professional Barnes represented England until 1971, when he joined the Scottish PGA.

It was during the 1970s that he played his best golf, with many tournament successes, most famously beating the 14-time major champion Jack Nicklaus twice in one day in a 1975 Ryder Cup match.

He achieved nine wins on the European Tour between 1972 and 1981 and was ranked in the top ten of the European Order of Merit each year between 1972 and 1980, as well as winning the Seniors British Open twice and the Canadian Seniors Open in his later years.

Barnes was known for his long, accurate hits but also his drinking habits.

He would regularly carry a supply of vodka and orange around courses, and later claimed he had been drunk when he beat the great Nicklaus.

In one well-documented Scottish PGA tournament in 1981, he celebrated with a beer at the last hole and used the can to mark his ball before putting his winning shot.

Plagued by rheumatoid arthritis since the late 1990s, Barnes found it increasingly difficult to play without injections to his knuckles, but made a low-key comeback by appearing in the British Par 3 Championship in 2012.

Barnes is survived by his two children, Didi and Guy. His wife Hilary died in 2014.