WEST Dorset golfer Lindley Baker has swung his way into the record books as England’s longest-playing golf club member.

The 97-year-old has scored an 80-year membership of the Dorset club where he still plays at least once a week.

It is estimated that during his tenure Mr Baker has hit a ball more than 330,000 times – and twice scored a hole in one.

When he joined the Lyme Regis club in 1937 the subscription fee was three guineas (£3.15), the equivalent of £197 today.

Mr Baker, who had left school and was working in the family hairdressing business in Lyme, was welcomed, along with his younger brother Ron, as teenage players as the club wanted to boost its membership of young players.

Mr Baker said: "At that time you could only become an adult member if you were 21 and you could only become a junior member if someone in your family was a full member. But the club secretary of the time, Stephen Pocock, said he could stretch a point."

Mr Baker added: "The course was quite different in those days, there were very few trees and it was virtually wide open."

In 1940 Mr Baker joined the RAF, serving as an electrical engineer. In 1942 he was posted to India but still found a little time for golf.

After the war Lindley he returned to Lyme and took up the game again.

He said: "I was doing quite well and I got my handicap down to eight in the 1950s – and then I got married and we had two children quite quickly and so my golf got restricted a bit."

He now plays mainly with his wife Daphne, whom he married in 1959.

He said: "Five years ago I stopped playing in competitions because I was getting slow.

"But I am also the unofficial nonagenarian club champion. Seven years ago member Harry Scotting and I both reached 90 in the same year, and we were egged on by others to play a match of nine holes. Which we did and I managed to win on the eighth."

Mr Baker, who was made captain of the Lyme Regis Golf Club in 1985, says he wants to go on playing until at lest 2019 when he and his wife celebrate their diamond wedding.

John Owen, president of the Lyme Regis Golf Club, said: "As well as being the oldest member of the club, Lin Baker is also the nicest member, a true gentleman. It has been our privilege for us to have known him for 80 years."