The first winner of what became the US Open golf championship is to be honoured by the club for whom he was the first professional with a statue.

Although born on the Isle of Wight, Horace Rawlins joined Mid-Herts Golf Club when it opened in 1892 as a professional player.

And just three years later, after emigrating to the USA, he scooped first prize in a tournament which has since been won by the likes of Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and most recently Dustin Johnson.

The statue to mark his achievements, sculptured in bonded bronze and the work of Ben Twiston-Davies, is to be positioned in front of the clubhouse, close to the putting green.

It will be unveiled at a ceremony, one of many events, to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the opening of the course in 1892.

When mounted on its base, the statue will stand seven feet in height.

Albert Scurfield, the current captain of Mid-Herts, said that the sculpture of Rawlins will provide the club “with a lasting monument to one of the early great golfers who shaped the destiny of both golf in general and our course here at Mid Herts”.

Rawlins, who died aged 60 in 1935, and won the princely sum of 150 US dollars with a total score of 173 over four rounds of the nine-hole course, beating the favourite, Scottish-born Willie Dunn, by two strokes.

Records show that Rawlins was a ‘good heady player with a happy faculty of not getting discouraged when in difficulties’, which many of today’s golfers – both amateur and professional - often find problematic.