The Greatest 71 hole Champion

Ask any golfer and they will tell you at least one time in their life when they go tired or they had a few skins riding on a big putt and the putt just got away, it went right, the body was tired, the mind was tired, the focus wasn't there and if you could do it all over you would have been more focused and forceful but that is what nerves and fatigue will do to a golfer.

Now consider Tom Watson's situation on 18 at Turnberry on the 72nd hole of the Open Championship. He leads the tournament by 1 a tournament that he hasn't won since 1983 but a tournament he has won 5times. Most of the guys he is playing are 20 years his junior and just entering their prime and blasting the ball off the tee a good 20 yards past the old man. Still "old man Watson" still manages to lead the tournament by one stroke after 71 holes. The old man has managed to come back from deficits three times during the tournament, surving one 6 hole stretch on Friday with five bogey yet still manages to come back and lead the tournament. On the final day when the nerves are the tightest Watson falls behind four different players at various times during the tournament but still comes back on the 71st hole to reclaim the lead.

Unfortunately this is golf the unforgiving game that has no gimmes when you are playing for the Clarret Jug and money. Watson drilled a perfect drive down the right side of the fairway within a 170 yards from the pin. Now the emotions were starting to come to the forefornt. Tom Watson who won the Open Championship the first time he played it in 1975 some 34 years ago and than would go onto win the title more than half of the first nine times he entered the tournament. The tournament was his to win but this tournament was different. No that Watson was 59 but now in an age of high security, terror threats and million dollar tournaments Watson walked up the green almost alone. He had his caddy and he had numerous security officials but where were the hundreds of Scotsman that had followed him up the 18th back in 1975? One of the great traditions in golf derailed by fear. The fear of the unknown. The fear that a hooligan would do something stupid. Maybe the lack fo the traditional crowd the accompanied Watson to his other British Open Championships intensified the nerves. Because what had been a fairy tale for 276 shots would now turn into a nightmare that hopefully will not overshadow one of the all-time great efforts in sports.

The 277th shot of the tournament for the old man from Kansas City hit just a little bit too hard and rolled but a few inches too far then drifted off the back side of the 18th green at Turnberry only to settle just beyond the second cut of grass in the rough.

What to do? After 38 years of professional golf including 112 rounds of British Open Championship golf and five Clarett Jugs to his name who better to make the shot than Tom Watson even if he is less than two months shy of his 60th birthday. The 277th shot of the tournament was probably the toughest decion Watson would have to make. Do you pull the 7 iron and bounce one up the hill from 20 feet away. Do you putt the ball not an easy task from twenty feet away out of the rough up the hill on the second cut of grass than down the green to the hole. Or do you pull out the loft wedge and try to drop one in like he did back in 1982 at Pebble Beach during that year's US Open Championship to beat the greatest of them all, Jack Nicklaus.

Watson decided to putt the ball and he took a good whack at the ball making sure to get it up the hill than shriveled the nerves of tens of thousands of Open Championship fans who were pulling for the old man to knock it tight for an easy 6th title. Not likely the ball rolled and rolled a good nine feet past the pin leaving Watson more than he bargained for. This was unchartered waters for Watson for the first time in the tournament the man who had played thousands of rounds of professional golf including 8 major titles had left himself with a nine foot putt for the championship after being 170 yards out and needing only to get down in three strokes to claim what could be the final chapter of a Hall of Fame career on the 18th hole at Turnberry. The putt was short and to the right, a push familiar to most of us amateurs when we have a mere couple of skins riding on a putt.

No sense rehashing the playoff. There is no debate whether Tom Watson didn't have the nerve to finish because he has finished too many times to doubt he is a bonafide Hall of Fame golfer. No, as good as the game has been for Tom Watson who won his first British Open this his last Open Championship prior to his 60th birthday will have been a cruel one for four and a half holes and for a man pushing 60 playing the Tiger Woods generation 71 holes was enough to put a smile on my face. Thank you Tom Watson.