A legend blooms: Watson’s week at Turnberry
I spent all weekend trying to get my mind around what Tom Watson was doing at Turnberry, how he had suddenly found a wrinkle in time and was threatening to win the British Open at age 59.
What could be compared? The Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock brought up Miracle on Ice, which for sheer improbability is in the same ballpark. Others talked of George Foreman, who won the heavyweight boxing title in 1994 at age 45, 20 years after he lost the title belt to Muhammad Ali. George Blanda, the late-game hero of several 1970 Oakland Raider victories at the age of 43, was another turn-back-the-clock hero.
But somehow, those comparisons fell short.
Hockey is a team sport, and while the U.S. 1980 Olympic upset of the Soviets was majestic and ranks as the greatest sports upset of all time, it had no genetic component. The Americans were outskilled and outexperienced, but sometimes grit and determination can make up those deficiencies.
Though we all love Foreman, it’s boxing. Titles can and are gerry-rigged all the time. Fighting who you want and when you want is not the same as standing by the lighthouse at Turnberry, knowing you have to hit into the North Atlantic wind.
And Blanda, while ancient in football age, was in 1970 only five years removed from leading the AFL in passing attempts, and his Oakland heroics were late-game, substitution-based successes. It’s not like he took the Raiders to the Super Bowl.
No, this was something else. This week at Turnberry was fantasy. This was a 59-year-old golfer about to win one of the sport’s biggest prizes, against the sport’s greatest golfers. Tiger Woods didn’t make the cut. Two-time defending champ Padraig Harrington never contended. The game’s greatest players came and went, and always there was Watson, sinking a long putt or avoiding trouble and making you think to the very end he might write a sports fairy tale to surpass all that had gone before.
This came closer than ever before to fulfilling the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.
ESPN proclaimed that Watson’s odds at winning were 1,000-to-1. I couldn’t find that kind of information. I did find a long list of pre-tournament odds, with the highest at 100-to-1 and everyone else listed as “field.” But maybe over in Scotland there numbers that had Watson at 1,000-to-1.
Sounds reasonable for a guy who hadn’t won a major in 26 years, in a sport in which no one over 53 really had ever contended for a major, much less won it. Sounds reasonable for a sport in which Jack Nicklaus’ epic Masters win in 1986 was hailed as monumental, since Nicklaus was 46 and had gone six years since winning a major.
Think about that. Watson is 13 years older than Nicklaus was at Augusta in ’86 and had gone more than four times as long since his last major.
Watson was from a different time. As if he had traveled by time capsule. This was not a great player whose skills slowly had eroded suddenly finding himself again. This was Joe Montana returning to quarterback the ’09 49ers. This was Mike Schmidt suddenly appearing at third base for the ’09 Phillies. This was Kareem back in the post for the Kobe Lakers. And playing like it was 1981 all over again.
The U.S. Senior Open golf championship never has had a winner as old as 59. You want odds? Baylor is a 150-to-1 pick to win the BCS title game. Nevada-Las Vegas is 500-to-1. Tom Watson was 1,000-to-1, same as Jesse Ventura’s chances at winning the White House in 2008.
This was fantasy. This was not surreal. This was unreal. This was a ghost, a man who long ago quit contending on the PGA Tour, a man relegated to the Senior Tour, where he still occasionally wins (twice in 2008) against the old geezers, a golfer who once owned the British Open but hadn’t finished in its top 10 since 1997, suddenly returning to the scene of his greatest triumph, Turnberry, the second of his British crowns, and reviving memories in old fans and shouts in the young.
This was the likes of which we never have seen except on the silver screen. This was “The Natural,” where Roy Hobbs comes back after 16 lost years to be baseball’s best player. This was “Field of Dreams,” where youth is magically restored.
This was “Rocky Balboa.” This was an old, aged, melancholy champion suddenly finding the zest of youth. Like Sylvester Stallone’s venerable film series, Watson had five thrilling spikes in his British career. Stallone made five Rocky movies, some a lot better than others, each with a different plot. Watson won five Claret Jugs, each at a different course, some more memorable than others.
And in the end, suddenly they were back. Another Rocky film, “Rocky Balboa,” a sweet ode to a legendary, albeit fictional character, and in the end the old fighter loses, but it doesn’t really matter. And another Tom Watson week on the links of ancient Scotland, a sweet ode to a legendary, absolutely real character, and in the end the old golfer loses, but it doesn’t really matter.
Tom Watson gave sports fans another thrill at Turnberry. He achieved the impossible. He trumped his 1977 Duel in the Sun, when he shot 65-65 in the final two rounds to beat the great Nicklaus, who shot 65-66 at Turnberry. The greatest golf, some say, ever played. But this was a greater story.
Had Old Tom Watson won, this would have been the greatest sporting achievement of all time. I would have called it the greatest sporting event of all time.
In the end, midnight arrived on Tom Watson, as it arrives on us all, and the Hollywood script writers were banished from the scene, because sport and Stewart Cink do not answer to them.
But Watson left his beloved Turnberry, with its majestic lighthouse and somber war monuments and picturesque Ailsa Craig, with something more precious than a sixth Claret Jug. Watson left Turnberry having given himself the priceless gift he gave us all.
Memories.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Comments
Tom Watson is truly one of the all-time greats. People like to compare Tiger Woods to Jack Nicklaus, and if Tiger breaks Jack’s record Tiger will be proclaimed the “greatest of all time.” To me, the thing that puts Nicklaus ahead is the truly great competition he played against (and usually beat). Tiger’s modern day competition? 25 years from now, can you possibly envision ANY of Tiger’s current competition even coming close to duplicating what Tom Watson just accomplished?
I do not play golf and most likey never will, but this was truly inspiring. It took may mind away from all this crap that goes on in Washington and beyound.
Thank you Barry for this article and Thank you Tom Watson for this moment in time. I wish you had one the damn thing, but your effort and achievement was one of a kind.
“Had Old Tom Watson won, this would have been the greatest sporting achievement of all time. I would have called it the greatest sporting event of all time.”
Even greater than Joe Dimaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, or even Tiger’s meteoric rise to golf super-stardom?
Wonder if this “almost did it” will be talked about 40 years from now.