A look back at Tom Watson's five Open wins, and his near-miss in 2009 | Golf News | Sky Sports A look back at Tom Watson's five Open wins, and his near-miss in 2009 Last Updated: 20/07/15 6:18pm Tom Watson: The veteran bid farewell to his Open career on Friday Tom Watson graced the Open Championship for 40 years before bidding an emotional farewell at St Andrews. We take a look back at his five victories, and the one that got away ... There had been doubts about the ability of the man from Kansas to win at the highest level, but they proved unfounded. Watson would go on and dominate The Open with five victories in nine years and claimed eight major titles in all. In near darkness at St Andrews on Friday, Watson bid farewell to his fabled Open career. Five-time Open Champion Tom Watson said goodbye to St Andrews, as he walked over Swilcan Bridge one final time ... Here, we look back at Watson's five wins ... and his near-miss in 2009.

1975 Watson landed his first Open title at Carnoustie Golf Links in 1975 Tom Watson sealed his maiden Claret Jug to become only the third player since the war to win the Open on his debut, emulating the achievements of Ben Hogan and Tony Lema. David Huish, the club professional from North Berwick, held at the halfway mark with rounds of 69 and 67, but then crumbled under the pressure as he carded scores of 76 and 80 to tie for 32nd place. With conditions calm and sunny at Carnoustie, Jack Newton broke the day-old course record with a 65 in the third round to lie one behind South Africa’s Bobby Cole, with Watson two shots further back. Watson went out in 35 in the wind on the final day, but then had three three-putts in a row. Johnny Miller led playing the last but took a bogey while Watson stayed calm to hole from 15 feet for a birdie.

Cole needed a birdie at the last to tie but could only join Miller and Jack Nicklaus in a share of third place, while Newton parred to tie Watson on 11 under par after missing from 20 feet for the victory. And so it went to a play-off in the rain on Sunday and it proved to be a tight affair, but the 25-year-old Watson held his nerve to win 71-72. They were tied playing the last but the Australian bunkered his approach and missed from 18 feet to match Watson’s par. It was the last 18-hole play-off in The Open, with a four-hole format later adopted, while Carnoustie would have to wait until 1999 to host The Open again. 1977 Watson celebrates his giant putt at the 18th green to win in 1977 This was one of the greatest Championships ever staged and became knows as the 'Duel in the Sun' after a two-horse race between Watson, winner of the Masters earlier that year, and Jack Nicklaus.

They were tied on 138 after two rounds and both had 65s on the third day in heatwave conditions at Turnberry, the most scenic of courses on the Ayrshire coast. Nicklaus quickly established a three-stroke lead in the final round but Watson rallied and holed from 60 feet at the 15th to get level. "This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?" Watson said on the next tee. "You bet it is," Nicklaus replied. He stayed calm under pressure to win one of the greatest Championships ever staged A birdie at the par-5 17th put Watson in front for the first time and at the last he hit a 7-iron to two feet. Nicklaus had driven into the rough by a gorse bush but smashed an 8-iron to the edge of the green and dramatically holed from 35 feet. Now Watson’s putt looked a bit longer but he tapped in for victory. His closing 65 was the lowest score ever to win an Open and gave him a new record total of 268 and also set a new best of 130 for the last 36 holes.

Both players left the 18th green arm-in-arm, each a two-time Open Champion. Rarely had two players produced such a high quality of golf amid so much drama. "I just couldn’t shake him off," Nicklaus said. Hubert Green, 10 behind Nicklaus, was the only other player to break par. "I won the tournament I played. They were playing in something else," he said. Watson's closing 65 was the lowest score ever to win an Open 1980 Watson led from the front at Muirfield in 1980 The Open was scheduled to finish on a Sunday for the first time in history, but it was Watson's performance on Saturday that brought the American his third Claret Jug, also proving that he was comfortable leading from the front. Both Watson and Lee Trevino had 68s to lead the first round and then Trevino had a 67 to go three ahead of Watson, Ken Brown and Jerry Pate.

In the third round Isao Aoki, the Japanese player who was runner-up to Jack Nicklaus at the US Open at Baltusrol a few weeks earlier, scored a 63, the second recorded in The Open but the first ever at Muirfield. Watson then almost matched him. He went out in 34 and came home in 30 for a 64 to lead by four strokes. The American showed his command of links golf Then, in the final round it was Watson’s burst of five birdies in six holes from the seventh that sealed his victory. No one bettered his 69 for the day and, on a total of 271, he won by four from Trevino and by six from Ben Crenshaw with Nicklaus tying for fourth place. Once again Watson had shown his command of links golf by beating the two previous Muirfield Champions. 1982 Watson entered the story late on in 1982 Watson won a fourth Open title on a fourth different Scottish links and in the process joined Bobby Jones (twice), Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino in winning both the US Open and The Open in the same summer.

Yet Watson only entered the story late on at Royal Troon. Bobby Clampett had a 67 and then a 66 to lead by five strokes at the halfway stage. Two early birdies in the third round put Clampett seven clear of the field but then the fairy tale turned into a nightmare for the 22-year-old American playing in his first Open. At the par-5 sixth, the longest Championship hole in Britain at 577 yards, Clampett found three bunkers and took a triple-bogey 8. A 78 still left him one ahead but a 77 on the final day dropped him into a tie for 10th. He felt he was handed his Open title on a plate at Royal Troon Watson stayed in contention with rounds of 69, 71 and 74. He had been seven off the lead after 36 holes and three adrift with a round to play. Out in 35, he hit a 3-iron to three feet for an eagle at the 11th and in the deteriorating conditions dropped only one shot coming home for a 70 and four under par.

With birdies at the 10th, 11th and 12th holes, Zimbabwean Nick Price led by three but he bogeyed the 13th, had a double bogey at the 15th after hitting his second shot into a bunker and dropped another shot at the par-3 17th. He eventually had to settle for second place which he shared with Peter Oosterhuis. Watson said: "I didn’t win this Championship, I had it handed to me." 1983 The American won his fifth and final Open crown in 1983 at Royal Birkdale A year later Watson won his fifth Open title, putting him alongside James Braid, JH Taylor and Peter Thomson and one behind Harry Vardon’s record six Claret Jugs. It was his first victory in England and came in fine conditions at Royal Birkdale. Hale Irwin and Andy Bean’s eight-under score became the target for Watson to beat. He had taken the lead after 54 holes but dropped two shots going out and Nick Faldo had briefly taken the lead before dropping back on the second nine to finish eighth.

Watson birdied the 11th, the 13th and the 16th holes and needed to par the last for a famous victory. After he drove onto the fairway, he had 218 yards to the flag and produced the sweetest of swings with a 2-iron just when he needed it. He had wasted no time, just two waggles of the club head, but maintained superb rhythm. "I busted that 2-iron as well as I could hit it," he said. He two-putted from 20 feet and an historic fifth and final Open was his. 2009 Stewart Cink (L) looks at the Claret Jug with Watson after his playoff victory At the age of 59 and 32 years after his last Open triumph and nine months on from hip-replacement surgery, Watson birdied the 71st hole to lead by one and it appeared he really could win a sixth Open title. On a course where he had played in three Opens, winning in 1977, and two Senior Opens, winning one of them, Watson opened with a 65 to be one off the lead. "There was something spiritual about today.

I feel inspired playing here again," he said. He led for the next two days but fell at the very last hurdle. "It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?" Watson said. "It wasn’t to be. The dream almost came true." His second shot at the last ran just over the green and then he putted eight feet past the hole. The putt for victory betrayed his age, it never looked like going in and the deflation around the course was acute. A dejected Watson walks across the 18th green Instead, step forward Stewart Cink. In the slightly surreal atmosphere of the four-hole play-off, the 36-year-old gentle giant from Georgia held his composure to win his first major championship. He was two under par for the play-off while a tired Watson finished four over par. A joyful Cink felt for the runner-up. "To play against Tom Watson in the play-off, it was mixed emotions," he said.

"I have watched him with such admiration this week." As he leaves The Open once and for all, Watson said he'll look back in joy and will try not to get to emotional with his farewell Tom Watson Says Farewell to the British Open, Where His Memories (Good and Bad) Remain Vivid | Golf.com Tom Watson Says Farewell to the British Open, Where His Memories (Good and Bad) Remain Vivid Tom Watson to Wrap Storied British Open Career Tom Watson prepares to play his final Open Championship at St. Andrews in 2015. by Alan Shipnuck Posted: Wed Jul. 15, 2015 Install App Tom Watson took a stroll on the Old Course the other day. A bitter gale was blowing in off of St. Andrews Bay, and as he squinted into the wind, the cragginess of his face was accentuated; he looked as weather-beaten as any of the stone walls in the auld grey town. Watson had arrived in Scotland 48 hours earlier to do promotional work for Adams Golf, his longtime sponsor, and he had barely slept since.

In the Old Course Hotel that morning he looked a bit logy, but as soon as old Tom neared the links, his gait quickened. Next to the 16th fairway is a fence with horizontal wires spaced about a foot apart. Watson, 65, bent over and shimmied through the gap like a boxer entering the ring. "I'm a farm boy. I know my way around a fence," woofed Watson, who was born and raised in Kansas City, Mo., and now makes his home on a ranch outside of town. Striding across the 16th fairway, he stopped to tap his toe on the ancient earth. "This turf!" he said, voice rising. "There's nothing like this turf anywhere in the world. Isn't it something?" It might sound funny for a man to grow misty over a glorified lawn, but for Watson, walking the ground where golf was born is understandably spiritual. When he reached the tee at 17, the Road Hole, Watson fixed a hard gaze on the famous OLD COURSE HOTEL sign. Just like that, he was back in 1984.

"You want to drive it over the R," he said, "but I left mine out to the right. I wasn't sure it was even inbounds." He was 34 then and at the tail end of one of the most dominant stretches in golf history. In the preceding 8½ years he had won 35 tournaments, including a U.S. Open, two Masters and the five British Opens that define his legacy. Along the way he dusted Jack Nicklaus so often that the Bear once told Watson, "I'm tired of giving it my best shot and not having it be good enough." By the '84 British, Watson felt an indefinable funk eroding his game. In the final round he was in a dogfight with Seve Ballesteros, then 27. The swashbuckling Spaniard—convention demands the adjective—was as fearless as Watson once had been. They were tied as the action moved to the 71st hole. "It's over here somewhere," Watson said, scouring the Road Hole fairway. The terrain of the Old Course is as alive as the ocean, pitching this way and that, heaving up and crashing down.

Watson was doggedly looking for a ripple of turf where his drive had settled 31 years earlier. A sprinkler marked 184 offered a clue. Nearby he found a round, ankle-high bump. "Yes, this is the one," Watson said. The specificity of a golfer's memory always amazes, but it is idiosyncratic—Nicklaus recalls his victories in forensic detail but almost nothing about the losses, while Watson retains the tiniest particulars of his most bitter defeats. "If it had been a flat lie," he continued, "I would have played a more conservative shot to the very front of the green. That's where Jack always aimed. But with this little upslope I knew I could get my 2-iron up in the air, and I could use the wind too. It was into me, which would help the ball land softer. So I took an aggressive line." 19 0 0 0 More In these pages Dan Jenkins described the shot as "a semishank, half-flier, out-of-control fade-slice that wanted to go to Edinburgh." Watson's ball flew the green and settled near the stone wall at the edge of the property.

He did well to chip to 30 feet. As he studied the par putt, the Old Course shook; ahead at 18, Ballesteros had rolled in a 15-footer for birdie and celebrated with a series of fist pumps, an image that would become iconic. Watson had once been the most feared putter in golf, but he was past the point of being able to will the ball into the hole. He missed, and that one confidence-eviscerating bogey dropped the curtain on the Watson era: He would win only twice in the next 12 years. The vacuum was filled by Ballesteros, who begat a European invasion led by Nick Faldo, who had usurped Greg Norman, who had been the favorite player of a kid growing up in Cypress, Calif. Tiger Woods reached the PGA Tour in 1996, the same year Watson, with a rebuilt swing, won Nicklaus's Memorial Tournament. His career reaches its denouement this week when he plays in his 38th and final British Open, at the Old Course. "It's starting to hit me," Watson says. "I'm a little melancholy.

It's like the death of a loved one: There's sadness, of course, but you're left with so many wonderful memories. It's those memories that sustain you." CARNOUSTIE It’s hard to believe now, but Watson was once considered too soft to close out tournaments. There was a jauntiness about him during his early years on the PGA Tour, accentuated by the freckles and the red hair. Herbert Warren Wind captured Watson perfectly in 1981 when he wrote, "It is easy to picture him sucking on a stem of grass as he heads for the fishing hole with a pole over his shoulder." By 1975, Watson's fifth season, he had only one victory and was probably best known for losing the '74 U.S. Open, when he had the 54-hole lead but bled out with a 79 on Sunday in the so-called Massacre at Winged Foot. Two months before the British Open he played in the Byron Nelson Classic, during which he forged a lasting friendship with the host, another farm boy who had gone on to big things.

Nelson imparted simple swing thoughts and homespun advice on golf's inner battle; duly inspired, Watson went out and won the tournament. He carried the momentum into his first British Open, at Carnoustie, the most demanding of the courses in the rota. On his first day in Scotland, Watson drove to Carnoustie with Hubert Green and John Mahaffey for a practice round, but they were turned away, told that the course was closed for maintenance. (Can you imagine?) They wound up on the humble locals' links in the town where they were staying, Montifieth. On the opening hole there—Watson's first swing in Scotland—he ripped a drive down the center of the fairway but couldn't find his ball. He searched and searched before dropping another and playing on. As he walked toward the green, Watson was dismayed to discover his drive had been sucked into a tiny, unseen pot bunker on the edge of the fairway, some 60 yards from where he had been looking. "I remember thinking very clearly, If this is links golf, I don't like it," he says. 0 0 0 More Watson had grown up at the Kansas City Country Club, a stuffy, conservative enclave.

He learned the game from his father, Ray, a stern, exacting figure and a strong player. Little wonder that Watson "had a specific, even Catholic idea of how golf should be played," Joe Posnanski wrote in his recent biography, The Secret of Golf. "Good shots were to be rewarded. Bad shots were to be punished." The vagaries of the linksland challenged Watson's worldview, but he couldn't help but be stimulated by it all. "I didn't care for Carnoustie, but I set about learning how to play it," Watson says. The weather was calm during the first three rounds, and after scores of 71-67-69, Watson was in fourth, three shots off the lead. He was the beneficiary of two fortuitous events before he teed off on Sunday. At his rental home there was a knock at the door, and a young girl presented him with a sprig of white heather wrapped in foil, saying it was for good luck.

There is a mythic quality to the story, which makes sense since it's informed by a Celtic folk tale: The warrior Oscar is wounded in battle, and in his final, dying moment he picks a sprig of purple heather and asks it to be taken to his love, Malvina; her tears turn the heather white, and she offers the prayer, "May the white heather, symbol of my sorrow, bring good fortune to all who find it." Watson isn't a sentimental guy, but beginning that day he carried the heather in his golf bag for more than a year. Then, just before he teed off on Sunday, he crossed paths with his mentor Nelson. In the past when he was around the lead, Watson had played aggressively to the point of recklessness. Nelson advised him that because of the howling wind, any score around par would give him a chance at winning. Watson replayed those words in his mind throughout the round and competed with the patience and resolve that would become his hallmarks.

He was even par for the day playing the 72nd hole, where a big drive and clutch 9-iron set up a birdie that ultimately got him into an 18-hole playoff against Jack Newton. The next day the two were all square playing the par-5 14th hole when Newton pitched it stone dead for a birdie. All Watson did was hole his ensuing chip for an eagle and then play flawlessly coming home. After the victory, Jenkins wrote, "Another authentic American hero was born," but Watson felt differently. "I still hadn't really learned to win," he says. "But that was an important part of the building process of steeling myself and being able to win under the most intense pressure." TURNBERRY Watson likes to talk a lot about the process. He is analytical by nature. During a walk through the cemetery in St. Andrews, he engaged a slightly dazed stonemason in a long discussion about his craft. If a professional photographer is using Nikon instead of Canon, Watson wants to know why. Debating politics is blood sport for him.

At the highest level, golf is largely metaphysical; trying to grasp the unknowable is what has kept Watson inspired and engaged for all of these decades. With his breakthrough at Carnoustie the search had just begun, for he still had a flaw in his swing that could lead to a violent hook. Late in the next year, at an otherwise meaningless pro-am in Japan, Watson had a hanging lie on a steep slope, so he concentrated on keeping the clubface square to the ball a bit longer on the backswing. The purity of the strike was a revelation that led him to transform his action. At the outset of the '77 season, he won back-to-back at Pebble Beach and San Diego, setting tournament scoring records at both stops. But the process remains never-ending. In the run-up to the Masters, he hooked a ball into the water on the 72nd hole to lose the Players, and a week later at Hilton Head he coughed up a four-stroke lead on Sunday. Whether Watson's new swing—and his psyche—could hold up was the big question as he took a share of the lead into the final round at Augusta, with Nicklaus lurking.

Big Jack threw seven birdies at Watson and moved into a tie for the lead, but the young challenger never flinched. On 17, Watson holed a nasty 18-footer for a birdie to go back ahead. Nicklaus was in the 18th fairway when the roar washed over him like a tidal wave, forcing him to back off his shot. As he told Posnanski, "That's the only tournament in my life when I got flustered and couldn't regroup." He dumped his approach in the greenside bunker and made bogey. Watson had felled the champ. 0 0 0 More This was the backdrop for the Duel in the Sun three months later at Turnberry, the best and most mythologized golf ever played. Watson and Nicklaus both opened with scores of 68-70-65, leaving the field behind. In the final round Nicklaus made two quick birdies to lead by three strokes after four holes. His advantage was still two with six holes to play. Watson, drawing on his Midwestern stoicism, was undeterred.

"Nothing ever fazed him," says Scott Simpson, who outdueled Watson to win the 1987 U.S. Open. "He was a fighter. He hits the shot, he marches on, and then hits the next one. He had a great attitude, especially for the major championships." Indeed, Watson holed a tricky 13-footer at the 13th hole to pull within one, and at 15 he buried a 60-footer to pull even. The pressure was suffocating, so imagine Nicklaus's surprise when he saw Watson standing on the 16th tee with an impish grin. "This is what it's all about, isn't it?" Watson said. "You bet it is," came the reply. They were still tied playing the par-5 17th when Watson hit what he calls "one of the best 3-irons of my life," leaving 20 feet for eagle. Straining to match him, Nicklaus missed the green with a 4-iron and couldn't get up and down.

Watson's tap-in birdie gave him the lead, and after a perfect drive on the 72nd hole he had 180 yards left, the distance he usually hit his 5-iron. His caddie, a barroom brawler named Alfie Fyles, handed his man a 7-iron, saying only, "The way your adrenaline's pumpin', Mister." Watson followed with an utterly ruthless shot, to 2½ feet. Nicklaus, as the script demanded, rolled in a 50-footer for birdie, making Watson's gimme a little less so. He rapped in the putt and once again had taken down Big Jack, 65 to 66. Watson had worked as hard at the game as anyone since Ben Hogan, propelled by a fear of failure born from a father who was impossible to please. It was at Turnberry that Watson at long last felt like a champion. All these years later he says, "That was the most significant victory of my career because that was when I finally believed I could play with the big boys.

I played against the best, with the best, and I beat the best." MUIRFIELD Watson’s third claret jug came in 1980, on perhaps the most venerated course in the rota, when he had rounds of 68-70-64-69 for a then Open-record total of 271. It was the best performance of what he calls his best season, but for him the unquestioned highlight came when hardly anybody was watching, on Tuesday afternoon. "I had just finished my practice round," Watson says. "A bunch of us [players] were staying at Greywalls"—a lovely hotel that sits just behind Muirfield's 10th tee—"and in the library there we'd often gather for a beer. In walks Arnold Palmer and Jerry Pate and Andy Bean and I forget who else. They had just finished their practice round, and Jerry was pretty chatty. He had beaten Arnold out of $300. He was all over Arnold.

All Arnold says is, 'Give me a beer.' Jerry is still ragging on Arnold, and you could see the steam coming out of his ears, and finally Arnold says, 'C'mon, Tommy, let's go play these so-and-so's.' So we went and played an emergency nine. "We started on number 10, and Arnie and I drove it in the rough. I had to lay up short of the cross bunkers, and he, well, he wound up in his pocket. I'll never forget it: Jerry hit a beautiful drive right down the middle and this beautiful second shot with a 5-iron right at the hole, and he yells, 'Get in!' He's posing and preening, and it almost did go in. I hit my chip about 25 feet past the hole and then stepped up and made the putt, and whaddya know, Jerry misses his little one. "By the time we get to the 16th tee his partner, Andy Bean, says, 'I'm not pressing these guys anymore.' We got Arnie's money back and then some because I made every putt. And I kept making them all the way through till Sunday.

But to play 27 holes on Tuesday of the Open Championship week? That's a love for the game." ROYAL TROON It’s a curious sidenote that Watson won his first three Opens without feeling any romance for the linksland; the tempestuous winds and unpredictable way the ball rode the turf still offended his sense of justice. In 1981 he began to see the light. Ahead of that year's Open he barnstormed across Scotland and Ireland with Sandy Tatum, who at 95 remains one of the game's grand old men. Tatum was the 1942 NCAA champion at Stanford (Watson's alma mater) and later the president of the USGA, and he has the soul of a poet. "Basically, Sandy helped me understand that accepting a bad bounce, and recovering from it, is one of the game's great challenges," Watson says. "And I've always loved a challenge." Watson arrived at the '82 Open still flying high from his U.S. Open victory a month earlier, at Pebble Beach, where he famously chipped in on the 71st hole.

Vanquished again, Nicklaus told him afterward, "You little sonofabitch, you're something else." 0 0 0 More At Troon, Watson never had his best stuff, but he delighted in grinding out solid rounds on the first three days. "Anyone can shoot a good score when they're playing well," Watson says. "But to post a good score when you're struggling with your game—when you have to fight hard for every par—that's the ultimate satisfaction." He was five strokes off the lead when he made the turn on Sunday, but the leader, 25-year-old Nick Price, was already looking shaky. Troon's 11th is the celebrated Railway Hole, a 481-yard par-5 that was playing into a punishing wind. Now two shots back, Watson smote a 3-iron to three feet for an eagle that tied him for the lead. Watson methodically parred his way to the clubhouse while Price bogeyed three of the last six holes. "I never felt like I was going to win that one," Watson says. "Some tournaments you take, some are handed to you." Did you deserve to win it? "Deserve has nothing to do with it.

I shot the lowest score. End of story." ROYAL BIRKDALE If an entire tournament can be distilled into one swing, it happened at the '83 Open. Watson came to the 72nd hole leading by one over Bean and Hale Irwin, who had whiffed on a two-inch putt the day before. Birkdale's final hole is a macho 473-yard par-4 that plays between towering sand hills. Watson split the fairway and had 213 yards to the hole, with a strong wind quartering off the left. He pulled out his 2-iron. "I can still feel that shot in my body," he says. "I can see the ball in the air. I can see it coming down right at the flag, but then the crowd just engulfed the fairway, running under the gallery ropes, so I couldn't see how close it was. The cheer from the crowd told me it was pretty close, but I guess I knew that already. I look back at all my Open Championship victories, that 2-iron is the shot I probably remember the most. Tough club to hit, wind in my face, and everything on the line.

It's the shot I'm most proud of." The ball had settled 15 feet from the hole, and two putts later Watson had his fifth Open title. ST. ANDREWS Live by the 2-iron, die by the 2-iron. It was the following year at the Old Course that Watson made a mess of the Road Hole and lost to Ballesteros. The defeat was crushing for a couple of reasons. It was a golden opportunity to tie Harry Vardon's record of six Open victories. There was also a sense of unfinished business with the Old Course. In 1978, Watson had taken the lead into the final round, but he made four straight bogeys on the front nine and was run over by Nicklaus, who won an Open at St. Andrews for the second time. Nicklaus's obsession with winning on the Old Course was imbued in him by Bobby Jones, who took the Open there in 1927. Says Nicklaus of his boyhood hero, "He always said that a golfer's record—a great golfer's record—is never complete unless he wins at St. Andrews.

There are a couple of places in the game of golf you want to win. I think [the Old Course] is probably the most special place of all to win a golf tournament." Watson has been listening to this for nearly 40 years now, but he refuses to take the bait: "Sure, winning one in St. Andrews would've been nice. But I won more than my share." Watson has had his ups and downs since the '84 Open. He divorced and remarried. (He is the father of five and grandfather to three.) He developed a drinking problem and then kicked it. His beloved caddie, Bruce Edwards, died of Lou Gehrig's disease, inspiring Watson to aggressively fund-raise for a cure. He captained the U.S. Ryder Cup team to a thrilling victory in 1993 and a demoralizing defeat last year. (In a weird way the loss enhanced Watson's brand; he was his usual crusty self, and if today's marshmallow-soft prima donnas couldn't appreciate his wisdom, well, that was their problem, right?

Watson refused to partake in the sniping that followed the loss, an admirable old-school restraint.) Following the loss to Ballesteros, Watson's game declined rapidly, to the point that he says, "I hated golf." It's a startling admission because no one has ever seemed to love the game more. In 1994 he discovered on the driving range at Hilton Head what he calls "the secret": By taking the club back far to the inside and then dropping it to the outside on the downswing, he had a move that repeated without fail. A few months later he returned to Turnberry and says he had the best ball-striking week of his life. But Watson's putting was typically awful, and Price surpassed him on the back nine on Sunday, payback for 12 years earlier. That night Watson was moping in his hotel room when Nicklaus cajoled him into playing on the pitch-and-putt course in the shadow of the Turnberry Hotel. Along with their wives they stayed out there until dark, a treasured memory for them all. As crazy as it sounds, you can't count out Watson for this year's Open.

Because the Old Course plays so firm and fast, long hitters will be using irons off many tees, negating the old man's distance disadvantage. Watson's most important tune-up came at last month's U.S. Senior Open, where he damn near shot his age, posting an opening 66 en route to a tie for seventh. No track in the world rewards local knowledge quite like the Old Course, so Watson will enjoy a home field advantage similar to Turnberry, where he lost in a playoff in 2009 at age 59, one of the more remarkable feats in golf history. Watson had arrived on the 72nd hole needing only a par to win. After a perfect drive he had 164 yards to the front of the green, 189 to the hole. With the wind at his back he was torn between an 8- and a 9-iron. You could practically hear Alfy Files whispering from the grave—The way your adrenaline's pumpin', Mister—but Watson went with the stronger club. His ball landed exactly where he was aiming, on the front edge, but it caught a tiny downslope and took a hard bounce forward.

"Maybe the ghost of Harry Vardon was blowing on it," Watson cracks. The ball trickled across the putting surface and over the back. Now Watson faced another choice: chip or putt? The pin was cut tight to the back of the green, just beyond a waist-high swale. Using the wedge would give Watson a better chance to knock it close, but it also brought into play the horrifying possibility of leaving the chip short and having the ball roll back to his feet, costing him the tournament. The young, fearless Watson would surely have chipped it, but now he acceded to his nerves and went with the putter, knocking it eight feet past. The par putt never had a chance; the stroke was a nervous jab. He had nothing left for the ensuing four-hole playoff and went meekly against Stewart Cink. Afterward Watson was again holed up in his room in the Turnberry Hotel, inconsolable. He refused to take any calls until Nicklaus, who had been glued to his television at home in Palm Beach, Fla., got through to Watson's wife, Hilary.

Jack gave his old friend a no-nonsense pep talk: With the whole world watching, Watson had hit a perfect drive and basically a perfect approach shot, and even after a bad bounce had the clarity to choose the right club for his third shot. As for the putt, well, Nicklaus joked that Watson had merely struck it like the old fart he was. What meant the most to Watson was Nicklaus's affirmation that he had played the right shot from behind the green. "Jack Nicklaus always made the correct decision on the golf course," Watson says. "His saying I made the right play instantly took away a lot of the anguish." Nicklaus promises to tune in again for this Open to watch as his old friend and rival says goodbye. Back in 2005, when Jack played his final Open, at the Old Course, Watson was his playing partner. When it became clear Nicklaus would miss the cut, the final holes of the second round turned into an extended farewell. "I think Tom was more sentimental than I was," Nicklaus says with a laugh. "Tom was crying on the Swilican Bridge.

I looked at him and said, 'Hey, I'm the one who is finished here, not you.' "Tom is very traditional," Nicklaus continues. "He has a great respect and appreciation for the history of the game. Those things mean a lot to him. It will be very emotional for him to end his career at St. Andrews." It's no surprise that Watson frowns at such talk. "I'm not going there to have fun," he says. "I'm going there to compete." Same as it ever was. For more news that golfers everywhere are talking about, follow @golf_com on Twitter, like us on Facebook , and subscribe to our YouTube video channel . No Open for Donald Trump’s Turnberry until 2022 at the earliest, R&A confirms • Turnberry overlooked for 2020 and 2021 tournaments<br />• R&amp;A refuses to take public stance over controversial American<p>The R&amp;A has dealt a blow to Donald Trump by confirming the Open Championship will not be held at Turnberry before 2022.

The chief executive of that governing body, though, still refuses to provide a public stance on whether Trump’s offensive opinions should exclude his venues from golf.</p><p>Trump’s views on Mexican immigrants in the United States and Muslims have triggered a dilemma for a sport which is seeking to be as inclusive as possible. In April 2014 <a href="" title="">Trump confirmed his buy-out of Turnberry </a>and subsequently promised to spend £200m on an upgrade of the property, with the approval of the R&amp;A. “This is golf’s greatest canvas,” Trump said at the time.

“People cannot avoid it now.”</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="">Bubba Watson wins Northern Trust Open after Rory McIlroy falters badly</a> </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open As holy triumphs go, Stewart Cink got us into the spirit of things | Lawrence Donegan The Open champion Stewart Cink reminded us that religion and sport need not be awkward bedfellows<p>God is good, God is kind, but more than anything God is bloody busy, as he was last Sunday when, in addition to his (or her) normal duties tending to congregations from Seoul to Southampton, he travelled north to Turnberry to make his influence felt at the 2009 Open Championship.</p><p>Those who follow golf on a regular basis will know the Almighty keeps a close eye on the PGA Tour, where scarcely a weekend goes by without his name being invoked in the victory speech.

But as we all know, it is the majors that count, and frankly God has been in a major championship slump in recent years.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open The 2009 Open will forever be remembered for the loser rather than winner Stewart Cink's triumph over Tom Watson deprived golf of its greatest story<p>As the tide of disappointment washed over Turnberry in the aftermath of Tom Watson's capitulation to Stewart Cink in Sunday's play-off for the Open Championship, it was hard to imagine anyone finding comfort in such anti-climax.</p><p>After all, in the space of 45 minutes – the time between Watson missing an eight-foot putt to win on the 18th hole of regulation play and Cink tapping in a two-footer for birdie on the same green – golf went from the greatest story ever told to just another story in the long history of the Open, one that, like Carnoustie in 1999, will be remembered more for the man who lost than the man who won.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open R&A to review age-limit restriction for former Open champions • We'll certainly be looking at it, says Peter

 Dawson<br />• Upper-age limit was only cut from 65 to 60 in 2007<p>The Royal and Ancient will review the age limit for former champions to compete in the Open after Tom Watson almost won the Claret Jug, for a sixth time, at Turnberry.

Next year's Open at St Andrews will be the 59-year-old Watson's last in the championship as former winners are not permitted to play beyond the age of 60.</p><p>Had Watson emerged successfully from Sunday's play-off with Stewart Cink, he would have been handed a further nine-year Open exemption.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open R&A to review age limit for Open Championship after Tom Watson's second place • R&amp;A to look at the current limit of 60<br />• 'We didn't contemplate a 59-year-old leading with nine to go'<br /><p>The age limit for past Open champions, reduced from 65 to 60 only two years ago, is to be looked at again following the performance of Tom Watson at Turnberry.</p><p>"I don't think we contemplated a 59-year-old leading the Open Championship going into the back nine on the final day at the time," said the Royal and Ancient Club chief executive Peter Dawson.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Tom Watson Padraig Harrington promises more as soon as he is back in the swing • Irishman expects to be in form for US PGA<br />

• Remains upbeat despite disappointing Open<br /><p>That Padraig Harrington managed to play 72 holes here represented progress considering the poor season the Open champion of the past two years has had.</p><p>He may have begun his final round six hours earlier than he had when winning at Carnoustie and then Birkdale, but at least he was still involved on the Sunday and despite signing for a 12-over-par 292, the Irishman said he would win more majors.

His next opportunity comes with the defence of the US PGA Championship, at Hazeltine from 13 August.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open It's not over until Peter Alliss does his Pavarotti gag | Martin Kelner Never having donned a Pringle jumper in anger, a lot of the nuances from the Open are lost on me<p>It is not like working for the United Nations, this job, or representing a major charity. It is rare you feel you can make a difference. But I think I can claim some credit for bringing Peter Alliss up to date with events in the music world. At the Augusta Masters earlier this year, the roly-poly doyen of golf commentary claimed to be "slightly less avoirdupois" than Pavarotti, which I was forced to reveal was probably not true given that the late great tenor had died two years previously.

I like to think Alliss took his lead from this column, finally giving the LGT a decent burial, in commentary from the Open.</p><p>Discussing Tiger Woods's failure to make the cut, Alliss said it was "like going to a Pavarotti concert and finding he's got laryngitis," quickly adding, "when the poor fellow was alive." What, I wonder, is it with Alliss and Pavarotti? Alliss compared Tiger to the singer as early as 1999, when asked by The Independent if he expected Woods to fulfil expectations. "He's in the middle of a learning process," said the Voice of Golf, "Like a young baritone or Pavarotti."</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Open diary - day four | Mikey Stafford For such a diligent student of his own game, Padraig Harrington does not have the best memory<p>For such a diligent student of his own game, Padraig Harrington does not have the best memory. Having relinquished his grip on the Claret Jug, the 2007 and 2008 champion was asked about his prospects at St Andrews next year.

The Irishman claimed that he had never played an Open at the home of golf. Had a forgettable performance from nine years ago just slipped his mind? Not really – back in 2000, he finished in a creditable tie for 20th.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Should older players be allowed to play the Open? • Fifty-nine-year-old Watson agrees with age limit of 60<br />• R&amp;A wants golfers in their prime with a chance of competing<p>The return to prominence of Tom Watson during the Open Championship and, to a lesser extent given his relatively formative years, Greg Norman in the same event a year ago has put the issue of age limits for golfing majors back on the agenda.</p><p>Watson will make his last Open appearance next year at St Andrews unless, as is highly unlikely, the Royal and Ancient reverses its policy of allowing past champions to compete beyond the age of 60.

It may irk Watson even more, given his showing here at Turnberry, that the age limit has only recently been reduced by five years.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Tom Watson finishes one weak putt short of the greatest win in golf history The old demons returned as 59-year-old Watson's miracle run ended in an anticlimactic play-off defeat that broke senior and junior hearts everywhere<p>He was the plot and the subplot, the whole 7,204 yards of this Open Championship's final round. And then some.

But Tom Watson, 47 days short of his 60th birthday, also ended up just one weak putt short of the greatest victory the game ever has witnessed.</p><p>Instead of swimming in the applause of thousands gathered round Turnberry's final green as well as garnering the admiration of millions sitting entranced in front of television sets, the "old geezer", as he had called himself this week, finally capitulated to logic and the tall figure of Stewart Cink, 23 years his junior, in the play-off that broke so many senior and junior hearts everywhere.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Tom Watson Play-off defeat tears at my guts, says Tom Watson • Veteran says missing out is as bad as in 1994<br />• Whole experience was surreal, says Stewart Cink<p>Tom Watson admitted he will feel the pain of losing out on a sixth Open Championship victory at the age of 59 as much as any blow he has suffered in his glittering career.</p><p>Watson came within a play-off of completing what would have been one of sport's most remarkable achievements but Stewart Cink capitalised on his opponent's collapse to claim a first major title.

Watson had led the championship by a shot when playing the 72nd hole but made a bogey before a series of wayward play-off shots dashed his chances.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Tom Watson Stewart Cink enjoys the tweet taste of Open success The Open champion began the day Twittering and ended it with the Claret Jug<p>The world of Twitter has its first major champion. In the Turnberry gloaming Stewart Cink tonight gave his 550,000 followers on the social networking site something to tweet about as he annihilated Tom Watson in a four-hole play-off.</p><p>Twenty hours before he birdied the 76th hole to claim a first major championship Cink was Twittering away about the availability of birth control in the vending machines in the clubhouse.

At that stage few would have imagined that he would go on to deny Watson, and the Open, the most romantic of endings.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Young English pair play their part in Open drama for all the ages • Chris Wood was only golfer to go from plus to minus<br />• Mixed fortunes for expectant father Ross Fisher<p>There was old Tom in his late 50s, Stuart Cink and Lee Westwood at 36 and a pair of South Africans, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, either about to hit 40 or already there. Age had its say at Turnberry.</p><p>Well, this is about a pair of Englishmen in their 20s.

They did not win the Open but they did as much as anybody bar the winner to make this a thriller for all ages.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Final hole horror will be hard for Lee Westwood the gambler to forget • Englishman thought he needed a birdie to stay in contention<br />• I feel pretty low, he admits after finishing in a tie for third<p>It will be scant consolation for Lee Westwood, for all his phlegm, for all his equanimity, that he played a bit part in golf history and, but for a bogey at the 18th, would have joined Tom Watson and Stewart Cink in the play-off for the 138th Open Championship.</p><p>He'd led a small knot of dreamers, young and old, for much of the day and his nerve looked to be holding until the very end. Then the hands shook just a little, the tongue protruded and his spirit sagged. He didn't bottle it, though.

He just blew it.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Stewart Cink sinks Tom Watson to win Open in a play-off • Missed putt at last costs 59-year-old the title<br />• Lee Westwood also misses out at the last<p>On a day of poetry, prose had the final word when the US Ryder Cup player Stewart Cink edged out the US legend Tom Watson in a play-off to win the 2009 Open Championship. It was a victory for reality over fantasy or, to put it another way, it was a crushing disappointment for those who prefer their sporting occasions steeped in romance.</p><p>"It would have been a hell of a story, a wonderful story. But it wasn't to be and it tears at your gut just like it always has," the runner-up said. "Hey, it's not a funeral." Maybe not, but it sure as hell felt like it.

Of course hearty congratulations went to the winner, but the heart itself went out to the man who came up short.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Tom Watson Clinical Stewart Cink closes out Open to deny Tom Watson sixth title • Stewart Cink holds nerve in play-off to take first major win<br />• Westwood and Wood raise British hopes but bogey last hole<p>Stewart Cink has won the Open to take his first major tournament and dashed hopes that Tom Watson would pull off the astonishing achievement of a sixth title at the age of 59.

Cink held his nerve over a four-hole play-off to win by six shots, while Watson's driving and club selection let him down.</p><p>Earlier Watson had approached the 18th hole with a one-shot advantage over the clubhouse leader Cink and only needing a par to take the title, but he missed a 10-foot putt and his game never recovered from that disappointment.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Tom Watson Matteo Manassero returns to school before chasing professional dream • Sixteen-year-old wins silver medal for best amateur at Open<br />• Italian's parents want him to finish school before turning pro<p>It has not just been Tom Watson who has proved since Thursday that championship golf is not defined by age.

Matteo Manassero, at 16 years and 61 days, spoke of his love for the <em>Serie A </em>club Milan, who he says are "not great at the moment", his favourite subjects at school — maths and history — and his dreams of even partly emulating his golfing hero, Severiano Ballesteros.</p><p>Manassero had just become the youngest ever winner of the silver medal at the Open since it was introduced for amateurs 60 years ago and the youngest player ever to compete in the tournament in the modern era.

A matter of weeks ago, he first belied his years by becoming the youngest ever British Amateur champion.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> The Open Tom Watson, 59 years young, captivated the golf world for four days at British Open | Golf.com Tom Watson, 59 years young, captivated the golf world for four days at British Open More Photo: Robert Beck/SI In his bid to become the oldest major champ, Watson (with Oxman on his bag) rediscovered the magic that helped him win five claret jugs&#151;including a memorable one at Turnberry 32 years ago. by Michael Bamberger Posted: Sat Jul. 25, 2009 Updated: Mon Dec. 1, 2014 Install App This is what it's all about: losing. Really. You're going to win some and lose more. That was the point of last week's British Open at Turnberry. Everyone paid more attention to the loser than the winner, right? The loser, an old man  nearly 60!  lost with class and heart and serenity and tired legs. He tried to turn back time.

It was a gallant effort, and he almost pulled it off. True, somebody won on Sunday. Somebody always wins, and the newest name on the claret jug belongs to 36-year-old Stewart Cink, a native son of Huntsville, Ala., with a half-million tweeps following his Twitter page and a long, elegant, Georgia Tech-honed swing. His shaved head covered by a Kermit-green hat, and wearing bright white pants out of a Marine Corps recruiting ad, he played a wild final nine holes, with only two pars but a closing birdie that got him a spot in a playoff with Tom Watson, a 59-year-old Hall of Famer with an artificial left hip, five British Open titles and an honorary guest bed in a million Scottish homes. In the four-hole playoff Cink overwhelmed the wee mon, two under to four over. Congratulations, Mr. Cink. You won your first major. Maybe you'll win others. You're a bright, considerate man with serious talent. You earned it. In victory Cink thanked his caddie, his swing coach, his junior-golf teacher, his wife, his two boys, his Savior. He gave a heartfelt shout-out to Watson too.

Cink most likely couldn't remember Watson in his early prime. Little Stewie was four when Watson won his epic Duel in the Sun at Turnberry in 1977 over Jack Nicklaus. But the new winner is well familiar with the Watson legend: the handful of Opens, the two green jackets from Augusta, the U.S. Open he stole from Nicklaus in '82 at Pebble Beach, the winning Ryder Cup captaincy in '93. On Sunday at Turnberry, the Duel in the Wind was at first about the promise of sporting history, and later about defeat. There was something gorgeous and sad and exhilarating about Watson's play and finish, with his wife, Hilary, his grown kids, Meg and Michael, and close friends watching in person or on TV. Watson had one cast left, and he had the fish hooked but could not reel it in. The old man and the seaside links. Oh, he'll win Senior events, and maybe he'll even contend next year when the Open returns to St. Andrews, although he's already saying he won't, not if the wind blows out of the west. He says he can't play the course in that wind. He's a hyperrealist.

When it was over, a hundred or more reporters gathered solemnly in a white tent and listened to Watson open the session by saying, "This ain't a funeral, you know?" He laughed, and everybody else did with him. Still. All Watson needed was a par on the last to become, by 11 years, the oldest winner of one of golf's four major championships. If he had shot 277 instead of 278, he would have won his ninth major and tied Harry Vardon, a mustachioed Englishman born in 1870, with a record six British Open titles. In the Age of Tiger, how can a largely retired golfer, seven weeks short of 60, grow his legend? Watson did. He said, "One of the things I want out of life is for my peers to say, 'That Watson, he was a hell of a golfer.'" His peers have been saying that for decades. From here on out, they'll be saying it even more. Tiger Woods likes to say "second sucks," and he acts as if he means it.

When Steve Williams, Tiger's caddie, implored Woods to hit a provisional ball after a horrid way-right shot off the 10th tee last Friday, Tiger kept walking and muttered, "F--- it," before finally making a U-turn. Thirty-two years earlier, when Watson nipped Nicklaus at Turnberry, the two walked off the final green arm-in-arm, the winner and the loser. Golf never looked better. When Sunday's playoff was over, Watson kept grace alive. There was his long handshake with Cink, which came only after Watson allowed the champ time to acknowledge the applause and savor the moment. There was his fifth straight session in the press tent, where, his voice hoarse after a long day in the wind and the sun, he offered no excuses. Not his age, not his man-made hip, not his infrequent play.

Of his poor putt out of fluffy rough from behind the 72nd green, he said, "I gunned it." Of his ensuing 10-footer for par that would have won him the title, he said, "Made a lousy putt." Asked if he ran out of gas in the playoff, he replied, "It looked like it, didn't it?" Congratulations, Tom. You're what it's all about. He's the same as he ever was, or better. This will sound crazy, but it's true: His metronomic swing, always a joy to behold, has never looked this good. It goes up, it goes down, it goes through. Boom-boom-boom. A study in efficiency. (You cannot say the same of his close-range putting stroke. It is short and stubby and nothing like his circa-1977 action, which makes his runner-up finish last week even more extraordinary.) As a man, Watson has never been more appealing, which is not to suggest there's something easy and endearing about him, because there's not and never has been. He's wound tight and he can be painfully brusque.

He once asked Davis Love III for a putting lesson, and Love gave him his best stuff, to which Watson responded, "That's wrong." Watson will, at times, show no patience for reporters with questions or kids with programs to sign or tournament officials who can't give him rain-delay information quickly enough. After his first marriage ended in divorce in 1998, there was a long period when his relationships with his daughter and son were strained. Over the years, there have been dinners where he drank too much, angering his friends and family and worrying them too. If real life were a VH1 special, we could cite a date when Watson's life changed and the road to last week began. But life of course is messy, and all we can offer are some recent milestones. He married Hilary Watson, former wife of golfer Denis Watson, in September 1999. He won the Senior British Open at Turnberry on July 27, 2003, spending a happy and wistful week with his wife and their great friends Jack and Barbara Nicklaus, while keeping tabs on his longtime caddie, Bruce Edwards, who was battling ALS at home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

Edwards, 49, died on April 8, 2004. (Watson has been raising money for ALS research ever since.) He stopped drinking several years ago on a date known to him and not many others. His relationship with both kids, Meg especially, has improved steadily over the past half-dozen years. He got a new hip last Oct. 2. He missed the cut at the Masters on April 10 by a dozen shots. (He says, not happily, that he's a "ceremonial" golfer on the lengthened Augusta National course.) Then came last week, when he led the 138th British Open after the second and third rounds and seized the outright lead one last time at the 17th on Sunday. He smoked his tee shot on the par-4 18th and clipped a downwind eight-iron from 187 yards that landed short of the hole, took a big bounce and went over the green. Three shots from there and the playoff was on. Watson was spent. His opponent was not. Watson traipsed up and down Turnberry's dunes without a limp.

As he managed his way around the course, a stunning links designed by God and some lesser-known architects, he was the picture of contentment, even as the wind whipped about. Watson, as well as anybody, could move his ball through it. In interviews, he kept talking in different ways about his serenity, and you could see his comfort all week long. He played a practice round with Charles Howell and Brandt Snedeker and told them old Tour stories, the likes of which they had never heard. Last Saturday night, Watson passed his close friend Andy North, the longtime ESPN golf commentator and, at 6' 4", the tallest winner of the U.S. Open, punched him on the hip, looked up and gave him a grin that seemed to say, Can you believe this? After the playoff was over, and while waiting for the prize ceremony to begin, Watson stood beside his golf bag and stared at his clubs, lost in thought, his wife's arm firmly around his waist, both of them so still and focused and centered you knew they knew: You lose more than you win. The fight was over, and Watson was accepting the outcome, even as he thought about what could have been.

In real life Watson is more fun than he sounds here. He has a nice sense of humor. Asked how his old friend Sandy Tatum, the 89-year-old former USGA president, was handling his run at the title, Watson said, "It's giving him a heart attack!" He has lived in the Kansas City area all his life, and spurred on by his friend George Brett, he used to own a small piece of the Royals. He goes with friends to baseball games often. He hunts regularly, sometimes with Michael. He designs courses. He devours the news and argues politics, often taking Rush Limbaugh's side of things when debating his caddie, Neil Oxman, a well-known Democratic political strategist. But, like Arnold Palmer and Nicklaus before him, Watson has become a sentimentalist. Oxman is on the bag because he was a friend of Edwards's; it was Oxman who first encouraged Edwards to ask Watson for work, way back in 1973.

As Watson stood on the 18th fairway on Saturday, he said to Oxman, "Bruce is with us today." After his opening round on Thursday, in which he shot 65  the same score he put up in his last two rounds in the '77 Open  he said he was inspired by a text message he had received from Barbara Nicklaus. She wished him good luck, and it opened a floodgate of Turnberry memories: his triumph over Jack in the Duel in the Sun; his 11th-place finish in the '94 Open, won by Nick Price, after which Tom and his first wife, Linda, and Jack and Barbara commiserated over dinner and a couple of bottles of wine; his Senior British win in 2003, with Oxman caddying and nightly dinners with Hilary and the Nicklauses. That victory, he said at the time, meant as much as any of his others, because he was winning for "somebody other than myself"  Edwards, his wife, his kids. On those VH1 specials, everybody seems to talk like that.

For Watson, it's about as easy as pulling his own tooth, but at least you know he means it. On Sunday night he spoke affectionately of the Scottish galleries, who have been cheering him on for 34 years now, since he won his first Open at Carnoustie, on the country's east coast, in 1975. They stood for him as he came up the 18th the first time on Sunday, when victory was in reach, and they stood for him the second time, when the promise of victory was extinguished. "That warmth makes you feel human," Watson said. Outside, it was cool and windy, but the green hillsides and white chimneys of the Turnberry Hotel were bathed in yellow by the late evening sun. "It makes you feel so good." The Watsons were staying in the Tom Watson Suite at the hotel, but this time the Nicklauses were not around. They were at home in Florida, just as Woods was by Sunday, after missing the cut (by a shot) for the second time in a major since he turned pro in late 1996.

Some of Watson's contemporaries were at Turnberry, but only as commentators: North, Isao Aoki, Bernard Gallacher, Sam Torrance. Tom Lehman, the 1996 British Open winner, 91/2 years younger than Watson, finished his Sunday round and followed Watson all the way around on foot, hoping to see history. The two of them, along with CBS announcer David Feherty and swing coach Butch Harmon, made a goodwill visit to U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007. Watson listened as Lehman, a fellow Ryder Cup captain, chatted with a veteran suffering from severe depression. Afterward, Watson said to Lehman, "That was impressive, the way you talked to that man." Lehman was stunned. It was the most personal thing Watson had ever said to him. People change. Golf games do too. Watson's game, he acknowledges, is aided by a titanium driver and hybrid iron-woods and graphite shafts and today's ball that goes straighter in the wind. Seven weeks shy of 60, he played Turnberry in rounds of 65, 70, 71 and 72.

Two-seventy-eight, two under par. Nobody shot a lower score. A day before the claret jug was hoisted by the new champion, Barbara Nicklaus sent a text to Hilary Watson. The first part of the message was golfer's wife to golfer's wife. The second part was golfing icon to golfing icon: "Jack says to tell Tom he still knows how to win." Maybe that's why Watson looked serene as he stared at his clubs on Sunday night. Jack had it right. The man does still know how to win. Sure, he lost a four-hole playoff. But he won everything else. More From the Web Stewart Cink sinks Tom Watson to win Open in a play-off | Sport | The Guardian Stewart Cink sinks Tom Watson to win Open in a play-off • Missed putt at last costs 59-year-old the title • Lee Westwood also misses out at the last Stewart Cink holds the Claret Jug after his play-off victory over Tom Watson at Turnberry.

Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images Sunday 19 July 2009 16.20 EDT First published on Sunday 19 July 2009 16.20 EDT Close This article is 7 years old On a day of poetry, prose had the final word when the US Ryder Cup player Stewart Cink edged out the US legend Tom Watson in a play-off to win the 2009 Open Championship. It was a victory for reality over fantasy or, to put it another way, it was a crushing disappointment for those who prefer their sporting occasions steeped in romance. "It would have been a hell of a story, a wonderful story. But it wasn't to be and it tears at your gut just like it always has," the runner-up said. "Hey, it's not a funeral." Maybe not, but it sure as hell felt like it. Of course hearty congratulations went to the winner, but the heart itself went out to the man who came up short. Poor, poor Watson, who has never asked for anyone's sympathy but who will have it pressed upon him for ever more.

The 59-year-old, bidding to become the oldest man to win a major championship, stood on the 72nd green of regulation play facing an eight-foot putt to tear up the history books. Alas he saved his worst shot of the week for that tumultuous moment, dribbling his effort short and right of the cup. That dropped him into a four-hole play-off against a man 23 years younger and a whole lot fitter. Those who feared the worst for Watson quickly had their fears confirmed as he failed to get up and down from the greenside bunker at the 5th and fell a shot behind. A lovely par putt on the 6th shored up his hopes but a weary drive on the 17th, followed by a couple of hacks out of the rough and a double bogey, laid them to rest. Cink now had a four-shot advantage. Formality demanded that the pair play the 18th hole but by then the engraver was already at work, although pedants might care to note that the new champion hit a superb approach shot, leaving his ball just a couple of feet from the cup.

He made a birdie, doffed his cap to the galleries and embraced the man he had just vanquished. It was a first major victory for Cink, who has been knocking around the upper echelons of the game for a few years now. A great player, he is also a good guy, as he showed afterwards in accepting that while his was a great personal triumph, it was also something of a letdown for those looking on, willing Watson to conclude his incredible journey. "I have been the underdog before, the guy that no one is rooting for, and that is OK," he said, with a smile. "Maybe that will change now." Maybe it will as thoughts of Watson's disappointment fade, to be replaced by memories of a wonderful performance. The American, who had won five Opens, the last at Royal Birkdale in 1983, started the week as a 1,500–1 outsider. He was tied for second after day one and led at the end of days two and three. Even then, there were doubts that he would hold up during yesterday's final round; doubts that did not diminish when he made bogey at two of his opening three holes.

Behind him hopes surged and fell like the sea beyond. When the day began there were 26 players within six shots of the leader, all entitled to believe they could win, and that number had increased by lunchtime as Turnberry's true character began to exert itself. Ernie Els and Justin Leonard, who started almost three hours ahead of the leaders, came from nowhere to finish in a tie for eighth. The South African and the American are former winners of this championship so it was hardly a surprise. The same could not be said of young Chris Wood, a nascent professional whose main claim to fame was his effort as an amateur in last year's Open at Birkdale, where he finished fifth. Since then he has carved out a nice run on the European Tour but it is one thing to knock off a top-10 at the South African Open, quite another to make a serious charge at golf's greatest prize. Expectations, especially the lack of them, can often be a golfer's best friend and the 22-year-old Englishman certainly had that in his favour. He clearly has a flair for this style of golf, too, nursing his ball around the front nine in 32 shots – better than anyone else.

A birdie at the 10th fixed his place inside the top 10 and his position rose as the afternoon progressed. In the end he tied for third. For that he could thank the likes of Ross Fisher, who briefly held a three-shot lead before running up a quadruple bogey on the 5th, and Jim Furyk, the fancied American who made bogey at two of his first three holes. Eventually, the competition was distilled into its purest form. As always on such occasions the lead, and the pressure that comes with it, was passed around with alarming regularity as Watson, then Fisher, then Watson, then Lee Westwood, then Mathew Goggin and, finally, Cink, all glimpsed glory. Of those, Westwood was in first place for the longest period, assuming the mantle when he holed a 20-footer on the 7th hole for an eagle. The Englishman has mined a wonderful seam of form in recent weeks and he did it again for almost the entirety of his round yesterday. Only as the end approached did he falter, dropping shots at the 15th and 16th.

Even then the Englishman would have won the tournament with a birdie on the last. Instead, he made a three-putt bogey. What a contrast with Cink, who had moments before rolled in a 20-footer for birdie and a place in the play-off. "That was the most crucial putt of my life," he said, cradling the Claret Jug. A major understatement from the new major champion.

Question: Led for 3 days by veteran Tom Watson, who finally won the 2009 Open Golf Championship?
Answer: STEWART CINK