In History's Grasp
Stewart Cink wins the British Open after Tom Watson's memorable, age-defying run at Turnberry comes up a putt short
Etched in history: Cink earned possession of the claret jug, while old and young stars Watson and low amateur Manassero (right) looked on.
Here's a Tweet for you:
The acceptance speech by the Champion Golfer of the Year has become depressingly routine—praise the geezer, pass the jug.
This wasn't the Duel in the Sun. As it turns out, time is a lot tougher than Jack Nicklaus. Old Tom Watson missed the early-bird special on claret jugs when he bogeyed Turnberry's 72nd hole to fall to two-under 278 and force a playoff against Stewart Cink who, as it turned out, was as happy as Robert the Bruce to drive a stake through the heart of history. Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, the way Watson played in the two-man, four-hole aggregate playoff, he would have lost to a caber tosser. Cink, on the other hand, birdied the last two of the four extra holes as the grand illusion of a man about to close out his sixth decade by winning a sixth British Open aged before your eyes like the Picture of Dorian Gray. In the end Watson, who lost the playoff by six strokes, looked as old as the Ailsa Craig, and Stewart the Tweet was king.
Imagine for a moment a young Watson. It's not hard to do. The body language was resurrected for four days at Turnberry, his arms clasped behind him as he surveyed a distant horizon like an admiral on the weather deck of one of her majesty's ships. Or, striding forward against the wind off the Firth of Clyde, his hands thrust deep into his pockets as if they were digging for the warmth of old memories. This was the Watson of yesteryear—a man, it should not be forgotten, who has left his share of victims in his wake, not the least of whom was Nicklaus himself on these very links. But only at Turnberry, the place that holds Watson's heart like no other, could it be broken so cruelly.
Golf's immortals all seem capable of summoning a farewell flash of brilliance. Hogan at Augusta in 1967. Palmer at Oakmont in 1973. Snead at Tanglewood in 1974. And of course, Nicklaus at Augusta in 1986. There's always a wave goodbye. Last year at Royal Birkdale, it was Greg Norman, 53, with his new bride Chris Evert on his arm, flirting shamelessly with the fantasy of youth before Padraig Harrington delivered reality with a 5-wood. This year, in a feat of historic legerdemain, Watson, 59, turned the unthinkable into the probable before our eyes, right up until the moment Cink, 36, a player in his competitive prime, became the instrument exposing the pitiless reality of old nerves and old legs.
winning was a tall order: Cink's 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole (above) allowed him to tie Watson after the five-time champion's march toward a sixth title was derailed by a costly closing bogey. Photo: Dom Furore
At first, the final day of the Open's return to Turnberry after 15 years looked like it was going to belong to the Brits, not a pair of Americans. Ross Fisher—whose wife, Joanne, must have been suspended in gravity boots in London to forestall the birth of their first child—went out birdie-birdie to take the lead from Watson, who stumbled anxiously out of the gate. The onset of labor probably began with Fisher's quadruple-bogey 8 on the fifth. Then, Chris Wood, the 21-year-old English lad with a hairstyle similar to the plume on an officer of the Queen's Horse Guard, went out in 32 and added another birdie at the 10th. Back-to-back bogeys on the 13th and 14th were his undoing. And then there was sorrowful Lee Westwood, who bogeyed the 15th and 16th and three-putted the last to suffer a depressingly similar fate to the one he endured at Torrey Pines last year, missing the playoff by one.
It seemed the planets kept jockeying into position for Watson, who was playing steadily if unspectacularly. That, or he was being pursued by a flock of marshmallow chicks. One by one, they all fell away. Retief Goosen, who has been struck by lightning once and the U.S. Open twice, couldn't make a putt. Mathew Goggin, the Tasmanian Devil, hung around until three straight bogeys on the back finished him off. Cink would birdie then bogey, then birdie then bogey. The claret jug was Watson's for the taking.
At the 18th Cink hit a solid 9-iron that stopped 12 feet from the hole. He made the putt to close within one stroke of Watson, who birdied the par-5 17th to reach three under par. Watson positioned his tee shot with a 20-degree hybrid on the 461-yard 18th. All week he'd been clever about getting the ball in play. His downwind 8-iron second barely rolled through the green, up against the short rough. He elected to putt instead of chip, and the ball screamed past the hole. It was eight feet but it might as well have been in Glasgow. Watson missed badly and all the hopes of all of Scotland couldn't put him back together again. He bogeyed the first playoff hole (the fifth), made a miraculous par on the second (the par-3 sixth) after missing far right with his tee shot, then double-bogeyed the third (the par-5 17th) after driving in the far-left hay. All that remained was one last funereal march up the last, the place where before he'd known only festivals.
In the year of the anti-story—be it Angel Cabrera over Kenny Perry at the Masters, Lucas Glover over Phil Mickelson and David Duval in the U.S. Open, or Cink over Watson at Turnberry—the unfortunate reality is the man who has his name engraved in silver is seen as somehow less deserving than the one who tilted at windmills. Nothing could be further from the truth.
