The Lessons of Turnberry

By Jaime Diaz
Photo By Dom Furore July 27, 2009

Lest it ever again slip our minds that golf is the cruelest game, the word "Turnberry" will for the foreseeable future suffice as an instant reminder. But as the wind howled through the empty bleachers surrounding the fateful final green and the sky darkened over the Firth of Clyde late Sunday evening, it was natural to wonder what the 138th British Open taught us.

First and foremost, Tom Watson's reputation as a player is adjusted upward. His feat of reaching the playoff of a major championship at age 59 has never been approached, surpassing what then-50-year-old Harry Vardon did by holding the lead over the final nine holes of the 1920 U.S. Open before sadly finishing second by a stroke. Like Vardon, and especially Sam Snead, Watson, by showing how much game he has in his dotage, retroactively raises the assessment of just how much game he had in his prime. In other words, during that period from 1975 to 1983 in which he won his eight major championships—and even in the long period after that when he barely won at all—he was better than we thought.

But second, the last round at Turnberry provided a revealing snapshot of the current era of golfers—and frankly, exposed them as wanting. For all their power and superior physiques and technical proficiency, the evidence keeps suggesting they are as a group (with one giant exception) competitively softer and less-accomplished shotmakers than their predecessors. And unless a few of them can come closer to being more like the giant exception, their place in history, much like the baby boomers, will end in the shadow of the golf equivalent of the Greatest Generation—a group including Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller and, of course, Watson—that ruled the game in the 1970s and into the 1980s.

I've been resisting this line of thought for several years, which has gained momentum as so many have folded and fallen before Tiger Woods. The argument goes that Woods has it easier than Nicklaus did when it comes to racking up majors, because of the greater number of proven winners and presumably tougher, hungrier and more well-rounded competitors that the Golden Bear faced. For all their vaunted depth, today's players, the theory goes, suffer from a general decadence: too much prize money lowering the urgency to win; too few moments atop leader boards leaving them relatively callow under pressure; and too many equipment advances that keep increasing distance, accuracy and spin while lulling them into a one-dimensional style of power golf that is ill-suited to the demands of major championships, particularly those played on a links.

For a while it seemed that a basic foundation for this polemic was nostalgia. It tends to ignore that Nicklaus and others picked up plenty of their majors when lesser players buckled. It also seemed an intentional slight to Woods, devaluing his breathtaking record for winning tournaments when holding or sharing the lead going into the final round (45 for 48 in his career, and 14 for 14 in majors), which to my mind is his most extraordinary feat and the one that most distinguishes him from the champions of previous eras. Finally, it runs contrary to the principle that is generally accepted across all sports—that athletes keep getting bigger, faster and stronger while increasing their skills.

However, I've been getting worn down as the game's wise heads have become more insistent. Sure, players from the previous era have a clear conflict of interest, but veteran caddies, who have worked in both eras and have been best positioned to see the difference, don't. Though they prefer not to be quoted, most believe the older players were tougher and better all-around players. "They can get rich without being that good now," more than one grizzled looper has told me of the current crop.

Turnberry contenders Goosen (above), Els and most dramatically Westwood didn't close strong. Photo: richard heathcote/getty images

Turnberry gave this school of thought more credence. It was the kind of examination that asked the variety and type of questions modern players have a hard time answering. As Luke Donald, who closed with 67 to finish T-5, said, "They don't the winner the champion golfer of the year for no reason, because this really does test all facets of your game."

Sunday's final round was most telling. Neither the wind nor the pin positions seemed extreme. Padraig Harrington, after ending his defense of the claret jug with an early finishing 73, declared, "Anyone can get it under par today. … There's hardly a pin on the golf course if you hit a good shot you can't get close to."

Yet birdies were scarce, and 67 was the best anyone did. Cink said it was because of Turnberry's tricky crosswinds. "You just don't have any margin for error with the way you start your shot, with the trajectory or the spin," he said. "You just have to be right, or you're going to miss your target, no question. It was just the perfect amount of wind to challenge everybody and see what everybody had."

It just didn't seem that the main contenders—the ones by definition doing the best playing—had that much. One after the other they failed when presented with a main chance. First Ross Fisher reacted to a sudden three-stroke lead after the first four holes by making a quadruple-bogey 8 on the fifth, and never recovering. Ernie Els, a stalwart of the era, got to even par by playing the first 10 holes in three under, but he could get no further and missed a six-footer for par on the last that ended all hope. Retief Goosen, who has not been quite the same since taking a lead into the final round of the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst and shooting 81, was within one when he took two in the bunker and missed a four-footer to double bogey the 15th. Mathew Goggin was tied for the lead through the 13th, but three straight bogeys and a failure to birdie the easy par-5 17th left him two out of the playoff. Even Chris Wood ended his 67 with a missed 10-foot par putt on the 72nd that would have tied him with Watson and Cink.