Of all the chapters in Tom Watson’s Scottish odyssey, one that is permanently implanted in the memory is the Open that slipped away. Which is why the doyen of gorse and heather and misty romance is doing an impersonation of Jack Nicklaus. The voice is a Midwest accent post a swig of helium. Does Nicklaus know that Watson mimics him like this? “He was taken aback at first,” he says. “Now he laughs.”
Watson, now 74, won four Opens in Scotland, at Carnoustie, Turnberry, Muirfield and Royal Troon, the latter the venue for this year’s championship. He also won at Royal Birkdale but the 2009 Open at Turnberry, when he was 59, was a stirring denial of age and common sense. He failed to get his par on the final hole and so was condemned to an ill-fated play-off with Stewart Cink.
“After the ceremonies I went into the press room and the corps were slowly moving in,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Come on everybody, this ain’t a funeral.’ I answered questions about why I putted from the back of the green instead of chipping. Then Hilary [his wife] and I went back to the hotel to dress for dinner. We were going to Wildings, which does the best sticky toffee pudding. The phone goes and I hear Hilary say, ‘Oh hello Babs.’ Then she hands it to me and says, ‘Jack wants to talk to you.’ ”
He now goes into his high-pitched Nicklaus. “He says, ‘Tom, I did something I’ve never done in my life before.’ I asked what and he said, ‘I watched you from the first shot you hit to the last in the play-off.’ Then he talked about the last hole. ‘You hit the perfect drive. If the second shot stops six inches shorter you’d win the tournament outright. The third shot would lose you the tournament.’ I agreed but felt it was better to putt because I had a depressed lie. I goosed it. Jack says, ‘The putt? You hit it like the rest of us would have, you dawg!’ The stomach is pretty empty at those times. You think ‘what if’. But the best player in the world called to console me. That lifted me.”
Old friends, memory brushing years and sharing fears, as two other old swingers would sing. The next day Watson flew to Sunningdale because he had a pro-am on the Wednesday and he had a policy of always playing two practice rounds. “Time to get off the pity pot,” he says. “I couldn’t have played any better but my putting turned to crap again. But the true aftermath was in the weeks afterwards. The email crashed because of the amount of messages. The gist of the responses was, ‘I gave up on doing things because I thought I was too old. You have given me life again.’ That was tremendous.”
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There were many more good times in Scotland and they keep on coming. Last month Watson left his Kansas farm for a “boys trip” and played Prestwick, Turnberry, Troon and Western Gailes. He remembers an early visit in 1982 and talking at length to “a wonderful immigration official with a big smile”. He then adds: “I never understood a single word he said.” Nevertheless, they became firm friends over the years. “I think golf is unique in Scotland. It is more ingrained in the fabric of the culture than anywhere in the world.”
It was, however, a slow-burning love affair. Prior to his first Open in 1975 he turned up at Carnoustie and was told he could not play as the course was closed to exempt players. Surprised, he went to Monifieth Golf Links, drove down the middle of the fairway and lost his ball. “I was not too enthusiastic about this type of golf and this links land.”
He practised until 11pm the night before the Open and the wind was so variable that one day he hit a driver and two-iron on a hole and the next it was a driver and nine-iron. He won his first major anyway, but admits: “I didn’t like the links. Playing the Old Course at St Andrews, in particular, this revered place, there were so many blind shots. The wind changed everything. You had to guestimate. Eventually, I said, ‘I can’t fight this anymore.’ That was 1979 at Royal Lytham. Acceptance led to enjoyment.”
Watson had won the Open twice in three years by then. The 1977 staging was dubbed “the duel in the sun” as he and Nicklaus fed off each other. Watson won by a shot. “That was when I realised I could play with the big boys. It took me until then to trust my golf swing. Jack put his arm around me and said, ‘Tom, I’ve given it my best shot and it wasn’t good enough.’ That gave me the boost of confidence that I could beat the best.”
He says that was the beginning of his run. He won five of his eight majors between 1980 and 1983 but then says he began to fade: “I didn’t think it was going to last for ever. If you have any intelligence you know it’s not going to last for ever.” He then indulges in another Nicklaus impersonation about what gets in the way. It is basically a triptych of family, injury and desire. “How long can you keep that absolute desire? Sometimes, honestly, you just wear out. I’ve seen it in players. They fall off a cliff and never produce again. But I fought through it.”
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In 1994 he found something in his golf swing and so he says that that year’s Open at Turnberry, rather than the golden oldie opus of 2009, was his biggest disappointment. “It was easy and I was controlling the ball beautifully tee to green but my putting was garbage, absolutely terrible. In the first seven holes I made one birdie but should have had six. Then I had two double bogeys and it was over.”
Nick Price won that year, which was a belated recompense for blowing a big lead on the last in 1982 at Troon. “I got lucky at Troon [when he won that same year],” Watson says. “But it’s probably the most difficult incoming nine in Open golf and you can make big numbers.”
Watson may seem an honorary Scot these days but he has also suffered some crushing blows north of the border. In 2014 Phil Mickelson did not waste any time as he used the post-match press conference at the Ryder Cup to damn Watson’s captaincy at Gleneagles. “Oh, I’m sorry you’re taking it that way,” remains one of the most disingenuous quotes in Ryder Cup history. Watson says Mickelson later apologised.
Watson is, though, part of the golfing furniture as well as firmament, so his disdain for the LIV Golf circuit is unsurprising. Mickelson is one of 18 LIV players in the Open field. Henrik Stenson, the winner of their epic duel the last time the Open visited the South Ayrshire town, is also playing. “The professional game is fractured,” Watson says as he assesses the wider landscape. “The real game is not — more people are playing golf than ever before which is an offshoot of the Covid pandemic and people having nothing to do but play golf. But we have two different entities in the pro game. There’s the PGA Tour, which I call the honest, legacy-driven entity, and then we have LIV, which is an exhibition tour.
“The people who left the PGA Tour knew they were violating a sacred rule about not playing in competing events because we have to protect our sponsors. That was the bottom line. They left and Jay Monahan [the PGA Tour commissioner] and the Tour did the right thing and said they were banned for life. Now people are saying they need to merge, but in the present form there is no way they are going to merge.”
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LIV players have won four of the past eight majors so their worth is not up for debate, but the future remains clouded. Will the Saudi Public Investment Fund buy into PGA Tour Enterprises and, if so, how will the tours cohabit? The majors remain oases of calm and, for Watson, those in Scotland are coated in a historic haze. “It’s a different kind of golf and you have to learn to hit the ball on the ground, add in the slopes, think about the bumps and the humps,” he says. “That’s the challenge. The ultimate challenge.”
The Open Championship
Royal Troon, Ayrshire
Thursday – Sunday
TV Sky Sports Golf
