Close To Perfect

For Ten Years, We’ve All Thought About What Could Have Been Had Tom Watson, At Age 59, Sealed The Deal On The 72nd Hole At Turnberry. All Of Us, That Is, Except Tom Watson.

- Michael Bamberger

A GOLFING LIFER, ASKED ONCE WHAT HE LIKES BEST ABOUT THE GAME, SAID, “THE BALL IN THE AIR.”

We all know how that goes. That golf ball is in the air, and you can guess where it might finish. But you can’t know. And so it was for Tom Watson, playing his second shot on the baked, short, downwind par-4 18th hole on Sunday in the 2009 British Open at Turnberry, on Scotland’s toothy west coast. He had 164 yards to the front of the green, 189 to the hole, 196 to the back, and an Adams 8-iron in his hands, hands that have launched a million shots, but few more significant than this one.

If you know Watson, you know the pose: arms against his rib cage, staring the shot down, his whole body alert. Have you ever hit a shot, one that counts, DSP (dead solid perfect)? Take that feeling and multiply it by a thousand and you have Watson, then and there. “When that ball was in the air, I said, ‘I like it,’” Watson said recently. “I literally had a flashback. It was exactly like I had hit it in ’77.” That is, his approach shot on 18 in his Duel in the Sun Open win at Turnberry, when he was 27.

At Turnberry in ’09, Watson was seven weeks short of 60. He was trying to become the first golfer to win a major with an artificial hip, having had his left one replaced nine months earlier. He was trying to win his sixth British Open, which would tie him with Harry Vardon for the most ever. He was trying to win his ninth major title, 26 years after winning his eighth, and trying to become the oldest winner of a major, by more than 11 years. And now that ball was in the air.

Talk about your good vibrations. In the final round in ’77, Watson hit his second shot on the last stone dead and made a birdie to win by a stroke over Jack Nicklaus, his playing partner, who closed with a birdie himself.