The GOLF Magazine Interview Tom Watson ‘I’ve got a rich life, but, in the end, I’m a golfer.’

RETIRED FROM COMPETITION BUT AS CONNECTED TO THE GAME AS EVER, THE FIVE-TIME OPEN CHAMPION REFLECTS ON LIV, LOSS AND HOW HE LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE LINKS

- Josh Sens

“The possessions that mean the most to me are the photographs,” he says. “The photographs are what evoke the memories.”

It’s a wet midwestern morning, Open Championship weather in Overland Park, Kan., and the greatest American links player of all time is standing in the doorway of his office on the 11th floor of a boxy building in a leafy business park. Rain streaks the windows. Trophies crowd the shelves, so many of them that Watson can’t say without squinting at which events they represent. He has no such trouble with the pictures on the wall. Few golf fans would. Many of the images are iconography: Watson chipping in at Pebble to steal the 1982 U.S. Open; Watson walking with Jack Nicklaus, arms around each other’s shoulders, in the gauzy afterglow of their Duel in the Sun.

That was 1977, at Turnberry, site of the second of Watson’s five Open titles and the backdrop of his most famous defeat, when, in 2009, at age 59, he came within a bad bounce of capturing the Claret Jug for what would have been a record-tying sixth time.

Now 73, he cuts a similar profile to that of his prime. The gaptoothed grin. The construction foreman’s forearms. His demeanor is familiar too: cordial but reserved, with a brusqueness toward questions that brush on touchy subjects. Don’t ask him to go deep on his controversial Ryder Cup captaincy in 2014 or the tension with Phil Mickelson that rose around it. Interviews with Watson rarely morph into confessionals. But they cover a lot of ground.