The tools I use for good golf are rusty now ...a bit like me
Tom Watson on his Open farewell
NEVER mind watching his golf, they could fill theatres on both sides of the Atlantic just to hear Tom Watson speak. The inevitable truth, and one that nobody was shying away from on the eve of the 144th Open Championship, is that what comes out of his mouth is likely to be more compelling than what comes off his club head this week. Watson is a 1000-1 shot for a sixth title. That matters little. Nobody has come here to see the American lift the Claret Jug at the age of 65, but to witness him wave goodbye 40 years after his first Open victory at Carnoustie.
But before he struck a ball in anger, he answered a few questions. Sorry, correction, he offered a series of soliloquies.
‘The toolbox is kind of half empty of the tools I used to be able to play good golf with,’ he said in folksy tones reminiscent of Ronald Reagan in his movie-acting days.
‘Those tools are missing right now or pretty rusty — rusty like me.
‘I really don’t know how I’m going to feel, although I can start with some of the emotions. With my friends and family, we’ve got a few housefuls of people coming over.
‘We’ll have a big party on Friday night. I hope that’s just in the middle of the four rounds that I play.
‘We’ll have a good last get-together at The Open. That’s where the state of mind is. I still want to compete. I still want to hit that shot that really means something under pressure. I may have a few left in me, but probably not enough to really make it right.’
Watson committed himself to play in Britain again at the Senior Open, but announced that next year’s Masters will be his last. ‘I will be eligible to play on, but I won’t,’ he said. ‘ The golf course is too big for me, with my declining skills and length.’
Nostalgia is part of the fabric at St Andrews. It is not just the Home of Golf, with capital h and g, but olde worlde down to its antiquarian bookshops.
It is the perfect setting to ask Watson for his outstanding memory of Scotland from a kaleidoscope of them. ‘Probably the very beginning — that Sunday morning of the play- off against Jack Newton ( in 1975),’ he recalled. ‘I was leaving the house, and it’s raining, it’s cold, and here comes a little Scottish girl to the front door and says, “Mr Watson, please take this for good luck”.
‘I could barely understand her, but I finally figured it out. She gave me tinfoil, and in it was some white heather. I kept it in my bag for years, and it brought me good luck. I remember that little girl. She was so sweet and innocent, but came over to wish me good luck. That’s what golf is in Scotland, right there.’
There was one piece of grit in the syrup. He described criticism of his Ryder Cup captaincy by Phil Mickelson as ‘sour grapes’, but other than that it was whimsy all the way.
He talked of using a club that belonged to Ben Hogan, in 1985 at Shady Oaks, Fort Worth, Texas. He described that as ‘fun to put my hands on history’.
He talked of his 1975 victory, when he ‘was just trying to learn how to play for a living’ and how that ‘kind of began my Open Odyssey’.
He said the 1977 Open at Turnberry (left) — his second win — was ‘where I really felt that I belonged on Tour, that I could play against the best and beat the best’.
In 1980 at Muirfield, 1982 at Troon and 1983 at Birkdale, he ‘actually enjoyed links golf ’, with its blowy unpredictability, after years of fearing it.
Then he zoomed forward to 2009 at Turnberry, when aged nearly 60, he came within one putt of winning his first major for 26 years. ‘I scared a few of the kids that week,’ he said. ‘They looked up at the board and they saw “Watson”, and they were thinking, “that’s Bubba”.’
If the old Watson finishes in the top 10 this weekend, he will qualify for The Open for another five years. Barely hoping for that minor miracle to unfold, he added: ‘This event has defined my career, and there is a certain sense of melancholy. You can sense that. It’s a little bit like death. The finality of the end is here.’
Given that Watson welled up hopelessly when Jack Nicklaus made his own valedictory walk across the Swilcan Bridge a decade ago, he is well- advised to carry a large handkerchief with him.