The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Watson’s Gleneagles request falls on deaf ears
GOLF LEGEND Tom Watson, the most-loved American in Scotland, has discovered at Gleneagles that the mutual love affair is off — for one year only.
The five-times Open winner is the American Ryder Cup captain at the Perthshire resort next year and paid the course a visit for the first time on Sunday.
He was there to check out the facilities for his team and take a tour of the PGA Centenary Course with Gleneagles officials.
However, when he asked for the pin positions from the last five stagings of the Johnnie Walker Championship, he related at the Senior Open at Royal Birkdale yesterday, he got an unexpected answer.
“They said ‘Yer no gettin’ them’,” he laughed, doing a decent approximation of a Scottish accent. “And I said, ‘OK, fair enough’.”
“A LOT of drainage has been completed on the course, I think they’ve put 5,000 tonnes of sand on the fairways,” Watson continued.
“The greens are very good and while there’s some challenging holes, there a lot of holes you can make birdie on.
“We were looking mostly at the logisitics of the thing, mundane sort of stuff like what rooms the players are going to have and where the team room will be, but it’s a wonderful hotel and the food is tremendous.”
Tom also had dinner with his opposite number for Europe, Paul McGinley, at Muirfield last week.
“We’re on the same page about the way the matches will be played, the spirit of the match and the fairness of it,” he continued. “I did say to Paul that his guys have an advantage because they’ve played the course more often under competition, but he just said ‘Well, it is our home match, you know’.
“I like the way he handles himself, I hope we have a good match and I just hope the outcome is a little different this time.”
For now, at 63, Watson is back at the scene of his last Open victory, in 1983, and still remembers “the best two-iron I ever hit” to the 72nd hole that year.
“Only I never saw it land,” he said. “As soon as I hit it, the crowd just ran in front of me and all I knew was it got a cheer … but not as big a cheer as at Turnberry (in 1977) when I hit it really close.”
Tom’s as competitive as ever — “I still get frustrated with the game and the day I don’t, I’m out of here” — but his current Open exemption runs out at Hoylake next year, unless he can roll back the clock the way he did in compelling fashion at Turnberry in 2009, when he lost heartbreakingly in a playoff.