Everyone knows about the Cinderella moment — the carriage, the clock, the pumpkin — but that doesn’t mean we’re ready to see it played out live on TV.
When it happened Sunday to Tom Watson on the west coast of Scotland, it left a whole generation all dressed up with no place to go. One moment he was an 8-foot putt from one of the most amazing sporting achievements imaginable. The next, his carriage was so much scattered fruit sliding off the cliffs of Turnberry into the sea.
One moment he was 27 again, without the plaid pants. The next, he was at least 59, his chronological age, losing one of the most lopsided playoffs in history. It was as if he had made Dorian Gray’s deal with the devil and taken back a lifetime’s worth of age all at once.
“It might have been the greatest feat in the history of sports for Tom to have won here,” Paul Azinger ventured on ABC in what, remarkably, didn’t sound like hyperbole.
But what did it all mean, exactly? Is 59 the new 39, the baby boomers’ wishful anthem?
When Tiger Woods misses a cut, as he did at Turnberry, is the current state of professional golf so pathetic that a man about to turn 60 has as good a chance as anyone?
Or is Watson merely doomed never to escape the vast shadow of Jack Nicklaus, even when the only title he’s after is “Oldest Guy to Win a Major”?
“It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?” Watson asked reporters afterward with that famous Missouri half-grin. He answered the question himself: “It would have been a hell of a story. It wasn’t to be.”
For a man whose fondest wish is to be remembered by his peers as “a hell of a golfer,” it was all about the golf, and not so much the putt on 18 that never had a chance as the two shots that set it up.
“In retrospect, I probably would have hit a 9-iron rather than an 8-iron,” he said of his approach, which rolled just off the back of the green.
Is that the takeaway from this magnificent drama? The difference between a 9-iron and an 8-iron? Really? The great Open Championship of ’09 is a lesson in careful club selection?
“You’re going to ask me, ‘What do I take from this week?’ ” Watson told reporters. “Well, I take from this week a lot of warmth and a lot of spirituality in the sense that there was something out there, I still believe, that helped me along.”
So where did it go at the last minute, when he needed it most? Watson had no idea.
“This was going to be a great memory,” he said. “Now it’s going to be like Jack, I’ll never remember what club I hit anytime in this whole tournament.”
For critics of the Tiger Era, there was plenty of ammunition. With Tiger shut out of the majors so far this year, the champions have been Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink. Not exactly Nicklaus, Player and Trevino, Watson’s rivals during his prime.
Indeed, with Phil Mickelson absent and Tiger missing the cut, you could argue Watson saved the tournament. What sort of an audience would a final day duel between Cink and Lee Westwood have drawn?
Someone asked Watson afterward if, at his age, he just ran out of gas.
“It looked like it, didn’t it?” he said. “It didn’t feel like it. It just looked like it.”
In fact, Watson may have made as good a case for age equality in defeat as he would have in victory. It had been a long time since he felt the pressure of leading a major in the final round.
“It reminds me what it used to be like when you played the big tour . . . and were in contention all the time, and the responsibility that you have to take care of business,” he said. “My hat goes off to Tiger for what he has to go through on a weekly basis with all the things pulling at him, as much as he wins and as much as he’s in the limelight.”
Nothing was expected of Watson when the tournament began. By the 72nd hole, he carried the weight of a world’s hopes, especially the vast generation of boomers trying so hard to make the clock stand still. By contrast, there was no pressure on Cink at all. He played with the ease Watson had when the tournament began.
Maybe it’s as simple as that — a 59-year-old can succumb to pressure, just like a 39-year-old or a 29-year-old.
But he can also turn back time for one memorable weekend. He can make an entire generation feel young again, if only until the clock strikes 12.
As he said himself when asked for the headline: “The old fogey almost did it.”
The winner is rarely a footnote in sports, but the winner in Turnberry was a footnote. This will always be the weekend when Tom Watson gave time the race of his life.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297 or dkrieger@denverpost.com
