Executive Golf Magazine

Tom Watson is not only the most prolific Open champion of the modern era but also one of the game’s great thinkers.

In the end it’s true …all you really need is love. Mind you, the ability to find the fairway, embrace the green and hole the putt may also be considered to be something of an advantage.

Certainly this was true for Thomas Sturges Watson, first superstar golfer to emerge from the dishevelled battalions of The Love Generation and a man who, for several years, outshone even Jack Nicklaus in his pursuit of the grand, old game’s most coveted trophies.

Born in Kansas City in 1949, Watson was not only an intelligent player he was a bright kid, making it through to Stanford University in the late Sixties and studying psychology in between swing fixes. His freckled face and tousled hair, his ambling gait and ready, gap-toothed smile meant he came to the West Coast with a stitched-on Mark Twain sobriquet.

Only in Watson’s case his instant nickname of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ was soon altered by his classmates to ‘Huckleberry Dillinger’, the better to describe a pleasant personality that disguised a hard-man interior and an extremely sharp ambition. Looking back at these Stanford days when the world was a different place, when Beach Boy Brian Wilson still looked and behaved pretty normal, when every girl’s hair was longer than her skirt, when Steve McQueen coolly rode a motorbike and California was the epicentre of what seemed a rather jolly planet changing movement, Watson, surprisingly, fails to smile.

“You have to remember that I went to college during the Vietnam War and all that turmoil,” he says. “College at that time wasn’t very smooth with all the issues that were going on with the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam. It was a turbulent time. There were some wonderful times and some trying times in those college years.”

Why can’t certain institutions require decorum? No matter what? Like a courtroom. Like golf. Why should we have to relax our standards because of what’s going on in other sports or in general society?

Now here he is nudging 60, too old to hang any Huckleberry sign outside his door, too young to consider quitting the game he has embroidered with a rare talent for so long and too busy walking his daughter up the aisle to make this year’s Open at Carnoustie. The truly great days are long gone, his ability to urge a ball into the hole severely diminished. Unlike his friend and early idol Nicklaus, Watson’s star flared brilliantly enough but failed really to last. By his 35th summer it was over although it took a few more years for him, and us, to realise this harsh fact.

With the exact benefit of hindsight we may now see that it ended shortly before 6.30pm on a glorious Sunday evening at St Andrews in July 1984. It was at this point that Watson stood over his approach shot to the 17th green on the Old Course. He had 184 yards to the pin, the light breeze in his face. It was, analysed how you like, a four iron tops.

Inexplicably, and he still cannot explain it, he selected his two iron. Perhaps he was unsettled by the sight to his left of Seve Ballesteros holing one of the most acclaimed birdie putts on the last, perhaps he felt the strength draining out of him. Whatever, his ball flew over the Road Hole and nestled up against that damn wall. Seve won, ‘Huckleberry’ was toast. But great toast. Between 1975 and 1983 he won eight majors including, of course, five Open Championships. He won the Masters twice and the US Open once but never managed the USPGA. He can, however, live with this.

“I’m pretty happy with my career record. Winning five British Opens makes it special. The 1977 so-called ‘Duel in the Sun’ at Turnberry when Jack (Nicklaus) and I went head to head is obviously a particularly fond memory. The way all those sunburnt Scots treated us both that week was terrific and, for me, to have beaten Jack when he was not far off his peak makes that Open a highlight.

“He made it tough for me especially when he holed that long putt for a birdie at the last and I had to make my short one to win. But that’s the way you want it to be. Jack and I are good friends. We’ve gotten to know each other well over the years since and have become close friends. It’s always good to be with him and Barbara. She’s a wonderful woman and she keeps him in line.”

So is it Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods? “I think Tiger is probably better than Jack at this point. Jack dominated the game but not to the extent that Tiger has. You have to give the nod to Tiger right now.”

This, from a man who predicted even before Woods turned professional, that Tiger would revolutionise the game is hardly surprising. At the time Watson’s prophecy was treated with some scepticism (not least in this quarter) but he has been proved more or less spot on. Anyway, he has never been afraid to speak his mind. On or off the golf course.

In his time he has called attention to rules infringements from fellow pros, warned of the dangers of drug use on the US Tour and, famously, resigned from Kansas City Country Club when he discovered that Jews were routinely rejected from membership. He has since rejoined but only after the club reversed its policy not just for Jews but for all minority groups.

He says he sees no point in holding an opinion if you do not express it from time to time and though he sometimes is maybe a little too sure of his own validity his intelligent and reflective views on many issues carry a resonance often missing from the majority of pro sportsmen’s utterances. Clearly, if you spend most of your adult life having your opinions solicited then you tend to end up opinionated. This, anyway, is my opinion.

Amongst his bete-noir issues the broom-handle putter looms large. Ever since professionals began using these ugly beasts to quieten their clanging nerves on a putting green Watson has been relentless in his criticism. “These putters do not require a stroke and so they should be banned. That’s it, end of story,” he says.

He is not, however, a Luddite where new technology is concerned. Refreshingly he is rare among global names not to have, or desire, his own website but he is equally refreshing about the virtues of new club and ball production values.

“I’m better from tee to green now than I was in my prime,” he points out. “Okay, the golf ball doesn’t curve as much so the art (of working the ball) is lost but you still have to make the ball move. You have to know how to make it move and trust it to move. The distances the ball gets hit now are unbelievable. So much so that when I spend time on the practice range alongside today’s kids I feel insufficient. I learned a long time ago that you don’t live in the past, you live in the present and you look forward to the future.”

These days he is an occasional winner on the Champions Tour, that rather gentle, and lucrative, circuit where ageing pros get to supplement their incomes by playing three rather than four rounds and where the decorum of the game is celebrated seriously. Watson helps lead this celebration of the core values of a game that often is criticised for being too fuddy-duddy. Whatever else Watson is, fuddy-duddy is not one of his vices.

“Why can’t certain institutions require decorum? No matter what? Like a courtroom. Like golf. Why should we have to relax our standards because of what’s going on in other sports or in general society?”

is his sharp riposte to critics who too frequently rely on their own prejudices to attack a game that is both simple and complex (The swing’s simple; thinking about it is complex).

Apart from playing golf he designs courses. But not many and not too often. He is deeply involved in the charity he set up following the death from ALS disease of his long-time caddie and buddy Bruce Edwards and has done much to promote understanding of, and research into, this still untreatable condition. Apart from these, however, Tom Watson just tries to enjoy life. Usually he succeeds.

“Byron Nelson was a great friend, a father figure to me in some regards,” he says. “One of the things he showed me was how to be a person who looks at life as a glass half-full, to understand that life is too short to go through it with any animosity. It’s one of the best lessons I ever learned.

“Winning? You have to learn how to win, how to perform under pressure and how to deal with your body under pressure. How to breathe, to walk. I choked plenty before I finally won and I’ve choked some since. If you fail and you don’t want immediately to find out why then you’re probably never going to be a success. Failure breeds success in the right types of personalities.

“I read a survey of the top 500 chief executives and one of the most memorable experiences the majority of these guys had had was to be cut from a team. They were told they weren’t good enough but they went out and proved they were more than good enough in other ways. Failure can be a great instigator for success.”

Spoken like a true graduate of the hippy Class of 70.

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