A Thank You Note To A 59-Year-Old

It was a reflection of two totally, different times…

A battle of the Twitter era and what we used to do with something called a “rotary phone.”

You remember those, don’t you…?

Stewart Cink has over 560-thousand followers on Twitter, while Tom Watson ((pictured, thanks Guardian/Tom Jenkins)) probably uses the word as a verb for someone who talks incessantly.

But for the better part of a week, 71-plus holes at a resort course near the rock where every curling stone is struck, it was Watson who held us at the edges of our seats.

Could a 59-year-old guy, this 59-year-old guy- you know, the one who has the fake hip, the crinkles in his face, and the sweaters- really do what no one had ever come close to doing…? Winning a major tournament…?

He just went about his business.
Sure, he thought so…he could win the Open.
That is the opinion that mattered- frankly, the only opinion that mattered…

And he taught us something about what makes the Open Championship different than the other three. To win those other majors, it’s done through the air. All those golfers on the “kids” tour –as Watson describes it- take their technology and thumb their nose at geography and his cousins- flora and fauna. They bomb away, knowing that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It’s an aerial assault on flagsticks and purses in the eight-figure range.

It’s like you’ve taken the game of pub darts and “500” that you play over a few beers on the weekend, and brought it to the land of golfers who commit “logo felonies” on their wardrobes with the best equipment money will never have to buy them since it’s provided by their sponsors.

At the Open, it’s different. Watson hits the ball straight and lets the ground do all the work for him. You hit it short of the target and the ball just heads where the open spaces are. The ground game requires imagination, thought, experience, memory (of your own game and the space you play on), and patience.

Something a 59-year-old has more than the “kids” a lot of the time.

And it’s about history… something the more experienced golfer has an appreciation for as time passes and your body decides to use either for you, mentally, or against you sometimes, physically.

Sure, Tom Watson’s swing took a few more clubs from the fairway than a lot of the other players out there. How many times did we hear Watson was using his “rescue” club…?

But what was the end result…?

Contending for an unheard of 9th major title and a 6th Claret Jug until the 74th hole of the tournament… That’s 74th hole… More than 72…

Watson talked about the “spiritual” feeling Turnberry had for him. But he never went into any real detail about the definition. It could have meant a lot of things- history of the game itself and playing in the steps of those before him dating back hundreds of years, the idea that this was his last shot at anything and his patience would carry him through, or the idea that a lot of us put there… that Bruce Edwards was with him somehow.

He mentioned earlier in the week that the media was inserting the last notion into our story lines, and it’s easy to see where we would do something like that.

Here is a man, totally at peace with himself on the outside, and nervous as hell on the inside. Who wouldn’t want to put that lyrical thought out there that his best friend that he misses so much wasn’t there for the ride…?

An entire gallery was pushing him along, and, probably a whole lot of us media types were doing the same thing. It’s a story that writes itself from plenty of different angles.

But, when Watson admitted later that he hit a “chubby” iron shot on the first playoff hole and his legs didn’t work for him on the third playoff hole, you could see him age right there in front of you while it happened.

The long-haired “Huck Finn from Kansas City” was on film in some questionable clothing for most of the four-day stretch. For the last two holes of the 2009 Open Championship, Tom Watson was trying to get out of the way so Stewart Cink would grasp the Claret Jug for the first time.

“It’s not a funeral, guys,” Watson said in his post-game press conference to lead off the questions. And he’s 100-percent correct. It’s not a funeral. It’s not the place to throw dirt on someone who doesn’t need to be out there slugging it out with the kids. Because Watson clearly showed that the right approach is the one you make for yourself.

Whatever that approach is will last a lifetime for you if you continue to listen to yourself and are at peace with your efforts.

Thanks for the reminder…even if I haven’t seen a rotary phone in a while…