A beginning and an end at the Home of Golf

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland

ON A CLOUDY, rainy day along the Firth of Forth ...

You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to write those words.

If you’ve never attended The Open Championship – that’s the British Open to you folks back home – then you haven’t truly been a golfer, in my honest opinion. And if you haven’t been to an Open at St. Andrews (The Home of Golf, the Swilcan Burn, the Road Hole, etc.), well, you don’t know what you’re missing.

I’m not alone there. Wednesday, as the weather changed from overcast to sunny and hot to chilly and a driving rain, I walked amid the dunes of St. Andrews and encountered a homegrown trio at the sixth tee. Greenville’s Bill Haas, Greenwood’s Ben Martin and Brian Harman, a Savannah native, were about to hit their shots of a mid-afternoon practice round.

Martin, a former All-American at Clemson and one of the nicest young PGA Tour players around, gripped his driver, looked into the distance and broke out in a huge grin. “Where we going here?” he asked. Another St. Andrews rookie, exulting in his first Open here as a professional.

I knew how he felt then: mystified and enchanted all at once. There have been a lot of important golf tournaments in my career as a writer/journalist – 40 RBC Heritages, 32 Masters, a handful each of U.S. Opens and PGA Championships – but like Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead and, for purposes of this treatise, Tom Watson, I was missing the final leg of a career Grand Slam.

But as important, this British Open at St. Andrews has a historic caveat. It’s my first; it’s the last – barring a miracle of 2009 proportions – for Tom Watson, the greatest player of my generation. Likely on Friday (but hopefully on Sunday), the winner of eight majors – including a record-tying five Open Championships – will make his final stroll up the 18^th fairway.

It figures to be emotional all around. Watson, who famously did not like links golf early in his playing days, became the finest Open player of the modern age. Forty years ago this week, the Kansas City sensation won his first Claret Jug at Carnoustie, topping Australian Jack Newton. Two years later at Turnberry, he won again, beating Jack Nicklaus in “The Duel in the Sun.” In 1983, he captured his fifth and last at Royal Birkdale.

Watson, in fact, never won an Open at St. Andrews, but Wednesday, it was clear from his emotional news conference that the Home of Golf is, in a sense, his home, too.

“(It was) actually ’82 (at Troon) and ’83 when I actually enjoyed links golf,” the 65-year-old said before an overflow crowd of media. “Up until that time, I didn’t enjoy links golf very much. I fought it. ... In fact, I didn’t like it at all when I first played here at St. Andrews. Didn’t like the uncertainty of it, didn’t like the (luck) of the bounce, just didn’t like links golf.

“I played the ball through the air, way up there. That’s not the best way to play a links golf course, as many of you know.”

But Watson learned. Did he ever. And in 2009, at the age of 59, he came one of those bad bounces from winning his sixth British at Turnberry. His no-doubt-adrenaline-powered approach to the 18^th green led to a bogey when a simple par would’ve made history – the oldest major-championship winner ever – and he lost a playoff to Stewart Cink. It was a heartbreaking loss for him and for all of us of that generation.

“I scared a few of the kids that week,” he said, the famous Watson hard smile coming through. “They looked up on the board and they saw ‘Watson,’ and they were thinking, ‘Well, that’s Bubba.’” It was not. It was almost miraculous.

But now, Watson says it’s time to pack up his Claret Jugs and say goodbye to St. Andrews.

“This will be it,” he said. “I don’t expect to end up in the top 10 (to earn a five-year extension in Open competition). I hope that ... I kind of just hope that I make it to Sunday.” He sighed. “When you get to that position in your career ... then it’s really time to hang them up.”

Watson admitted to some melancholy this week. “(The Open) has defined my career, and there is a certain sense of melancholy,” he said. “The regret that it’s over. I said a few months ago, it’s a little bit like death. The finality of it all.”

His passion for the game and the country undiminished by time and tide, Tom Watson will play at the Home of Golf for the final time ... unless he can recreate the feeling of 2009. He’s not ruling it out, but he’s not counting on it. As he said, it’s time.

And so I’m glad I finally made it to Watson’s home, to be there when his St. Andrews love affair takes its final turn and enjoys a last hurrah. There’ll be cheers and tears, even the latter for the infamously stoic player. The lion in winter, one last time.

If you’re doing this for the first and maybe only time, I figure, this is the one.

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 11:47 PM with the headline "A beginning and an end at the Home of Golf."