RealClearSports: Match Play Is Golf for the Moment

in ,
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

MARANA, Ariz. -- Match play is when golf becomes the NCAA basketball tournament. Match play is when two men compete head to head, as Ali and Frazier or Nadal and Federer. Match play is "get the ball in the cup or get out of here.''

And, as Tiger Woods a day earlier, Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy are out of here. Done.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

Newsday (N.Y.): Watson hopes to challenge again after near-miss in '09

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -- For Tom Watson, the Open Championship inevitably evolves into the past, even if he doesn't want it to.

Either someone is asking about what might have been a year ago or that missed opportunity here on the hallowed golfing ground of the Old Course 26 years ago.

Strange how it is in sports. No matter how many championships you earn, and Watson has five Opens, only one fewer than the century-old record of Harry Vardon, the questions are always about the championships lost.

Such as the 2009 Open, when Watson, age 59, led for 71 holes at Turnberry before a bogey on 18 led to a tie and playoff loss to Stewart Cink.

Such as the 1984 Open here when Watson came to the 17th, the Road Hole, "the hardest hole in golf," tied with Seve Ballesteros and hit a 2-iron onto the road near a stone wall. The bogey dropped him to second.

It was a nostalgic but forward-looking Watson who showed up in the media tent Wednesday, 24 hours before the start of the 139th Open.

"St. Andrews is a hard course to understand," said Watson, when asked his chances. "You have to re-learn it every day."

This will be his seventh and most likely his last Open at St. Andrews, a course on which Jack Nicklaus said "all great Open champions must win," but a course where Watson has only one top-10 finish, that runnerup.

The disappointment of a year past, when Watson was a stroke from becoming the sports story of the year, has not lingered.

"It tore my guts out," said Watson of the final-hole failure at Turnberry, "but I've had my guts torn up before in this game. But it hasn't made any impact.

"People of our age come up to me and say they couldn't stop watching. They say. 'I'm 60 years old, and I've given up on the game or given up on something else, and you've given me hope.'"
The hope for Watson is in 2010 after an 18th place in the Masters and a 29th in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, "It would be a great triumvirate if I did well here at age 60."

Ballesteros is not doing well. He is home in Spain, after undergoing multiple surgeries for a brain tumor. At the Champions dinner, held only when the Open is at St. Andrews, Ballesteros sent a brief video.

"He said I wish I had energy to be there," Watson said. "It was sad to see him. But seeing him I remembered the cheer that went up before I tried to make my par putt at 17 [in '84]. I looked at 18, and there he was [indicating an arm pump.] I said. 'Uh, oh, I have to make it now.' But I didn't."

Watson and several others, including Arnold Palmer, received honorary doctorates from the University of St. Andrews.

"I told Arnold, 'You've always been my idol,'" Watson said. "When I grew up I was a member of Arnie's Army. Then Jack came along and beat Arnie, and I couldn't stand it. I told Arnie, 'The only reason I beat Nicklaus all those times is because he beat you.' He got a laugh out of that."

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http://www.newsday.com/sports/golf/watson-hopes-to-challenge-again-after-near-miss-in-09-1.2105409
Copyright © 2010 Newsday. All rights reserved.

SF Examiner: Likeable Watson forced to deal with sting of defeat

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By Art Spander
Examiner Columnist

Losing, we have been told, is the great American sin. But was it sinful what Tom Watson did at the British Open? Surely, it was disappointing. The idea in sports is to win.

The reality is that more times than not we lose.

“The taste of defeat,” wrote basketball star and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, “has a richness of experience all its own.”

The memory of J.T. Snow hunched over and staring at his locker after the seventh game of the 2002 World Series forever will remain. Snow and the Giants had that Series won, had a 5-0 lead in Game 6. Yet they didn’t win.

And there was Snow contemplating what could have been, what Giants fans to this day believe should have been.

Tom Watson is very much a part of the Bay Area as the Giants and A’s and the rest of the franchises. He came from Missouri, but was a Stanford man ... still is a Stanford man.

No cheering in the press box is the yardstick to which American journalists must adhere. An event must be approached without bias. In this British Open, however, I cheered silently for Watson.

Not only because of his age, not only because a 59-year-old golfer finishing first in a major championship tournament would have been the sports story of the century, an irresistible tale of persistence and implausibility, but because in this world of fraudulence and dishonesty, Tom Watson is genuine, truthful.

In the winter of 1968 as a Stanford freshman, Watson for the first time competed in the San Francisco Amateur at Harding Park. In the match-play portion he hit an errant shot, into the trees, at the 10th hole I think it was, and after he putted out for what presumably was a par, he said he had moved the ball accidentally at address, thus had a bogey and lost the hole.

No one saw his transgression. The ball had remained virtually in the same place it had been. He received no advantage. But Tom Watson was governed by the rules of golf, as well as his conscience. For him, there was only one way to play the game.

Tom has had his moments, created his legacy. He won five British Opens, two Masters and then at Pebble Beach in 1982 in the U.S. Open. He was involved with Sandy Tatum and Robert Trent Jones II in the creation of Spanish Bay Golf Links on the Monterey Peninsula and has taken part in charity events at Stanford.

He can do without our tears, even though symbolically he deserves them.

Watson played so well for so long in the Open, until the last of the 72 holes, and then as the Bay Area, as America, as the world of golf winced, he messed up, dropped into a playoff and lost to Stewart Cink.

“This ain’t a funeral, you know,” Watson told a grim-faced pack of writers in what the Open still calls the “Press Centre.”

No, it was a defeat, supposedly enriching an athlete’s experience.

You looked at Watson as you did Snow back in 2002 and found that concept very hard to understand.

Art Spander has been covering Bay Area sports since 1965 and also writes on www.artspander.com and www.realclearsports.com. E-mail him at typoes@aol.com.

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http://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/Likeable-Watson-forced-to-deal-with-sting-of-defeat-51368017.html
Copyright 2009 SF Newspaper Company

Newsday: Watson falters, loses British Open playoff to Cink

in ,
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

TURNBERRY, Scotland -- It could have been the sports story of many a year, the golf story of the century. Tom Watson, who will turn 60 in September, was going to win the British Open. He had a putter in his hand and the tournament in his grasp.

It was wonderful, fantastic. And then like that, it was gone.

Then like that, late Sunday afternoon, Stewart Cink -- mentioned so often as a probable major tournament winner -- was raising his arms in triumph and reaching for the historic silver claret jug on which his name, as is tradition, already had been engraved.

Watson was a shot ahead after 71 holes of the 138th Open, but he bogeyed the 72nd and came apart in a brutally sad four-hole playoff in which he looked like the 59-year-old man he is, getting beaten by six shots.

Cink, playing five groups ahead of Watson, birdied the 18th hole for a 1-under-par 69 and a total of 2-under 278. It didn't seem to mean much until Watson's 8-iron approach to 18 was long. Using the putter, he took three from just off the green, shot 72 and also finished with 278.

Cink went par-par-birdie-birdie in the playoff, Watson bogey-par-double bogey-bogey.

Tied for third at 1-under 279 were two Englishmen -- Lee Westwood, who held the lead before bogeying 15, 16 and 18, and Chris Wood.

"It would have been a hell of a story," said Watson, who had at least part of the lead in all four rounds at Turnberry, where 32 years earlier he won the second of his five Open titles.

Indeed. Not that the 36-year-old Cink didn't like the story that came to be. He grew up watching Watson's World Golf Hall of Fame career, and to face him in a playoff for a major, Cink said, in a bit of awkward prose, "would be beyond even my mind's imagination capabilities."

The presumption was that holding up the last day was beyond Watson's capabilities. He had hip surgery in October. He plays the Champions Tour, where the courses are not as severe. He had not won a major since the 1983 British Open.

But with a hole to play, Watson was a shot ahead and seemed destined to become by 11 years the oldest man ever to win a major. Unfortunately, he hit an 8-iron when he said he should have used a 9, and the ball rolled off the back edge of the 18th green, Watson made a bad putt, then missed an 8-footer for the par and the win.

"Yes," Watson said, "it's a great disappointment. It tears at your gut, as it always has torn at my gut. It's not easy to take. The playoff was just one bad shot after another and Stewart did what he had to do."

Which was make one good shot after another.

Cink had won other tournaments. He had been on Ryder Cup teams. He just didn't have that finishing touch, a major. He does now.

"How much I needed it, I don't know," Cink said. "I'm not sure I ever thought about whether I was good enough to win a major or not. I knew I'd been close a few times, but I never heard my name tossed in there with the group of best ones not to win.

"So maybe I was starting to believe that, that I wasn't one of the best ones to never win a major."

Watson opened his post-round interview with the admonition, "This ain't a funeral, you know."

It was a golf tournament that gave Watson and others a huge jolt and then, excluding Cink, a massive letdown.

"It was almost," Watson said. "Almost. The dream almost came true."

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http://www.newsday.com/about/ny-spbrit2012984854jul19,0,2597041.story
Copyright © 2009, Newsday Inc.

CBSSports.com: Easygoing Cink gives fans fairy tale -- just not one they want

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By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange/CBSSports.com

TURNBERRY, Scotland -- It wasn't as if he shot Santa Claus. All Stewart Cink did was shoot under par. That he beat Tom Watson, whose age and reputation made him everybody's favorite, couldn't be held against Cink.

Finally Cink had won a major, the oldest one on the planet, the British Open.

Did it by sinking a 15-foot birdie putt on the final hole of regulation Sunday, and then after the 59-year-old Watson bogeyed the same hole, Cink crushed him in their four-hole playoff.

"It's a surreal experience for me," said Cink. "Not only did I play one of my favorite courses, but playing against Tom Watson. I grew up watching Tom Watson play on TV and hoping I could follow in his footsteps at the Open Championship.

"I feel so happy just to be part of all this."

As he should. As Watson felt so devastated.

After the 36-year-old Cink and Watson tied with 72-hole scores of 2-under 278, Watson, coming unglued, went 4 over par in the four extra holes -- the fifth, sixth, 17th and 18th -- while Cink went 2 under.

A onetime star at Georgia Tech, Cink twice finished third in majors, including the 2001 U.S. Open, when -- despite a reputation for being a great putter -- he missed a short one on the final green that kept him from a playoff. Cink is maybe the best unknown star on the PGA Tour.

He understood the compassion for Watson, a five-time Open winner who by 11 years could have become the oldest champion in a major.

Stewart was the unintended villain, the guy who ruined arguably the best golf story ever.

"Playing against Tom, it was with mixed feelings, because I watched him with such admiration all week," Cink said.

The admiration was universal. Virtually everyone in the boisterous gallery wanted Watson to make history.

"It's not the first time I've been under the radar," said Cink. "I've played a lot of times with Tiger [Woods] and hearing the Tiger roars, and with Mickelson. I'm usually the guy the crowd appreciates, but they're not behind me 100 percent. Maybe this will change it."

Or maybe not. For some, this 138th British Open at Turnberry on the Firth of Clyde will always be the one Watson lost rather than the one Stewart Cink one. The one that might have been.

Cink came in with a 1-under-par 69 Sunday, holing that 15-footer on 18, although at the time, with Watson several holes behind and battling Englishman Lee Westwood, the putt didn't seem that big. As we learned, it would become huge.

An easy-going individual -- and in this world of shouting and waving, that may have kept him in the figurative shadows -- Cink was mentioned by the golfing cognoscenti as one of the game's top players.

He had won other tournaments. He had been on Ryder Cup teams. He just didn't have that finishing touch, a major. He does now.

"How much I needed it, I don't know," Cink allowed. "I'm not sure I ever thought about whether I was good enough to win a major or not. I knew I'd been close a few times, but I never heard my name tossed in there with the group of best ones not to win.

"So maybe I was starting to believe that, that I wasn't one of the best ones to never win a major."

He can stop believing. The way he went through that playoff late on a windy afternoon, going par-par-birdie-birdie, was the stuff of excellence. He talked about Tiger, but Woods rarely has put on so emphatic a performance.

Someone wondered if Cink, who was embraced by his wife and family just off the 18th green, felt he had come in at the end of a syrupy Hollywood film and stolen the girl just before the final scene.

"Well, just as long as I get the girl," said Cink, "I'm OK with that. No, I don't feel that way. I feel like whether Tom was 59 or 29, he was one in the field. I had to play against everybody in the field and, of course, come out on top.

"I don't think anything can be taken away. Somebody may disagree with that, but it's going to be hard to convince me."

Understandably. Cink did what he was supposed to do, win the tournament, although admittedly it was not what many people wanted him to do. The Tom Watson Tale was one that never may come along again.

"I never would have dreamed that I would go up against Tom Watson head-to-head in a playoff for a major championship," Cink said. "That would be beyond even my mind's imagination capabilities."

That's an awkward way of saying that even if the ending wasn't all fuzzy and magical for the world of golf, the story was as good as it gets for Stewart Cink.

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http://www.cbssports.com/golf/story/11969462
© 2009 CBS Interactive. All rights reserved.