2009 Open Championship, Turnberry — the same links where he’d beaten Jack Nicklaus in the Duel in the Sun 32 years earlier. Tom Watson, 59 years old, stood in the fairway on the 72nd hole needing a par to win the Claret Jug and become the oldest major champion in history by more than a decade.
He pulled 8-iron. And here is the cruelty of it: he hit it perfectly. Flushed it. So pure that it landed on the green and skipped through the back, into the collar of rough. Had he hit it slightly worse, he’d have had 20 feet for the win.
He putted from off the green and ran it eight feet past. Then he missed. Bogey. Playoff with Stewart Cink, and at 59 there was nothing left in the tank — Cink won it by six.
“That was the ugliest stroke in the world,” Watson said. “I don’t want to relive that thing.”