As Tom Watson strode purposefully the forty or so paces from the 17th green to the Tee box on 18 on Sunday of The Open Championship, the set of his strong jaw looked remarkably similar to the image of Watson that many in the gallery and millions more watching at home had kept in their minds since watching him for the first time in the 1970s. Gone was the shy, gap-toothed, aw-shucks smile that had been seen striding around the Ailsa course at Turnberry for the last three and a half days as he almost apologetically stayed in contention for golf’s most treasured prize. Of course, the basic decency of the man remained secure, his legendary respect for the game, his fellow competitors and the fans worn as comfortably as the snappy argyll sweaters he sported throughout the weekend. But as he approached what must surely be his final tee-shot of the tournament, something fundamentally had changed and if you looked closely at his face, that visage ravaged wonderfully by years of striving in the wind and sun, looking remarkably similar to the rugged, rocky Ayrshire coastline on which he now stood to complete the most unlikely victory of his career to date, you saw that change and were suddenly afraid for the result.

This tournament began, as all events in golf have for the past 14 years, with a discussion of Tiger. How was Tiger? Was Tiger fully recovered from his surgery? How would Tiger play on a course he had not yet dominated? For the past decade and a half if Eldrick Woods was not participating in that week’s event the pundits and TV personalities would reluctantly drag their adoring attention briefly away and consider some less fortunate plodder.  The event would be poorer lacking his glowing presence. TV audiences would drop by something approaching 50%, galleries would be smaller, but the hope would remain, Tiger will be back soon.  Just twelve months earlier, no one could be sure that the sun would come up tomorrow for golf, as Tiger underwent major surgery to repair a badly damaged knee.  One can picture PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem and a selection of Network TV Sports Presidents gathered outside the O.R. wringing their hands and praying to their personal gods like expectant family members waiting to hear the results of a life-saving operation on a beloved relative. “Pleeeeease God…take me, save Tiger!!!”  None of that fell to be considered at Turnberry however, as his Royal “Swoosh”ness was thankfully in attendance.  The storylines were set, some bit-players were ready to deliver their cameos and in the end, despite some trifling obstacles, Tiger would prevail.

That golf has reached this situation could not have been foreseen when Tom Watson first came to the awareness of the public in the early 1970’s.  Golf had enjoyed tremendous success both as a participant and spectator sport and would continue to increase in popularity for the foreseeable future.  The greats of the sport had, as in baseball, enjoyed their run of success but always sharing the spotlight with some other worthy competitor. Hagen and Jones, Hogan and Snead, Palmer and Nicklaus, Trevino and Player had paralleled their careers and ensured golf’s place in the public eye, in the way that Ruth and Gehrig, Musial and Williams, DiMaggio and Mantle had together propelled baseball steadily towards a bright future. Tom Watson and an older but still feisty Nicklaus did their part by staging a number of epic duels, most notably at the US Open and at The Open Championship at Turnberry in 1977.  It was at the heart of what made golf compelling, fierce competition against the backdrop of a tough golf course and the cruel vagaries of the game itself. But all that changed in 1995 when a teenager fresh out of Stanford arrived on the scene, heralded as golf’s shining deliverer, but in reality its potential instrument of destruction.  Now, the results of any tournament came down to three possibilities: Tiger won. Tiger didn’t compete making the result inconsequential, or Tiger somehow lost.  He was never beaten, but somehow -and usually illustrated through the super-slow motion lens of something pithily known as the “Konica Swing Vision” we were treated to a complicated, really more like incomprehensible explanation of why- Tiger lost the tournament.  There were no other heroes, only the mundane, mechanical reality of Tiger making the necessary adjustments to win next time. Tiger could determine the financial success or failure of any particular event by his mere presence, like an Olympian God Tiger could arbitrarily point his finger and bestow riches on a corporation and a community, or conversely wipe a town from the map of the PGA.

That is why Watson’s appearance on the Leaderboard of the 2009 Open Championship seemed like a magical gift from the past. Tiger’s unexpected, almost unprecedented removal from the competition by missing the cut need not result in the self-immolation of executives at ABC Sports.  They were temporarily relieved from the need to consider reprogramming 5 hours of Network TV time on Sunday afternoon with reruns of Dancing With the Stars. As long as Watson could continue his age-defying act, viewers would continue to watch, enthralled by the story, engaged by the drama.  We were treated to discussions of course conditions and historical references, not as pro-forma filler between Tiger’s shots but as the essential fabric of determining a champion.  Everything that was once great about golf was suddenly on display and it took the re-emergence of one of its ancient heroes to accomplish it.  Like Odysseus returning from the dead, Watson was back to teach a new generation about what once made golf great.  Any discussion by some quarters about how a Watson victory would denigrate golf is preposterous.  Professional golf as a spectator sport is already on its death bed, its breathing supported artificially by Tiger’s brilliance.  Watson, however showed the powers of golf a way back. Step away from the one -albeit brilliant- note that is Tiger.  Encourage the emergence of other personalities and play regularly on courses that are challenging enough to become part of the story, not the benign backdrop for pointless domination by Titanium-wielding robots.

But as Tom Watson stepped onto the tee at 18 none of these were the dominating thoughts.  Whatever the result, the reticent native of Missouri had already done his part to illuminate the future path for a renaissance of the game.  It now came down to winning and by birdying the 17th and after the collapse of  Lee Westwood –one of the many bloodless, faux-stars of the current crop of players- Watson now suddenly found himself in a position he had probably been hoping to avoid the entire weekend…it was his to lose. A mere par would re-write the history books. But Tom Watson had been in this position many times before and had been let down enough by a recalcitrant putter that his face revealed the fact about 20 minutes before the world let out the familiar “oooomph” of a sucker-punch to the solar plexus.  There would be no fairy-tale finish, no hoisting for a 5th time of the Claret Jug but only the lasting memory of a star from another age returned not to embarrass a new era of golf, but to show them a way back.  Our only response should be to say, “thanks Tom”.