Once more just for old time's sake

By Michael Corcoran
Courtesy of Scotland on Sunday

Before the first practice ball is struck and after the last putt falls this week at the Senior British Open, the talk will be of Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson. No golf course in the world is so consistently mentioned in the same breath with those combined legends as is Turnberry.

Strictly speaking, the terra- firma element of this notable threesome is the famed hotel's Ailsa links, but if one were playing a word-association game, the equation for golf history's perfect event would read: Nicklaus + Watson There will, of course, be 142 golfers at Turnberry this week who are not Jack Nicklaus or Tom Watson. Odds are that one of them will win, but this week is probably the final time that Nicklaus and Watson will play Turnberry together in competition. Viewed in that light, the 142 others who make up the rest of the field are mere filler.

At 63 and 53, Nicklaus and Watson are long removed from days when they could impose their will upon the outcome of tournaments. And we wish it weren't true, because back when Nicklaus and Watson could pick up a tournament field by their collective scruff, it was truly something to see.

In the Open Championship at Turnberry 26 years ago, they set the bar for epic drama so impossibly high that not even Tiger Woods has come within sniffing distance of it. Over four days in July 1977, all of the game's disparate elements, each in its purest form, were channelled through Nicklaus and Watson in a performance that indisputably remains the game's finest hour.

The first two rounds of the '77 Open demonstrated that Ailsa had some teeth despite bluebird weather and a prolonged drought in south-west Scotland. Nicklaus and Watson posted matching scores of 68, 70 and 65 in the first three rounds. In the final round - the Open began on Wednesday at the time - they were in the final pairing at 1.30pm.

At the second hole, Nicklaus made a birdie three and Watson a bogey five. Almost at once, spectators recognised something special was afoot. Nicklaus had won the Open twice in Scotland, and now that he was bearing down on a third, the hue and cry of 18,000 sunburnt Scotsmen was letting him know they were pulling for him.

Ahead of Nicklaus and Watson, Ben Crenshaw could feel the atmosphere becoming charged. "The crowds were very vocal," Crenshaw recalled. "They knew they were seeing something rare, something beyond anything they'd ever seen before."

At the fourth hole, Nicklaus rolled in another birdie, and the lack of prolonged rain and 36,000 or so marching feet combined to kick up a cloud of dust along not just the hole that they were contesting, but the hole immediately in front as spectators ran ahead to get in position.

"The crowd was absolutely chock-a-block," said Bobbie Millen, Crenshaw's caddie. "The dust was flying everywhere, and several times Ben had to pause to get the dust out of his eyes."

Watson always seemed to play at his best after getting his nose a bit bloody, and having gifted Nicklaus a two-stroke lead, he began to fight back. He birdied the fifth, and at the long par-three sixth, he tugged a 3-wood left of his line and into a bunker. After a pedestrian effort from the sand, Watson paced the green trying to get a read on his six-foot par putt.

The most fearless putter in the game at the time, he faced a stroke that Peter Alliss described as one that would "get the heart a-thumpin'." His face was stoical, and realising the gravity of the moment, he did something uncharacteristic: for the only time in their association, Watson asked his English caddie, Alf Fyles, to look at the line. Fyles stood behind the ball, and offered: "It will move left just at the last." Watson played the ball as Fyles suggested - and it tumbled in just at the last.

By now both men were fully aware that for one of the rare times in stroke-play golf, they had only each other to worry about. Watson was two strokes behind, and could not afford to let his opponent make a birdie without matching him.

At the par-five seventh, Watson played a nervy second shot from the fairway with his driver. With the ground as hard as the runways nearby next to the Kintyre course, it seemed a risky strategy. Watson, however, carefully thought the shot through: "I had something like 240 [yards] to the green, and I was pretty good with the driver off the deck. Wooden drivers had a higher centre of gravity, and it was tough to get them airborne off the ground unless you had a swing like Sam Snead's.

"I thought it was the best shot I could play. If I hit it a little thin, it would still run down the fairway. Also, if I pushed it or pulled it, the lower trajectory of the ball would keep it from ballooning up and over the dunes. So I felt like I could keep the ball in play even if I hit it off line."

He made a confident strike, the ball's trajectory that of a bazooka shell as it drifted almost imperceptibly from left to right and bounded up on to the green. "It was my best shot of the day," said Watson. After the round, Nicklaus said that he had "admired that shot"; with two sure putts, Watson was within one stroke.

The eighth saw a vintage Watson moment. With 20 feet for a birdie, he rolled the ball so boldly that it would have gone at least that far past had it missed: it hit dead centre. "That was a lucky putt," he said. "It had the line, but not the touch."

As the two stood on Ailsa's famously-isolated ninth tee, they were momentarily on their own: 50 yards off, a roiling cauldron of humanity was on the brink of pandemonium. It was after they played their tee shots that the dam burst, the ropes holding back the spectators gave way to a surge, and in an instant frenzied fans were running down the fairway past the players.

Angelo Argea, Nicklaus' caddie, said: "It was a stampede. The people were going wild. I thought Jack was going to get trampled."

Nicklaus added: "We were so wrapped up in our games that it took a second to realise what was going on. Nothing like that had ever happened to me at a golf tournament before."

With order restored, the struggle continued, Nicklaus surging ahead, Watson fighting back. Fresh off a birdie at the 13th, and back within a stroke of Nicklaus, Watson paused on the 14th tee: "It was an exceptional sight. It was so warm, and people had their shirts off. They were fried like lobsters, red-skinned and running everywhere. The people had just finished crossing the fairway, and a cloud of dust hung in the air.

"It was like Golf in the Kingdom. I just really felt that I had always wanted to compete against the best, and here I was doing it. And not doing too badly."

It was then that Watson, 27, turned to the 37-year-old Nicklaus and said: "This is what it's all about, isn't it?" Nicklaus smiled, and responded: "You bet it is."

"It just came from the heart," Watson reflected years later. He finally took the lead after 71 holes when he birdied the 17th and Nicklaus missed a short birdie putt. At the 18th, Nicklaus pushed his drive to the right, the ball finding gorse off the fairway. When Argea arrived at the ball, he was shaken: "That gorse had horns on it. His ball wasn't in the gorse, but it was the thickest rough on the whole course." In fact, because of the dry spell, it was the only thick rough.

While Nicklaus contemplated, Watson played the shot that seemed sure to draw a curtain on the scene. With 178 yards to go, and his adrenaline coursing, he fired a 7-iron directly at the flag. It stopped two feet from the hole.

But Watson knew that legends do not surrender. They fight until beaten, and now it was Nicklaus who came off the ropes. He had 160 yards to the hole and an 8-iron in his hands. He needed the loft to get the ball free of the tangled grass, but he would have to make a mighty swing and avoid an interfering branch of gorse. All was quiet as he steadied himself. Then came the signature cocking of the head, and Nicklaus drew the club back fully to parallel and lashed furiously at the ball, a blow that Alliss described as "animalistic".

The lead edge of the 8-iron scythed away a large clump of grass, which clung to the clubhead until the follow-through was finished. Nicklaus did not see the ball land. The instant he struck it, the stewards behind him dropped the ropes and the crowd rushed in.

"They ran full tilt the second he hit the shot," said Watson. Nicklaus could only listen, until he heard the greenside arena explode. Somehow, Nicklaus had muscled the ball on to the right front edge of the green.

Of course, he made the putt, momentarily pulling level. Watson, by his own admission, had a very simple short putt, and he dispatched it with ease for an aggregate of 268 (68-70-65-65). It was the second of his five Open Championships; Nicklaus won his third and final Open the next year at St Andrews.

The giants return to Turnberry this week to play together at the course to which they are inextricably linked. Both realise the special quality of their reunion with Ailsa. So much so that, at Watson's suggestion, they are staying together in a house for the week. "I'm going to enjoy the moment," he observed. "I'll enjoy it more if I play well, and less if I don't, but then that's always been the way for me."

Watson has been playing well, leading the US Open after the first round and performing solidly, and ending the first day of the Open in the top ten. In a string of important seniors' events, he has been in a position to win, but come up short. "The consistency isn't there. I have some good stretches, but I haven't put the rounds back to back."

For those spectators at Turnberry who witnessed the white-belted Watson in 1977, the biggest difference will be on the greens. "My putting isn't as sharp as it was 26 years ago. I hit the ball the same distance - not as high as I used to because of a swing change I made about ten years ago, but I hit it straighter."

He will arrive directly from Sandwich, while Nicklaus has spent a few days fishing in Iceland, and today is in Russia, looking over a course-design project near Moscow.

Nicklaus' good rounds are few and far between these days. He had his left hip replaced some years ago, and that is the most reliable part of his chassis. "The left hip is bionic," he joked. "The rest of me is 63 years old."

His lower back has given him fits for years, but some of the pain has been alleviated by a diet that allows his anti- inflammatory system to work at a higher level. The back still acts up now and again, but the diet at least makes it possible to swing the club - and he has lost 20lb in weight.

The young Nicklaus was viewed in a somewhat villainous light by Americans because he had the temerity to beat Arnold Palmer. But in Scotland, his talent and nature were appreciated as early as a Walker Cup visit to Muirfield in 1959 ...

"The Scots are very knowledgeable and passionate about the game. They respect its history and traditions, and they respect those who also embrace those aspects of the game. The Scots always seemed to support me during Open Championships, and their support grew with the years.

"Since I am returning to Turnberry, I think back to the 1977 Open, when Tom and I had that wonderful duel down the stretch. I was later told that the fans came along and dropped coins in the divot I made by the gorse on the 18th, which was a show of appreciation for a good shot and a token for good luck.

"Then, the next year at St Andrews, the Scots were a part of what is arguably my fondest Open memory. I will never forget the scene as I walked up the fairway that final round. The people were standing in the bleachers and hanging from the windows, screaming wildly for me. It was an overwhelming moment.

"While the Scots had endeared themselves to me long before, that day I shared a bond with them that will not soon slip from my memory."