Newsday: Watson falters, loses British Open playoff to Cink

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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