Tom Watson’s bid to become the oldest player to win one of golf’s major championships, the British Open at Turnberry, was doomed from the start as TV commentators eager for a storied Open offered increasingly hackneyed clichés as the 59-year-old Watson took over the leader board in the first round and held it until the weight of one banal cliché after another finally crushed any hope he had of holing that last 10 ft putt on the last hole of the last round.
As Watson surveyed his putt a breathless TV commentor said, “He has a chance to make history for the first time,” and another said, “If I were his caddy I’d go over to him and put my arm around his shoulder and tell him, Tom, you’ve made a million of these putts in your career.” Now a move like that by Watson’s caddy, Neil Oxman, would surely have made history for the first time, and may even have raised Watson’s former long-time caddy, Bruce Edwards, from the dead – talk about making history!
As it turned out, TV commentators and newspaper writers alike had to settle for the colorless Stewart Cink, whose head resembles some of the Turnberry ‘greens,’ holding up the Claret Jug while they worked in Watson’s loss with Cink’s last name.
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