Date: 19/07/2009
The debate will continue for as long as Tom Watson plays golf - and Stewart Cink come to that. Was the outcome of the 138th Open Championship good or bad for the sport? Do we cheer for Cink or weep for Watson?
Links golf courses occasionally do produce unusual champions. Ben Curtis in the 2003 Open at Sandwich and Todd Hamilton at Royal Troon in 2004 are recent examples. Fast-running links courses also enable older competitors to compete against younger ones in a way that inland courses often do not.
In recent Opens, too, amateurs have done well on links courses, which is probably because of the amount of golf they play on such courses. So, do we damn or praise the quirkiness of links?
“Golf is not a business; it's an art form, like a Picasso painting or a Steinbeck novel,” Watson once said. On Sunday night, he also said: “Boys, it ain't a funeral. It would have been a hell of a story.”
Watson had been eight feet from bringing off possibly the greatest sports story of all time. He had been wanting it. We had been wanting it. Some of his fellow competitors had wanted it. Even a part of Cink had wanted it. In the end, Cink got his hands on the trophy and the Open will be remembered as the one that Watson lost. Although the 6ft 4in Cink towers over almost every rival, he will be remembered at Turnberry for being overshadowed by a man seven inches shorter.
Those who raise an eyebrow at links golf do so on the grounds that as the game is played through the air at the three other major championships, it is less appropriate when it is played along the ground at the fourth. Comparisons between the two styles of golf courses are made to grass tennis courts and those of other surfaces.
Lucas Glover had only one victory to his name before he won last month's US Open at a monster of an inland course in New York state. Is he a more worthy champion than Cink, who has five victories on the PGA Tour in the US and triumphed on the testing seaside links of Turnberry, having honed his game on links in Ireland? Although it did not happen this time, the world's best player won when the Open was held at Turnberry on the three previous occasions: Tom Watson in 1977, Greg Norman in 1986 and Nick Price in 1994. I think that the variation brought to golf by the requirements needed to play links courses are a strength of the game not a weakness. To plagiarise: what does he know of golf who only air golf knows?
A golfer used to air golf becomes a more rounded player by undergoing the experience of having to land his approach shot 20 yards short of a green to allow it to run up to the flagstick; of having to float a shot in on the wind or having to go down the shaft of a five-iron to hit a ball 90 yards into a wind coming off the sea. He may not like it, he may choose not to play it again, but at least he has experienced it.
Golfers may wear a sort of uniform but theirs is far from a uniform game. Starting in 2006, the Open has produced four stunning championships in a row in conditions that differ dramatically. Tiger Woods, the best player in the world, won the first, Padraig Harrington won in 2007 and 2008, and then won the US PGA Championship as well. No doubts about his ability.
The fourth Open to be staged at Turnberry ended in anticlimax because we wanted Watson to win. Those of us who witnessed it might not have deserved to have been present at what would have been the greatest performance in the history of the game. But there seems little reason to question the legitimacy of links golf as a result. It was still a hell of a story.
Moving up in the world
Tom Watson's agonising play-off defeat at the Open has improved his world ranking 1,269 places - from 1,374th to 105th. Had he become the Open champion, Watson would today be ranked No 45 in the world. Stewart Cink moves up from No 33 to No 9.
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