Watson Finally Feeling Below Par Again

Things come back. “Star Trek” came back. George Foreman came back. Short skirts came back. John Travolta came back. Wrestling came back. Mark Spitz came back. “Batman” came back. John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom came back. War came back.

Or were they never gone?

Tom Watson never was.

Yet we waited and waited and waited for Watson to come back, as though he were Godot, as though he must. For 10 years and more, he was the god of golf. PGA player of the year six times. Leading money-maker on the tour five years. Winner of five British Opens and two Masters. He was Thomas Sturges Watson, the green monster.

And then he wasn’t.

One day he was the fresh prince of Pebble Beach, with the most stupendous beyond-the-fringe shot anybody attending a U.S. Open ever did see. Clock hands spin. Calendar pages fall. It is nine years later and Tom Watson has won exactly three more tournaments in his native land. One at LaCosta and another outside Chicago in 1984. Something in San Antonio in 1987. Nothing since. Not a one. Not a major, not a minor.

Byron Nelson took a gander at his young friend one afternoon a dozen years ago and said: “Tom’s the top star of this sport, period.”

And then he wasn’t.

The book of Watson’s life, like Ronald Reagan’s, might well be called: “Where’s the Rest of Me?” The former President’s autobiography was so named because, in one of his films, his character awoke in a hospital and found that doctors had amputated a leg. Tom Watson waved his right arm limply after another exasperating experience a few years back and said: “Sometimes, I wish I could cut this thing off. It won’t do what I say.”

Immediately he apologized for this remark’s bad taste, because Tom Watson generally is careful not to offend. But such was his unhealthy attitude at the moment. There was a similar soul-searching question in the title of a Broadway play, “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” in which a sculptor wishes not to prolong his existence because he no longer has use of his hands. Watson was hardly this desperate, but he did know the feeling of losing one’s grip. Golf was his life.

Naturally, there was his wife Linda and their two kids, and his hunting rifle and his fishing pole and the guitar he fooled around with, and much else to live for, including a bunch of back-patting goodfellas at the Kansas City Country Club who still treated Tom as though he were the king of clubs. But even this element of Watson’s life took an unhappy turn. A summer or so ago, the membership application of Tom’s acquaintance Henry Block, of the income-tax Blocks, was thumbs-downed by his friends from the club. The more they talked it over, the more convinced Tom and Linda Watson became that the reason behind this rejection was an unspoken gentlemen’s agreement regarding Block’s religious affiliation, which was Jewish. Watson protested and quit the club.

Coming, as it did, on the heels of the Shoal Creek controversy over the absence of minority members at that Alabama club, Watson’s action shook a few people up. At last, an actual touring pro, one with a high profile, a champion, had taken a stand. Here finally was a golfer willing to draw a line in the sand.

Long ago, Watson once joked that golf’s interest would double if only the sport had some controversy. “Maybe I should get in a fistfight with Jack Nicklaus on the 18th green,” he said.

Not likely. The closest thing to anything violent in golf is a yellow shirt with red pants. Then again, perhaps Tom Watson will sword-fight with putters today with Ian Woosnam of Wales, with whom he will be partnered for the final round of the 55th Masters. They are the tournament leaders, Woosnam up by a stroke, on a weekend that has dug up Watson from the divot of the living dead.

His worst round in three days is 70. That’s how well Watson is playing. He and Nicklaus tap-danced together Friday as though the 1980s had never happened. Their carbon-copy 30-footers at the 16th green raised goose bumps over every arm in Augusta. They were so good you swear they were faking it, like Milli Vanilli. It was like looking at an old movie that somebody had colorized.

Saturday, Watson walked side by side with Woosnam, one of the few players who could call him “Stretch.” There was a hop to the 41-year-old’s step that made him look like a freckle-faced caddie. Even on the greens Watson looked cheerful, and in recent years the yips have caused his knees to clack like castanets.

Tom Watson was as washed up as an old Titleist in a ball washer.

And then he wasn’t.

“I’m not through with golf yet, or maybe I should say it’s not through with me,” said Watson, who came back when nobody was looking, from somewhere far back in life’s pack, to the delight of anyone at any club who would have him as a member.