'Freak' Watson adds another chapter to not-done-yet story

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A part of Tom Watson's swing clicked last week, and the result was a major championship at age 61.

David Eger has seen golf from every angle. As an administrator with the PGA TOUR and the United States Golf Association, he learned to appreciate the game from a perspective up-close-and-personal with its players. Eger was inside the ropes without a club in his hand and that's a rare vantage point.

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Eger has been inside the game at the highest levels swinging a club, too, and he can appreciate all the nuances, all the twists and turns, and all of the esoteric meanderings the game encourages. Eger has competed against the best as an amateur and a professional, a point he made again at Valhalla Golf Club. Eger reached a playoff before losing to one of golf's all-time greats, Tom Watson, at the Senior PGA Championship.

In a memorable finish, Watson, 61, added another major championship to his truly remarkable haul. Eger has been around to witness what Watson and another of the game's great champions, Hale Irwin, have accomplished since their first major victories -- Irwin's came at the 1974 U.S. Open, Watson's at the 1975 British Open. Irwin, the all-time leader with 45 Champions Tour victories, turned back the clock a few days shy of his 66th birthday to contend at Valhalla before finishing fourth.

"I think that Tom and Hale are freaks," said Eger, 59. "And I say that in a complimentary way. I call Hale '45'. That's what he's got, that's the numerals he has on his golf ball. I asked (Watson) walking off the 18th tee there in the playoff how old he was, and he told me 61. And we added up to, what? 120 years combined.

"It's amazing. Tom hasn't played well this year until this week and suddenly, bam, it clicked on. I don't know what he does out there in Kansas City, or wherever in the world he goes, but whatever he does, it's been the right formula for 11 years out here (on the Champions Tour). I wish he played more. I understand why (he doesn't), he has other priorities and whatnot, but both Tom and Hale are unbelievable golfers and people and athletes. They're really attributes to their profession."

It's true. There was a bit of Emeril Lagasse and the Bam! factor in the golf Watson produced at Valhalla that enabled him to become the second-oldest winner of the Senior PGA Championship. Jock Hutchison was 62 when he won the title in 1947.

At Valhalla, Watson became the third-oldest winner in Champions Tour history and the oldest winner of a major championship on the Champions Tour since the Tour began in 1980. Irwin previously held that distinction (59 years, 11 months, 28 days) when he won the 2004 Senior PGA Championship, also at Valhalla. Watson has won twice over the age of 60 and has six major titles on the Champions Tour.

Watson didn't give himself much chance entering the week. His practice in Kansas City a week before wasn't encouraging. And then, Bam!, it happened.

"The light switch went on," he said. "I went back to a move in the backswing that I had not been doing or been using."

Watson was picking the club up on the backswing.

"Just using my hands taking it away," he said. "And I thought about just dragging the club back as low as I could, keeping everything together on the backswing. And, lo and behold, the swing started working again."

Rediscovering new/old secrets is the essence of golf. Unraveling the mystery is what it's all about. And then seeing 'it' disappear. They go hand-in-hand. One minute it's here, then it's forgotten and then, seemingly out of nowhere, it's back again. It happens even to the greats.

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"It is the definition of the game," Watson said. "I don't know how many times I've been close enough to feel like I could touch it, I could smell it, but just actually touch it and grab on to it like this, and then when you get that close you feel like you've got it, and then all of a sudden the wheels fall off.

"You say, 'Where did it go? Where did it go?' And your confidence goes down with that.

That's the beauty of this game. Bobby Jones said it's played between the five inches here (between the ears). All the cliches are accurate about this game. It's not a game of perfect."

Few have ever come closer to perfection than Watson -- Nicklaus, Hogan, Jones, and maybe a couple of others -- but nobody's achieved it and nobody ever will.

But at the highest levels, it sure is fun trying. Just ask Watson, who can honestly say he has come close to whatever the ultimate is in golf.

"The game remains fun," he said. "It's fun when you hit the ball where you're looking. Not fun when you miss short putts, but it's fun, it's fun to hit the ball where you're looking and hit the quality shots when you have to when the chips are down. That's what I'm out here to do is compete and I enjoy the pressure and putting myself under that pressure to hit those shots that I have to hit.

"I'm living on borrowed time right now at 61. These young kids coming out here hit the ball so much farther than I do and, you know, their nerves are pretty much still intact. And they don't have the aches and pains and I've been lucky with that, but I'm starting to get few aches and pains and I feel very fortunate to have won. Very, very fortunate."

And we are all very fortunate to still have the opportunity to watch him do it again and again.

Vartan Kupelian is a freelance columnist for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the PGA TOUR.