Tom Watson Jilted at Immortality's Altar

"Tell him win one for the old folks, make us proud, make us cry again..."

                                           Jack Nicklaus on Tom Watson (ABC)

Tom Watson stood on the 18th fairway Sunday holding a one-shot lead in the 138 Open Championship.

As he waited to hit his approach shot to that 72nd hole, he was staring directly into the unforgiving eyes of destiny.

Lady Turnberry had seemingly wrapped her arms around him and was prepared to walk him to the altar of immortality in sports.

His sixth Claret Jug was waiting at the reception.

Minutes later the clock of borrowed youth struck midnight one shot too soon.

With a nine-foot putt standing between him and history no one could imagine, Watson's game suddenly turned old. His putting stroke turned feeble with an effort that came up short and right and denied the victory that seemingly all of Scotland and the rest of the world were pulling for.

His 277th shot, the shot that would have won this revered championship, was an ugly bug of a putt.

Watson tapped in for the fateful bogey and it was though all the fresh air had been let out of Turnberry.

That bogey ended Watson's chance to finish it all there at that final hole and do what no one had ever done in sports, anytime, anywhere in any era. It could have been the greatest of stories, ever. Instead, he faced the daunting challenge of a four-hole playoff with Stewart Cink, a man seeking his first-ever major.

Both had tied at two-under par 278.

To say the playoff was anti-climatic is an understatement. It was a cruel ending to a day of supreme drama. It was a day that once again saw Watson charge from behind while younger competitors fell by the wayside down the stretch. It was painfully obvious in the playoff that Watson, the little engine that could, had run out of magic and perhaps out of gas as well.

He played those holes four-over, including a double-bogey at the par five 17th, thanks to an errant drive and futile efforts to extract himself from the long rough. Cink stood on the last playoff hole with a four-shot lead, a margin that even Jean Van de Velde could not have squandered.

Cink birdied the last hole and put his punctuation mark on the victory.

In the end, it was one of golf's great gentlemen congratulating Cink, also a gentleman by reputation and newest member of golf's major fraternity.

Cink played the role of unwilling villain, the man who ended what might have been the perfect story.

"It would have been a heck of a story, wouldn't it?" Watson said to the assembled media afterwards.

And it was more than that for 71 holes.

It was an improbable tale, even to the most optimistic.

If he had it over, Watson said he'd have hit a nine-iron for his final approach rather than the eight-iron that went long, over the green and into a spot from which he could not rescue a par.

In the end, it was Watson consoling everyone:

"Hey, this ain't a funeral," he joked as he sat down for his interview.

He had turned back the clock of memories and put together an effort no one could possibly have imagined.

But perhaps it was a funeral of sorts. For on that final, dramatic day, those final undramatic playoff holes sounded the death knell of what could have been one of the greatest stories in the history of sports.

It was something no one has come close to doing and perhaps no one will again.

It was that special.