Jack Nicklaus made sure he was one of the first people to call Tom Watson after he came agonisingly close to winning The Open Championship at Turnberry in 2009.
Golf has rarely come closer to seeing a fairytale play out on a major championship stage than when Tom Watson looked set to win a sixth Open title at the age of 59.
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Watson went down the 72nd hole needing a par to lift the Claret Jug once again. Unfortunately, a bogey would see him end up in a playoff with Stewart Cink. And Cink proved to be clinical over the four additional holes.
It had been two decades since Watson had registered a top five finish at The Open. He had also not won a major since 1983.
What Jack Nicklaus did after Tom Watson lost the 2009 Open Championship in a playoff
As he revealed on Chronicles of a Champion Golfer, Watson’s mood in the hours after was lifted once he took a call from Jack Nicklaus.
“The disappointment after losing was written all over the face of my friend Andy North who had followed me that round, and my wife Hilary,” he said.
“And after the press conference where I said, ‘come on everybody, hurry up, this is not a funeral, hurry up, get in here, let’s get on with it’, after that we walk up to a room, we’re getting ready to go to dinner and Hilary’s phone rings. She says, ‘Hi Barbara’. I knew, Barbara Nicklaus. ‘Here, Jack wants to speak to you, Tom’.
“And he gets on the phone and Jack said, ‘I did something today I’ve never done in my life’. I said, ‘what’s that, Jack?’ He said, ‘I watched a tournament from the start of the round to the end of the round when you were playing’. He said, ‘you played the right shot for your third shot. You gave yourself a chance to win by putting the ball rather than chipping’.
“That was a relief, because I got that question in the press. And on the putt, he said, ‘you hit the putt like the rest of us would have hit it’. That broke me up, that just cracked me up. It was a slight needle that made you laugh.
“That’s what type of friend Jack is to me. He knew of my suffering, he knew how I was feeling. He’d experience it before and he had to call his friend to help him out, which he did, and I’m very grateful for it.”
How Tom Watson reacted to all of the letters he received after Turnberry
Only Harry Vardon has won The Open more often than Watson. The American would have moved level with a victory at Turnberry.
Nevertheless, it was clearly an incredibly special week for anyone who watched Watson’s display, as well as the class he conducted himself with afterwards.
It turns out that Watson made sure to reply to almost all of the letters he received in the weeks and months after.
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“The response that I received from people all over the world: ‘Tom, you’ve given me hope. You’ve given me the desire to continue. Things that I gave up because of my age, you’ve given me that’,” he said.
“I answered most of them. There were thousands, but I answered most of them. People were genuine in saying you’ve helped me. A loss helped a lot of people.”
There is no question about Watson’s brilliance on the course. And perhaps it is fair to say that the game has never had a better ambassador.
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