Tom Watson was on the verge of tears.
On Wednesday, the 75-year-old eight-time major champion attended the PGA Show in Orlando and was honored by the National Golf Course Owners Association with its Merit Award, the association’s highest honor. He participated in an hour-long conversation with NGCOA CEO Jay Karen and discussed some of the highs and lows of his career, sprinkling some swing tips with advice on the business of the game that attendees could take home to their clubs. . But it was at the end of the session, when Karen opened up questions to audience members, that a participant asked what seemed like an innocuous question that struck a chord with Watson.
“What is your favorite memory of golf, whether it was playing or anything else that you can share with this room?”
Watson was silent for 10 seconds. “Excuse me,” he finally said. Another 10 seconds of silence in the room as Watson tried to control his emotions.
“That was the last time I played with my dad,” he began. “I’ll tell you the story.”
Raymond Watson was a retired insurance salesman and former Kansas City (Mo.) Country Club champion, who put a hickory-shafted 5-iron into his son’s hands in 1955 at the age of six and immediately taught him the correct grip and position. A scratch handicap player, Raymond died of a heart attack in 2000 at the age of 80 while in Hawaii to watch his son compete in a PGA Tour Champions event.
“My father had a stroke at the age of 78, but he loved to play. He would go out on those 38 degree days with a hat, gloves, his long sleeves and corduroy pants and he would go out with six clubs in a little bag and he would walk around the golf courses and play nine times. holes,” Watson said. “I always asked, ‘What did you shoot, Dad?’ He said: “Ah, I took €50 from a newspaper. »
“Diary is all about guessing what you filmed when you picked up. I gave myself a 7. I kept asking, “What did you shoot?” It said: “A newspaper 94”. Before having a stroke, he had shot around 70 years old, his age then being 78 years old. We would go to Michigan via Long Lake. We spent 2 to 3 weeks there every summer. His favorite course was Belvedere Golf Club in Charlevoix, the beautiful (Willie) Watson course there. And here we are, it’s 1999. The last round of golf we played on this trip was at Belvedere. We got to the first tee and I said, “All right, Dad, here’s the deal: no pickup today.” The reason I said that was because he hadn’t been above 90 since the stroke. He got off to a good start. He was 3 over par after 8 hours. He understood. Nine, he makes a double bogey, damn it, but still, he’s out in 41.”
Watson thought his father could make 48 on the back foot, no problem, but then he started making a few double bogeys on the way home.
“We get to the last hole and he has to make bogey to shoot 89,” Watson continued. “He hits a perfect drive, he smokes it there. But on the second blow, the blow got him. He had a problem with his right hand and he lost the club and the ball hit the tip of that hybrid and went straight right and under a tree into rough, bare fescue dirt. Oh, shoot!
“I didn’t have the heart to go there. He took out a club and I’ll never forget his last swing, whoosh, he couldn’t make a full swing because of a tree branch that stopped his follow through but there’s dust and the bullet comes flying out and lands about 20 yards away. of the green and rolls up like this (hands close together). He has it! I walk up there and considered giving him the putt, but knowing my dad, I knew he wouldn’t take it. I made him make a putt and he missed it.
But Raymond Watson still finished with a bogey for 89 and broke 90 for the first time since suffering a stroke.
“Coming off the green, he probably reacted exactly like I would have reacted,” Tom said. “Dad, do you know what you shot? Yeah, son, I know what I shot. He was upset that he missed that short putt. It was the last round of golf I played with my father.
Watson’s favorite golf memory had nothing to do with one of his greatest accomplishments, but rather a round with his father, the man who introduced him to the game. And everyone in that room at the Orange County Convention Center that hung on Watson’s every word at the NGCOA conference closing luncheon will never forget the Hall of Famer’s emotional response to an open-ended, softball question.
This article was originally published on Golfweek: Watson tells the story of the last time he played with his father