Five-time Open winner Tom Watson announces his retirement at Senior equivalent

It started on a jocular note. “I will not seek, nor will I accept, my party’s nomination for the President of the United States,” said Tom Watson to a chorus of laughter. As that died down, his tone quickly turned serious as he then made an announcement that will be met with sadness by every single British golf fan lucky to have watched the man who was the best links player of his generation.

Tom Watson announces his retirement at Royal Lytham & St Annes. Photo by Phil Inglis/Getty Images

Four years after the five-time winner brought down the curtain on his Open Championship career, the end is also nigh in the Senior equivalent, which fell to him three times after turning 50. Today’s final round in this week’s event at Royal Lytham will be the 69-year-old’s last competitive outing on British soil. Watson is also calling it a day in the US Senior Open.

A decade after he almost pulled off one of the greatest sporting tales of all time when a 72nd-hole bogey at Turnberry denied him a sixth Claret Jug at the age of 59, the Kansas City man no longer feels he has the game to compete. He wants to spend more time with his wife, Hilary, as she battles cancer. He also aims to get his teeth into cutting, a western-style equestrian competition.

“I guess you could say that this might be riding off into the sunset on the back of a horse and essentially it is,” said Watson. “I’ve thought quite long and hard about the decision I’ve made. It has to do with really a pretty sensible assessment of how I play the game now. I don’t have the tools in the toolbox to really compete successfully.

Tom Watson shakes hands with Jack Nicklaus on the 18th green at Turnberry in 1977. Picture: Allsport UK/ALLSPORT

“So, therefore, I’m basically declaring now that this is my last Senior British Open Championship. I’m also going to hang up the spikes in the US Senior Open. I’ve had a good career playing professional golf all these years. I’ve run 
across so many fine people who have helped me and supported me.

“My real passion right now is not particularly playing golf; it’s competing on the back of a horse. And I started this about three years ago, and it’s called cutting. And I have made it my goal to try to surpass Hal Sutton. Hal’s lifetime earnings are $42,000. My lifetime earnings right now are $19,000. So I’m after you, Hal!”

Watson recorded four of his five Open Championship successes on Scottish soil, making a winning debut at Carnoustie in 1975, beating Jack Nicklaus in their infamous “Duel in the Sun” at Turnberry two years later before adding victories at Muirfield and Royal Troon in 1980 and 1982 respectively. All three of his Senior Open wins were also landed in the sport’s cradle as he triumphed at Turnberry (2006), Royal Aberdeen (2005) and Muirfield (2007).

“I’m good with it. I’m very good with it,” he insisted of his decision. “I might play a few selected tournaments still. But I played with Darren Clarke and Miguel Angel Jimenez the first two rounds [in this week’s event], and I’m three clubs shorter than Darren and two clubs shorter than Jimenez.

“When I was one club shorter, I felt like maybe I still could compete. But when you get that short, the realisation is there that you really can’t compete.

“It’s not to say that I don’t love the competition. I love the competition. But I’m going to focus my competition on something a little bit different, on the back of a horse now. It’s not to say I won’t be over here again. I’ll be back at the Open next year as an ambassador for the R&A.

“My competitive days in the Open Championship and Senior Open Championship are finally over and it’s a decision that I am very happy with.

“It’s been welling up for a while. And it just made sense that this is the time to do it. My wife’s good with it. And I called Jack [Nicklaus] and, I said, ‘Jack, what made you hang them up?’ He said, ‘Probably because I couldn’t compete anymore’.

“I’ve been kind of spinning my wheels out here. I haven’t really been able to compete the way I would really want to.

“Last week I really practised hard for this tournament. Two weeks ago I was practising hard and I was out testing how far I was hitting the driver in the air. My standard hitting the driver in the air is 250 yards. And I was pretty confident I could. Well, I can’t do that anymore. You still chase the grail. But it’s time to chase it somewhere else, and that’s on the back of a horse.”

Watson said he had a “plethora of memories” from playing links golf. He’d have been there all day if he’d recollected all of them, but there was no hiding the sparkle in his eyes as he picked out one or two.

“The play-off with Jack Newton in ’75, the last hole at Carnoustie,” he said of holing a 20-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole. “Meeting Bobby Locke in the practice round before the ’76 tournament started. He was in his tie, Plus 2s and his bonnet, his white bonnet.

“And to be able to play on the golf course when Gene Sarazen made 2 at Troon in ’73. At Turnberry in ’77, when Jack put his arm around my neck and said, ‘Tom, I gave you my best shot but it wasn’t good enough’, that gave me the confidence that I could beat the big boys.

“In ’83, coming down the last hole with the one-shot lead hitting two great shots, best 2-iron I probably hit ever in my life. Then you start on the Senior British Opens at Turnberry and Muirfield and Royal Aberdeen and to be able to win there and continue to play.”

Was there any significance in this decision being made a decade after he rolled back the years at Turnberry, where he had one hand back on the Claret Jug only to take a bogey at the last before losing in a four-hole play-off to fellow American Stewart Cink?

“No, just getting old,” he declared. “Just can’t hit it out of my shadow. I was getting to the point where the joke is you can hear it land with the driver.

“But no, there’s no significance there. That was a bittersweet memory. But the only time I think about it is when people ask me about it. It’s over and done with.”

At the end of his press conference, Watson went round the room, shook every hand and said “thanks” over and over.

The “thanks” are on us, Tom, and that final farewell is likely to be a tearful affair at the Lancashire venue. “The [British] public have been so gracious to me” he said. “Come on, Tom. Come on, Tom’,” he said in a Scottish accent of how people had always got behind him. “People who love the game of golf. The most knowledgeable crowds there are right here in the UK. And that’s why I love it over here. That’s why I love to play golf over here. I’ll continue to play golf over here, just not in competition.”