Global Golf Post - April 12, 2010

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LEONARD;SHAPIRO
AUGUSTA,;GEORGIA;|;As a much younger
man, Tom Watson played a Masters prac-
tice round at Augusta National with the late
Byron Nelson and watched in awe the way
the grand old man dealt with the difficult
440-yard 14th hole.
“Byron hit a drive out there and said,
‘Tom, this is the way we used to play this
hole,’ ” Watson recalled last week. “He
took a 3-wood and drilled a low runner and
knocked it a foot from the hole, knocked it
40 yards short of the green and ran it up.
He said, ‘That’s how we used to play it.’ ”
“Well,” Watson deadpanned, “that’s
how I’m having to play it now.”
However Watson had to play this past
week, it often was working for a 60-year-
old, two-time Masters champion who shot
67 on Thursday. That matched the best
round he had ever posted in 37 appearance
at Augusta National, even if he’s playing
with an artificial hip. For several hours, he
became the oldest first-round leader in
Masters history, until that 50-year-young
whippersnapper Fred Couples, sockless
and in tennis shoes to ease the strain on
his balky back, did him one better, posting
a 66, his best career round in 26 starts.
That same day, 52-year-old Bernhard
Langer was leading the event at 3 under
until he stumbled slightly on the back nine
and shot 71. And Sandy Lyle, also 52, was
among 16 players in the field to shoot in
the 60s, with his own splendid 69. In all,
six players 40-and-over were among the
31 men who broke par that memorable
day, a year after then 48-year-old Kenny
Perry lost here in a playoff and Watson
nearly pulled off what would have been the
most astounding story in golf history, los-
ing a playoff in the Open Championship at
Turnberry after a truly unlucky bogey at the
72nd hole cost him the title in regulation.