Tom Watson Steals the Show

(Getty Images)

I woke up this morning, and immediately turned on the TV to TNT. I knew that I would probably miss Tiger's entire round, so I wanted to look at how the course was playing, and the leaderboard. At first, I thought I must have had the wrong channel, beautiful sunny day, barely any wind, doesn't seem like the British Open I know. Then I look at the leaderboard. At the top, it says "T. Watson -5 65". No, you can't be serious, not that T. Watson, he has to be like 60 years old. It has to be some other T. Watson, not the 5 time Open champ. It can't be the guy who went head-to-head against Jack Nicholas at the British Open in 1977 at Turnberry, in which Nicholas later called "the best tournament I played and lost." Then TNT flashes the reel that recaps the action from earlier, and indeed it was Tom Watson who had the stellar first round.

In favorable conditions, many older players had solid rounds, but no story is greater than Tom Watson who is in 2nd place after the first round of play, at the age of 59. This comes one year after the tremendous story of Greg Norman, at the age of 53, leading the Open Championship after 54 holes. We all know that being at the top of the leaderboard on Thursday does not mean you will be even in the hunt on Sunday, but what a tremendous start for Watson.

Let's think hypothetically, what if Watson can ascend and win this tournament, and capture his 6th British Open title. That would be one of the greatest stories in sports history. You rarely get a chance in sports to have a huge name like this, and someone this accomplished be an underdog. This is sort of like Magic Johnson coming back to the NBA and leading the Lakers to a title, or Pete Sampras coming out of retirement to beat Roger Federer in the Wimbledon Final. Maybe golf is a slightly different game, and older players have more of a chance to compete, but the fact that he had this kind of round against Tiger and the rest of the field (that beats Tiger 71% of the time) is something special.

After the round, Watson admitted that he wasn't sure if he could handle the pressure later in the tournament. One could imagine that it would be hard for a man at 59 years old to play 3 more strong rounds of golf, especially if the winds pick up and the rain starts to fall as expected. Although Tiger had a bad first round (again), look for him to make a charge as the weekend starts. However, count me in as one of the people who would like to see this tremendous story come true.