Wowzers, Watson!

Tom Watson is rolling back the years …

The fifty-nine-year-old golfer – who hasn’t won a tournament in over a decade – is leading the British Open (sorry, we don’t go for that whole “Open Championship” nonsense) after three rounds, conjuring up memories of the eight major championships he won back in “the day.”

If the Midwestern native can hang on to his one-stroke lead over the next eighteen holes at Turnberry, Scotland, he will make history – and write perhaps the most improbable chapter in the history of golf.

Seriously, no one – even Watson – saw this coming.

“The first day here, ‘Yeah, let the old geezer have his day in the sun,’” Watson told reporters Saturday. “The second day you said, ‘Well, that’s OK.’ And now today, you kind of perk up your ears and say, ‘This old geezer might have a chance to win the tournament.’ I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know one thing. I feel good about what I did today. I feel good about my game plan.”

He should – he’s positively thwacking the ball around the most celebrated golf course in all of Great Britain.

The oldest person ever to win a major? Julio Boros, who was 48 when he captured the 1968 PGA Championship. The oldest golfer to ever win a regular tour event? Sam Snead, who was 52 when he won the Greater Greensboro Open.

Obviously, a win by Watson would shatter both of those marks.

Sadly, Watson won’t get to reprise his epic battles of yesteryear with Jack Nicklaus against the game’s current champion, as Tiger Woods missed the  cut at the British Open. It’s only the second time Woods has missed the cut at a major since he turned pro in 1996.

Watson has won two Masters Championships, a U.S. Open and five British Opens – his last coming twenty-six years ago in 1983.

Now if we could only go back to the President we had back in 1983 …

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