Did Technology Help Tom Watson?

Tom Watson nearly won the British Open nine days ago. A uncooperative putter -- one that has plagued him for most of his career -- proved his undoing, and the 59-year-old would have to settle for second place and the Greg Norman Treatment.

Last year, Norman, then 53, made a run at the Claret Jug, faded late, eventually tied for third, and spent the next 12 months accepting congratulatory wishes for the moral victory. There are worse ways to transition to the old-timer's circuit.

Amid all the back-slapping we've been treated to any number of explanations for Watson's success, despite his advanced age: a golf landscape devoid of talented young players, Watson's Open Championship experience (particularly at Turnberry), his shiny new hip, so and and so forth.

One thing we haven't heard, though: how advances in equipment helped him get around the course more efficiently than all but one other player in the field. GolfWorld's Mike Stachura writes that Watson's bag 22 years ago (the last time he "seriously contended on Sunday in a major"), looked wholly different from the one caddie Neil Oxman was lugging around Scotland a week and a half ago.

[In 1987], Watson carried a persimmon driver (Ram TW 805) with a True Temper Dynamic Gold X-300 shaft that was 43 inches long. ... And the head size was about 150 cubic centimeters. His irons often included a 1-iron and always a 2-iron. Those Golden Ram Tour Grind forged blades also utilized a heavy steel shaft to go with a center of gravity location that was at least four-fifths of an inch up the clubface and just a little toward the heel. And let's not forget about the Golden Ram Tour 100 ball Watson played, a wound, balata ball designed to accentuate spin first, distance second.

(For those of you who aren't into golf equipment minutiae, today's drivers are 460ccs. Just a slightly bigger sweet spot.)

Now Watson's bag is filled light-weight composites and oversized clubheads. Which means mis-hits are minimized, distances are maximized, and a guy nearing his sixth decade on this planet can compete with players half his age. And Watson concedes as much.

"Has anybody here taken an old persimmon head driver and hit it recently?" Watson asked at Turnberry before the tournament. "I couldn't hit the sweet spot if it saved my butt. No way I could hit the sweet spot. They have that big old thing about like that, and you swing it as hard as you can, and if you mis-hit it off center it still goes out there. It makes you sloppy. The big-headed clubs make you a little sloppy."

During the 1977 Open Championship at Turnberry, Watson hit 1-iron, 7-iron (to two feet) on the 72nd hole on his way to victory over Jack Nicklaus. Against Stewart Cink last week: hybrid off the tee and an 8-iron over the green. Equipment, clearly, is the great equalizer. Except...

... Everybody benefits from the same technology. And it doesn't matter how many hip replacements Watson has, he's not in better physical shape than most of the golfers in the field at Turnberry. So when Stachura writes: "... while Watson did nearly everything right at the British Open last week, it was his use of modern technology that may have been just as significant in his near victory," I tend to think it was mostly the former since everyone had access to the latter.

More anecdotal evidence: it's not like over-50 set is regularly running roughshod over the world's best players; it's a rare occurrence, maybe once a season. Either technology is streaky, or once-great players in the twilight of their careers occasionally catch lightning in a bottle. I'd like to think it's resurgent old-timers reveling in past glory, if for only a week. It makes for a more compelling story.