No one moment could sum it up, of course. No one moment could tell the story of Tom Watson, Kansas City&rsquo;s own, 59 years old, weather-beaten, exhausted, fighting against the wind and the hourglass, trying to do the most impossible thing that had ever been done on a golf course &mdash; win a British Open more than two decades past his prime.</p><p> No one moment could capture all those clashing feelings on Sunday &mdash; elation, despair, triumph, disbelief, sadness. Watson had it. He lost it. He faded. He was charged. Watson is something of a student when it comes to sportswriting, and so he would not want his remarkable Sunday reduced to a cliche; he would not want to read that his day was an emotional roller coaster or a spine-tingling affair or a fleeting moment at the Fountain of Youth. But there are reasons sportswriters came up with those cliches in the first place. They are for those days that transcend words. They are for those days that transcend moments. </p><p>Look, Tom Watson almost became the oldest man to win one of golf&rsquo;s four major championships &mdash; by more than a <em>decade</em>. He almost won his sixth British Open in the same place &mdash; Turnberry &mdash; where 32 years earlier he had beaten Jack Nicklaus in the greatest golf match ever played, a match so remarkable and memorable that they gave it a name: &ldquo;The Duel in the Sun.&rdquo; You can&rsquo;t overhype this: Watson almost pulled off one of the most remarkable stories in the history of sports.</p><p> There&rsquo;s no way to find a single moment that can animate it all. There was the tension of Watson&rsquo;s early day, when it looked like he would quietly slip away. There was the soaring music of his midday, when he found his rhythm and took back the lead. There was the soul-crushing sadness of the end, when he hit bad shot after bad shot in a four-hole playoff and, with tears in his eyes, yielded the British Open to a fairly nondescript, 36-year-old nice guy named Stewart Cink.</p><p> No. There is no one moment that gets to the heart of all that. But there is a single moment I know that I will always remember. It was the moment when Watson stood over his putt at the 18th hole, that 8- or 9-foot par putt that would have won him the British Open. </p><p>You can still see the scene, can&rsquo;t you? He was ahead by a shot. That stage was his. He stood over the ball, took a practice stroke and then another, his pants flapping in the Scottish wind rushing off the Firth of Clyde.</p><p> And as he stood over the putt, one of the television people asked on-course announcer Andy North what he thought. North, you should know, is a two-time U.S. Open champion. He is also one of Tom Watson&rsquo;s best friends. He had tried to stay as neutral as he could all weekend because that&rsquo;s what announcers and journalists are supposed to do &mdash; suppress the cheers, maintain a calm voice, don&rsquo;t let the emotion of the moment blind your judgment.</p><p> Only, here, North could not hold back. &ldquo;He can stroke this one,&rdquo; North said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to make this and win.&rdquo;</p><p> No, I won&rsquo;t forget that. Because Andy North, I think, was talking for all of us. There was no real reason to believe that Watson would knock in the putt. He had been waging a losing battle against 8- or 9-foot putts for more than 25 years. When Watson was 33, he won his eighth major championship, and it seemed like he would be the best in the world for years to come. He never won another major championship, though. Those Yao-Ming-length putts aged him prematurely. People from all over America would send him putters and lucky charms and homemade spells and advice &mdash; putt with one eye closed, putt with both eyes closed, putt while imagining a serene place near the water. None of it helped much. The putting demons would not let Tom Watson go.