On eve of last Masters and in twilight zone of career, Tom Watson is aging with grace

Forever young Tom Watson suddenly is 66 years old, but in many ways he’s in harmony with the times and averting the onset of age.

And not just because he posts photos on Instagram, touts golf apps on Twitter and likes to play with a drone he just used to capture the burning of spring grass on his farm.

It’s also apparent from his energized, engaged aura and in the way he takes care of himself: On a recent day in his office, he laughed as he reflected on the way trainer Janine Young of Elite Golf & Fitness had made mulch of him that morning.

Never mind the limited range of motion in his spine. When he wasn’t stretching enough to please her, she figured he was slacking.

“ ‘Don’t tell you me you can’t do this!’ ” she yelled. “‘Can’t is not in my vocabulary.’”

Watson, though, also is a realist and pragmatist.

And can’t, alas, has become part of his vocabulary — which is why the 2016 Masters beginning on Thursday will be his last. He says he can’t “compete with the kids anymore.”

Watson sees that rock and roll, of all things, is “an older person’s music now,” and that “the millennials are kind of taking over,” and that it’s the time of life to appreciate and simplify.

“You have a lot of stuff; you want to get rid of stuff,” he said, smiling. “You want to get rid of physical stuff, and you also want to get rid of mental stuff, the things that cause you consternation.”

Golf is not at all a source of anxiety to Watson, whose persona has been entwined with the game for the better part of 50 honorable years, including eight major championships.

But as he reflects and takes inventory on his fortunate life and career, Watson has reconciled that his ebbing distance and club-head speed no longer allows him to compete as he wishes.

That’s particularly so in Augusta at the Masters, which over time he has seen go from 7,000 yards to 7,345.

A course that once seemed contoured to his game as he won there in 1977 and 1981, a course that provided a springboard to his midcareer surge, is simply “too long for me” now, Watson said.

“And I don’t want to go around the golf course not being able to play it,” he said. “So that’s the reason I’m not going to play there anymore.”

Watson was downright ho-hum as he said this, reminding that he will go back to Augusta for past-champions dinners and such and still will be playing in senior events and thus suggested it wasn’t like some sad ride off into some sunset.

There was scant hint of the emotion he had conveyed at a news conference last year just before his final British Open at St. Andrews.

“There is a certain sense of melancholy; you can sense that,” he said then. “The regret that it’s over … It’s a little bit like death. The finality of the end is here.”

So maybe Watson came to terms with the emotions of letting go after walking up to the 18th hole last July with “a couple of tears in my eye” before catching himself.

He told his son, Michael, who was caddying for him that day, “This isn’t the time for tears. It’s the time for celebration.”

“And,” he added, “that’s the way I’m going to take the Masters.”

But Watson can’t know how he’ll respond until he’s there, he acknowledges, and the moment is certain to be more emotional than he either had yet realized or was letting on.

Because of the sheer splendor and history of Augusta, yes, but also because of the role it played in his life and career.

Watson, who first played there in 1970 as an amateur, entered the 1977 Masters at a crossroads.

He had won the British Open in 1975 and had dominated the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am Tournament at Pebble Beach and the Andy Williams San Diego Open in early 1977.

But he still was lugging the stigma of “choker” into Augusta — a label that started with losing leads in the 1974 and 1975 U.S. Opens and was revived by his failure to win two 1977 tournaments he had led into the last day.

The line of questioning at Augusta bordered on vicious, as golf writer Herbert Warren Wind wrote for The New Yorker in a snippet reprised in Joe Posnanski’s excellent book, “The Secret of Golf: The Story of Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus.”

But the circumstances illuminated a constant in Watson’s character: the ability to stay above the fray and remain a gentleman and sportsman even in such moments.

“I don’t know how Watson found the supernal restraint to answer those questions politely and reasonably,” Wind wrote. “But he did.”

As he looks back, Watson said, “The label was fairly applied early on when I couldn’t hold it together when the pressure was on.”

Yet he fumed over the reflexive resurgence, and he absorbed it to his advantage.

“It did inspire me,” he said, “to prove to people I wasn’t a choker.”

And so he did, down to the wire against Nicklaus.

The first question in the news conference afterward, he recalled, was about the “choker label.”

“‘That’s yours to answer,’” he smiled and remembered saying.

That paved the way for his second British Open victory later that year at Turnberry, the so-called “Duel In The Sun” with Nicklaus.

After Watson shot 12-under to beat Nicklaus by 1 stroke, they walked off the green together with Watson remembering Nicklaus telling him, “‘I gave you my best shot, but it wasn’t good enough.’”

“Those were kind words, but those were words of grace and also honesty; I felt like he was being honest with me,” Watson said. “If you beat the best in the world, twice now that summer, it was the confirmation that I could play with the big boys.”

Watson won at Augusta again in 1981, further cementing his legacy.

But it’s telling that no sooner does he say “two’s better than one” that he’s compelled to add “and three’s better than two” — and lament a handful of missed opportunities at Augusta in his prime.

He finished in the top three there six times, in the top five nine times and in the top 10 15 times.

“It’s the game,” he said. “It’s a difficult game because there’s nothing perfect about it.”

For all these years, that’s meant embracing that very aspect of it.

It’s meant going right back to work after tournaments to correct whatever might have gone awry — the best way he knew to deal with the boundless emotions that come when you know your real competition is yourself.

“It’s really all right to get angry and frustrated, but it’s what you do afterward,” he said. “How do you respond to the situation that caused that anger or that frustration? Or that caused that joy? How do you respond to the joy?”

Now, though, he will put an unabashed exclamation point on one of the joys of his life: the Masters.

He’ll compete with all he has, and then he’ll bask in another transformational scene to nicely bookend the one in 1977 that he considers the highlight of his career.

“People want to go to the Masters; they want to be there,” he said. “It’s done with grace. It’s done with respect.”

Mirrored by Watson as he ages with grace.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 7:14 PM with the headline "On eve of last Masters and in twilight zone of career, Tom Watson is aging with grace."