Tom Watson

Watson, nicknamed "Huckleberry Dillinger" while growing up in Kansas City, was a capable all-around athlete. His sporadic success at Stanford University hardly foreshadowed a Hall of Fame career. His peers, however, admired Watson's work ethic when he turned pro. Part of Watson's growth progress included painful defeats, such as the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York. Watson led by a stroke entering the final round, but shot 79 and fell to fifth. The following year, at Medinah, Illinois, Watson led the U.S. Open after two rounds, but fizzled again. Legend Byron Nelson advised Watson and later became his coach.

In 1975, Watson achieved his watershed victory, a British Open playoff triumph that quelled doubts and

Tom Watson

paved the way for five British titles. (Watson is one of the few Americans to have received honorary membership to the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, a frequent British Open site.) Watson made birdie on the last hole with a 20-foot putt that pulled him even with Jack Newton, then defeated Newton by one stroke in an 18-hole playoff the following day.

"Young Tom Watson finally became a champion, a new person and one hellacious player," Dan Jenkins wrote in Sports Illustrated. "After a lot of slightly baroque things had happened on the becalmed, deroughed and tranquilized beast of Carnoustie, it all came down to a Sunday match between the 25-year-old Watson, who admits he possibly thinks too much, and an equally young Australian, Jack Newton, who admits he drinks too much."

"Holding together was not something Watson had done so well in the past," Jenkins wrote. Watson's litmus test was on No, 17, but this time he held his own, making a necessary five-foot putt for par. "Tom rammed it home as if it were a gimme. That would have been the perfect spot for Watson to do what he had so often done in the past—to miss, and start blowing another one."