Life-changing moments on and off the golf course have eerily intertwined for golf legends Tom Watson and Fred Couples.
Both Watson and Couples have overcome significant troubles in the past decade and a half. But today they are thriving on both the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour, the latter for golfers 50 and older. At a time when championship-level world golf is showcasing the talents of a handful of golfers barely old enough to shave, Watson and Couples, aged 60 and 50 respectively, are defying the usual dictates of age and playing golf at an elite level.
The veterans are showing competitors like recent winners Rory McIlroy, 21, of Northern Ireland, and Ryo Ishikawa, 19, of Japan that their skills have not abandoned them. Nor has their drive to compete – and win.
The past two years – in particular in 2010, with Tiger Woods absent from leader boards, if not the headlines – Watson and Couples have picked up the slack for the image-suffering PGA Tour. With good health and happiness off the golf course, Watson and Couples have almost singlehandedly revitalized a game that needed a boost.
At the recent Masters in April, Watson proved his shocking return to form at last year’s British Open, where he came within one flubbed putt of winning, was no fluke. Watson played onto the first page of the leaderboard on the first day of the Masters, shooting a 67, before hanging in the next three days to finish a respectable 18th.
Couples, meanwhile, a first-year powerhouse on the Champions Tour this season, scorched the Augusta National with a 66 on Thursday and finished 6th.
The numbers for both Watson and Couples speak to how they are measured against their fellow competitors, but the pencil scratches on a scorecard don’t tell the real story of how both have successfully mounted personal comebacks.
But the numbers certainly are remarkable.
Elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1988, the 5’ 9” Watson owns 39 PGA Tour victories, including five British Open Championships, two Masters wins and the 1982 U.S. Open. Who can forget that ’82 U.S. Open, when Watson holed his chip shot for birdie on No. 17 at Pebble Beach (host of the 2010 U.S. Open, which has granted Watson an exemption)? Considered the greatest golfer on links courses, and the greatest wind golfer of all time, Watson captured British Open titles in 1975, ‘77, ‘80, ‘82 and ’83, and as a Champions Tour competitor three Senior British Open titles in 2003, ‘05 and ’07.
Throughout the 1970s and into the ‘80s, Watson possessed a sharp short game that eventually enabled him to dethrone golf’s all-time champion, Jack Nicklaus. Today, the old foes are friends, and together in May they teamed to win the Wendy’s Champions Skins Game. The week before, Watson birdied the final two holes for a 7-under 65 and one-stroke victory over Champions Tour rookie Couples in the tour’s season-opener Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hawaii.
There are many who believe Couples, from California, has underachieved during 30 years on the PGA Tour. He has captured 15 tournaments, including the 1992 Masters Championship, during his respectable career. But during the fateful year of 1994, Couples tore the outer layer of a disc in his lower back on the practice range at Doral in Miami, and has subsequently battled back problems that have limited his practice time and tournament play. But glimpses of greatness still appeared, as in 2006 when Couples went head to head with Phil Michelson in the last group on Sunday afternoon at the Masters, finally finishing tied for third.
Anyone who has witnessed Couples’s swing admires its consistency and easy flow. There are his mannerisms – the graceful walk, gyrations when loosening up, placid expression, and his swing with the pause at the top before the club is violently unleashed with an extraordinary movement of the front hip for power. When his back is in good shape, that swing is a thing of beauty. And for his legion of female fans, it’s one more part of the man to admire.
Today, with a limber back, booming 300-yard drives and solid putting – a part of the game that has been his Achilles heel in the past – Couples is the talk of the Champions Tour. He lost to Watson in January at the Electric Championship showdown but he went on to win three of his next four tournaments, thanks again to destroying par 5s and putting like a champion.
Watson also points to 1994 as a turning point in his career. Though he had already compiled a Hall of Fame career, he knew he needed to change his swing in order to continue winning. “When the swing was off, I didn’t have anything to revert to. I was one of those golfers who was always searching, willing to try anything,” explained Watson in a recent conference call. (Couples was unavailable for an interview for this article.)
So, after seven years without a win, Watson took notice of how diminutive competitor Corey Pavin made his exaggerated, over-the-top, outside-in move. Watson emulated the swing, and discovered it kept his shoulders more level at impact. Rather than swing hard and out of his shoes with the reverse C that he had copied from Nicklaus, Watson now kept his head down and spine straight. With this new swing, he has steadily improved to the point where he almost pulled off the biggest upset in the history of golf at the 2009 British Open.
At age 59, Watson came within that one putt of winning the Open at Turnberry before losing in a playoff to Stewart Cink. The entire golf world was pulling for the senior golfer to win one of golf’s biggest awards. It was typical Tom Watson in the media room afterwards: brutally honest.
“This ain’t a funeral you know,” Watson said to the media even before they asked a question. “It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?”
The stage was set for an incredible 2010 that began with that Skins win, and the one-stroke victory over Couples in Hawaii.
Watson says he is thrilled with his U.S. Open exemption at Pebble Beach June 14-20. Back in 1982 on Sunday at Pebble, Watson was tied for the lead with Nicklaus. Watson’s tee shot at the long par 3 landed in deep grass on the green collar. His long-time caddy, Bruce Edwards, told Watson, “Get it close,” to which Watson answered, “Hell, I’m going to hole it in! He did, held off Nicklaus and won his only U.S. Open title.
Watson had his right shoulder operated on in 2004 and in 2008, he underwent left hip replacement. Says Watson, “It was a lifestyle decision. The discomfort kept me from getting a good night’s sleep.”
Just as Watson has turned around his career with new-found youth and a reliable swing – and a cure for the putting yips – off the course he has inner peace, too. There were always rumours about Watson’s heavy drinking. In November 1997, he quit cold turkey. “I stopped drinking because while I was drinking I did some things that I didn’t like,” Watson said in a Sports Illustrated profile from the era.
That December, his wife of 25 years, Linda Watson, filed for divorce. In 1999, Watson remarried. He and wife Hilary have two children, while Tom is stepfather to Hilary’s three children.
Meanwhile, over the past 15 years or so, Couples was facing his own demons. Despite the fact Couples on TV appears smooth and easy-going, he has been in frequent pain – his back has never felt 100 per cent. “Every move you make, it’s like a toothache. By the end of the day I’m physically spent, and a lot of nights by 7 p.m. I’m in bed,” Couples told Golf Digest in March 2008. Today his back is faring much better – but not 100-per-cent pain-free – with new treatment.
Couples’s personal life has been nothing like his controlled golf swing. His marriage to his first wife, Deborah, ended in 1993. In May 2001, she committed suicide. Couples's estranged wife, Thais Baker, died from breast cancer in February 2009. They had married in 1998. Couples’s mother, Violet, died of cancer on Mother’s Day 1994, and his father, Tom, died of leukemia in 1997.
With Couples’s recent dominance and Watson’s solid play, the Champions Tour has received a jolt of new energy in 2010. The Tour comes to Montreal June 28 to July 4 at Club de golf Le Fontainebleau for the Montreal Championship. “Everywhere I go, we hear, ‘Is Freddie coming? Is Freddie coming?’” says tournament director David Skitt in anticipation of the big event. By mid-May, Couples had indicated he will be in Montreal but not Watson.
Couples, a decade younger than Watson, is a youngster on the senior tour. Watson recognizes that his superb play will not last forever – though on the other hand, who thought he had a second-place finish in the British Open left in him?
So why is Watson, at age 60, suddenly competing well against some of the top young guns on the PGA Tour? He’s one of golf’s best all-time, lives for the game, and thrives under pressure – especially when playing links golf or in windy conditions. He has never stopped playing golf, and today he takes very good care of an aging body with a good fitness regimen.
After he nearly won the Open Championship in 2009, golf legend Jack Nicklaus said, “I think what he did ... was just unbelievable. Here’s a guy who shot 65 the first round. He led after the third round. And was still after regulation tied for the lead. That’s pretty phenomenal for a guy 59 years old.”
“When I look back, I realize I’m just a golfer,” Watson says. “That’s all I am. That’s my career. And why would I want to do anything else? I could see doing something else when it stops working, but it still works pretty well.”
FATHER – AND PALMER – KNEW BEST
Like, oh, tens of millions of North Americans, Tom Watson credits his father with introducing him to the game of golf. Ray Watson offered excellent instruction to a six-year-old Tom.
“My father cut down a hickory-shafted 5-iron and then proceeded to teach me the grip of how too hook and slice the ball – all the basic fundamentals of the game,” says Watson, who also found wisdom in Ben Hogan’s book, Five Lessons, and in a chat with the great Arnold Palmer. When a 15-year-old Watson played in an exhibition with Palmer, Ray asked the golf great, “What one thing will make my son a better player?” Said Palmer, “Have him play in as much competition as he can play.”
GOLFERS HAVE CHANGED WITH THE TIMES
How does Tom Watson do it? Stay fit and limber enough at age 60 to compete with players one-third or one-half his age? Canadian golf pro Angelo Puma, instructor at Family Golf Learning Centre in Oakville, Ont., weighs in:
“I was fortunate to caddy for Billy Casper in the 1968 Canadian Open. In those days the players were not as focused on fitness programs, sports coaches and nutrition as the players of today are. Most players from that era were hard smokers and drinkers and didn't look after themselves like modern players do.
“Back then Gary Player was considered to be unusual because he worked out and did 200 sit-ups every day.
“Players like Tom Watson are able to maintain their game because they live a health-oriented lifestyle. They eat healthy, they have a great fitness schedule and work hard on their game.
“The game of golf can easily be integrated in the lifestyle of an older golfer. It gets you out, it is very sociable and promotes fitness.
“Some people say ‘I am too old to play golf.’ I say, ‘You should play golf to help you stay young.’”
