SEASON REVIEW:IF YOU'RE so inclined, you can look up Stewart Cink's twitter pages and find a gallery that features his family posing by the Cliffs of Moher, passing through Milltown Malbay ("a typical Irish town," is how he describes it) and . . . a photo of the Claret Jug filled with Uncle Arthur's brew.
Cink’s decision to play links golf in Ireland ahead of his visit to Turnberry for the British Open in July proved to be judicious, even if, for some, this gentleman from Georgia, in the deep south of the US, was construed as the villain of the piece in deigning to ruin one of sport’s potentially all-time stories of romance.
You see, Cink – who claimed a first major when claiming the 138th Open championship – deprived one of golf’s legends, Tom Watson, a remarkable success. At 59 years of age, Watson, complete with artificial hip, defied the onslaught of time to get within touching distance of the most famous trophy in golf only to run out of steam in the four-hole play-off with Cink.
A a cold chill passed over the famous Scottish links as the ghosts of Old Tom Morris, Willie Park, Harry Vardon and all those other greats of bygone times accepted it was not to be and returned to their spiritual resting places after Watson was spurned, the over-riding belief being that it was simply Cink’s turn. His time had come.
For 72 holes, Cink and Watson – his body rebuking the years and playing with an elasticity that revived glorious memories of his five British Open wins, that last of them at Birkdale in 1983 – had proved inseparable.
In the final round, Cink shot 69 to Watson’s 72 for the two of them to finish on 278, two under, a shot clear of Englishmen Lee Westwood and Chris Wood.
However, in the four-hole play-off, Watson played like a man who had spent all the mental and physical energy his body had displayed over four wonderful days. When it really mattered, and the two protagonists went head-to-head, Watson couldn’t match his younger, hungrier opponent: over the four-hole play-off, Cink took 14 strokes to Watson’s 20.
Cink went par-par-birdie-birdie, Watson went bogey-par-double bogey-bogey.
What did Watson take away, we wondered? “Warmth . . . and spirituality, by which I mean there was something out there that helped me along,” said the grand old man of the sport.
If Cink finally discovered the secret to success in a major, Argentina’s Angel Cabrera had rediscovered it in April at Augusta National when capturing the season’s opening major. In winning the US Masters (adding the title to his US Open of 2007), Cabrera rode his luck but made the most of it.
The defining moment came when he pushed his tee shot on the 72nd hole into the trees and then audaciously tried to play a four-iron through a gap that hardly existed. The ball ricocheted off trees back into the fairway and he got up and down from 72 yards (66 metres) for par four, before going on to defeat Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell in the play-off.
It took five weather-hampered days in June to find a winner in the US Open at Bethpage and, when it was all done, 29-year-old American Lucas Glover – who’d never managed to even survive the cut in three previous appearances – had two shots to spare over Phil Mickelson, David Duval and Ricky Barnes.
The season’s final major, the US PGA, provided another first-time winner in Korean YE Yang at Hazeltine, who had the distinction of becoming the first player to set out in pursuit of Tiger Woods in the final round of a major and overhaul the world’s number one.
