WATSON, Thomas Sturges ("Tom")

(b. 4 September 1949 in Kansas City, Missouri), professional golfer ranked among the best in the world during the 1970s and 1980s.

Watson's father, Raymond Watson, was an insurance broker and was once the champion at the Kansas City Country Club, where Watson learned to play golf. Watson's mother Sarah Elizabeth Ridge was a homemaker. Watson was a natural golfer, according to Stan Thirsk, the club professional, who first saw him swing a club at age six and who became his coach and friend. Watson quickly developed into an excellent golfer but stuck close to home, winning the Missouri Amateur title four times. In 1967, after graduating from Pembrook County Day School in Kansas City, where he played on the basketball and football teams, Watson attended Stanford University in California, where he majored in psychology and played well enough on the golf team to turn professional upon graduating in 1971. Watson married his high-school sweetheart Linda Tova Rubin a year and a half after graduating from Stanford. They had two children.

Watson did not get off to a good start in his professional career. In 1972 he lost by a stroke in the Quad Cities Open. In 1973 he slipped twice on his way to the winner's circle, most dramatically at the Hawaiian Open, where he led by three stokes going into the fourth round. The U.S. Open at the Winged Foot Golf Club fell from his grasp in 1974 when, after leading for three rounds, he finished in second place with a score of seventy-nine. Finally he claimed his first victory at the Western Open, coming from six strokes behind. Watson's career took a turn for the better in 1975. He won the British Open at Carnoustie, Scotland, and finished every other major that year among the top ten players. The following year he finished in the top ten in eleven tournaments, winning a respectable $138,000.

Watson's string of successes began to threaten the status of Jack Nicklaus, who at that time was the greatest golfer of the twentieth century. In 1977 Watson won two majors, the Masters and the British Open. In each tournament he battled Nicklaus all the way to the seventy-second hole. At the British Open in Turnberry, Scotland, Watson won a victory that many consider the most dramatic head-to-head battle in modern golf history. With close scores in the first two rounds, Watson and Nicklaus were paired in the third round and again came up even. They were paired up for the final eighteen, with Watson leading by one stroke at the last tee. He drove to the middle of the fairway. Nicklaus drove into heavy rough, but his next shot put him just thirty feet from the cup. Then Nicklaus sunk his clutch putt for a score of sixty-six. But Watson had placed his second shot less than three feet from the flag and holed the putt for a winning sixty-five.

When the 1977 season ended Watson was the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) Player of the Year and the Vardon Trophy winner with a stroke average of 70.32; his prize money topped the $300,000 mark; and he was hailed as the game's up-and-coming best player. Over the next seven years, Watson's triumphs and reputation for dramatic play grew steadily. In 1978 his earnings took him over the $1 million mark, he won five tournaments, and he again was named the PGA Player of the Year and the Vardon Trophy winner with a stroke average of 70.16, the best average in a decade. In 1979 he maintained this rising trajectory by winning five tournaments and, for an unprecedented third consecutive year, both the Player of the Year award and the Vardon Trophy with a 70.27 stroke average.

Although Watson had not won a major for several seasons, he was often in contention, and his play continued to be steady and impressive as he entered the 1980 season. He won six of the twenty-two events he entered in the United States, placed in the top ten of ten more, and earned money from all of them. Overseas, he edged out Lee Trevino to become the British Open champion for the third time. His stroke average was down to 69.95.

In 1981 Watson once again beat Nicklaus at the Masters and went on to win the Western Open, the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, and the San Diego Open. At Pebble Beach, California, in 1982, he again snatched victory from Nicklaus, who appeared certain to win his fifth U.S. Open until Watson chipped in from deep rough for an unforgettable birdie-two on the seventeenth to take and hold the lead. Watson again won the British Open in 1982 and 1983, bringing his British victories to five, an achievement shared only with Peter Thomson. In the early 1980s he also won three more PGA Player of the Year awards.

During these years, Watson's magnificent play fascinated the golfing world. His driving, irons, and wedge techniques always were superior, and he had the "nerves of steel" that allowed him to become one of the best putters in the history of the game. His nerves frayed, however, in 1985, when even three-and four-foot putts became unsinkable. Byron Nelson, Watson's friend and mentor, said, "He's thinking too much.… But he'll come out of it. He's too good a golfer not to." In 1988 Watson was elected to the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame, but he did not recover his former dominance. From 1988 to 1999 he won only two events, the Memorial in 1996 and the Colonial in 1998.

Watson once said, "The game is important because it teaches you that there are rules that you have to live by." He put his principles into action in 1990, when the secret membership committee of the Kansas City Country Club rejected Henry Bloch, the cofounder and chairman of the tax-preparation firm H&R Block, who was Jewish. Watson resigned from the club to protest this clear-cut case of anti-Semitism, a wrenching decision for someone whose career and social life had revolved around the organization since he was old enough to swing a golf club. In Sports Illustrated, John Garrity wrote, "This single act of conscience will one day count for more than all the trophies he has won with his clubs."

The late 1990s were a time of transition for Watson. In 1998 he divorced his wife Linda, and soon married Hilary Watson, the former wife of professional golfer Denis Watson. In 1999, at age fifty, Watson joined the Senior PGA Tour. Golf fans eagerly anticipated his return to form. With new clubs and a new training regimen, Watson quickly made his mark as a senior player, and in 2001 won the Senior PGA Championship.

For biographical information about Watson, see David Porter, ed., Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: Outdoor Sports (1988), and Ralph Hickok, A Who's Who of Sports Champions: Their Stories and Records (1995). Watson has been featured in numerous magazine articles, including Golf Digest (Aug. 1999, Sep. 1999); Golf Magazine (June 1983, Sep. 1984, Aug. 1985, Oct. 1993); and Sports Illustrated (10 Dec. 1990, 17 July 1995, 10 June 1996, 20 Sep. 1999, 10 Apr. 2000). More biographical and career information is on the website of the PGA Tour at http://www.golfweb.com/players/bios/2256.html.

Martin Sherwin