Mike Celizic

Tom Watson isn’t going to win the British Open. Neither is Mark O’Meara or Mark Calcavecchia. But it sure is fun watching the old guys show the kids how this game is played.

Greg Norman was fun last year, but Watson alone is much better because he’s older, and because he authored similar magic on this same Turnberry course 32 years ago when he was the 27-year-old hotshot and Jack Nicklaus was the 37-year-old legend. Watson beat Jack with a final-round 65, the same number he shot on Thursday.

Only one golfer shot a lower score, and that was Miguel Angel Jimenez, the only man on Tour brave enough to wear a pony tail. At 45, Jimenez is no spring chicken, either.

But enough about the kid. Let’s go back to the 59-year-old legend, with skin like an old catcher’s mitt but still flashing that Letttermanesque smile. If Watson keeps this up, the British tabs will start calling him Old Tom.

And Tiger Woods is going to step up to the tee and wonder where he gallery has got off to.

It’s a testament to what an old man — or a young one — can do when he knows how to play a game and doesn’t go out expecting to win. Norman was the same way last year — an old-timer teeing it up for fun and thinking of nothing other than the shot in front of him.

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Not having expectations can be a wonderful thing. The sports shrinks talk about it all the time. If you can forget about the result and focus on the process, you’d be amazed at what happens. The problems start, as they did for Norman last year, when you start thinking of the score you have to shoot or the guy you have to beat or the shot you have to make. Muscles get tight, shots go astray, scores balloon, and the next thing you know, you’re eight over after nine holes and looking for a rock to crawl under.

Watson’s been there before, and knows what pressure’s like. He’s also smart enough to know he better not think about anything but nursing his ball around the course and not even think about winning. If it comes to it, there’ll be time enough for that on Sunday, when he can either pull a Norman or find a way to channel Young Tom Watson and give us a show we’ll never forget.

For the moment, it’s enough to thank the game of golf for making all of this possible. You won’t see an Old Tom, Dick or Harry in any other sport do anything like it, because it’s simply not possible.

Only in golf, where brains are sometimes better than brawn and experience matters. On the links is where young hotshots go to find out they don’t know a thing about how the game used to be played.

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