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The 138th British Open Championship Final day of play in Turnberry, Scotland. more photos

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The crowd scurried to the first playoff hole, only to groan as Watson scuffed an iron shot and made bogey. Soon it became clear they weren’t going to be part of one of the greatest sports stories ever, and they watched glumly as Cink strode confidently to victory.

“It would have been a helluva story wouldn’t it?” Watson said. “It tears at your gut as it always has torn at my gut. It’s not easy to take.”

It almost felt unfair because this was Cink’s dream, too, and he had never won one of these, much less five. Lost in the excitement over Watson’s improbable run to a title three years before he is eligible for Social Security was the fact that Cink made a 12-foot birdie putt on his last hole of regulation just to have a chance and then played steady golf in overtime.

A few people cheered when Cink hit it into a bunker on the first playoff hole, and the cheers for Watson coming up the 18th one last time were far deeper than those for the winner. But Cink was holding the claret jug, which was tonic enough, and he seemed to already understand that he would forever be known as both an Open champion and the player who ruined a special week.

He also understood that some might feel he beat an old man, but that was all right, too.

“I feel like that whether Tom was 59 or 29, you know, he was one of the field, and I had to play against everybody on the field and the course to come out on top,” Cink said. “I don’t think anything can be taken away. Somebody may disagree with that, but it’s going to be hard to convince me.”

Watson had to look a little harder to take something out of this day. He talked about how great it was being back in contention with the best players in the world, as though he were in his prime, and how gratifying it was to walk up the 18th fairway not once, but twice, to standing ovations from packed grandstands that included people who saw him win on the same green all those years ago.

It was fun once again, he insisted, and maybe that was because it made him feel young again. He was hurting, but at the same time he had shown he could still play and — for four rounds at least — play better than anyone else in the world.

The smile he flashed most of the week was there again as he walked off the final green with his arm around his wife. Before leaving, though, he offered this:

“What I’ve always said is when all is said and done, one of the things I hope that will come out of my life is that my peers will say, you know, that Watson, he was a hell of a golfer.”

They will now.