If not for Tom Watson being cut by a Midget “B” baseball team as a 9-year-old in Kansas City, the world of golf might have been deprived of the career of one of its best.
“I had a lot of time that summer,” Watson recalled Tuesday night during a visit to Colorado. “That got me started in golf.”
Fifty years later, at the University Club in Denver on Tuesday, Watson became the fourth recipient of the Will Nicholson Award, presented for a lifetime of commitment and dedication to the game of golf. Previous Nicholson honorees were Nicholson himself (a former president of the USGA), Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
Pretty good company in the grand scheme of things in golf.
Watson certainly ranks among the game’s pantheon. After all, he won eight major championships, 39 PGA Tour events overall, and was ranked No. 1 in the world from 1978 through “˜82. In 1988, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Watson credits a good junior program at his home course as a youngster, as well as guidance from his father, Ray, who instilled a passion for the game in Tom. Mix in Tom’s strong work ethic, and even a little ego, and Watson found the path to greatness.
“I wanted to see my name in the paper (in tournament results),” he said. “That was cool.”
But Watson now has deep concerns about the future of golf and how it meshes — or fails to mesh — with a society that can’t live without its personal digital assistants and other electronics.
Watson, who will turn 60 in September, said he has some “worries about the direction the country is going.” But he has some specific concerns when it comes to the game of golf.
“Kids take way too much time with their PDAs,” Watson said. “Will they take four or five hours on the course? That worries me, the time management.”
Beyond that, Watson wonders whether the game will continue to have a strong following among future generations. With caddies becoming less common, the number of youngsters who developed a love of the game through “looping” has taken a big hit. And with golf becoming ever more costly in many areas, a great number of kids are priced out of the sport.
“It’s getting too expensive to play, and we’ve got to do something about it,” Watson said.
He strongly supports the efforts of The First Tee organization in getting kids involved in golf at a grass-roots level, and he’s also a big fan of “Kids On Course,” which subsidizes greens fees for youngsters through agreements with specific golf courses. But on the other hand, Watson notes that American Junior Golf Association tournaments are “too expensive for most kids to play.”
“The dark cloud on the horizon in golf is the expense is getting out of hand,” Watson said. “And there’s not enough interest in the game.”
Watson said that with rounds taking longer than ever to play, and “time getting condensed” in general nowadays, he wonders how many kids will make the commitment it takes to play the game over the long haul.
“The black cloud is, it takes too long to play,” he said.
Exacerbating the situation is that the courses being built nowadays, often up to 7,500 yards long, make round times even longer. In that regard, Watson hopes the USGA and R&A put restrictions on the liveliness of the golf ball, which will make it unnecessary to build ever-longer courses.
