Armed With Modern Equipment, Watson Unable To Defeat His Old Geezer Peers At Sunningdale

The premise goes something like this: Tom Watson would not have been competitive at Turnberry had he not been armed with modern technology. Big driver head, Pro-V1, new hip, etc...

True. If he'd shown up with his Ram 3-wood and a balata ball, he probably would not have made the cut!

Actually, the number of what-if's is too long to contemplate, but that didn't stop Mike Stachura from stating "it was his use of modern technology that may have been just as significant in his near victory.

Watson's whip-crackin' swing may seem to hardly have mellowed with age, but let's not suggest that he's playing exactly the way he did 20 or 30 years ago just because he's getting more Omega 3s in his diet, is still as crafty as a boomtown gambler and is sporting an artificial hip that's 58 years younger than the rest of his body (but more on that later). No, you're leaving out one key detail. It's not like the man was tearing his way through all the young bucks at the British Open with a persimmon driver and a forged muscle-back 1-iron. Fact is, modern equipment technology played no small part in helping Watson compete with men half his age.

I guess to accept this premise you'd have to contemplate the possibility of someone showing up with a retro set. And that's not going to happen, so can we really credit any portion of his success to his modern clubs?

This seems to be one of those "all relative deals."

Then again, if you armed the rest of the field with 70s equipment there might not have even been a playoff. Maybe the old coot would have won by 10 because the new stuff had made modern golfers less skilled?

In other words, maybe technology actually prevented his true skill from showing and let the young guys keep up with Old Tom?