Watson bears the deepest cuts

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jul 11, 1999 | by Art Spander

Tom Watson has always been a private and complex man, Art Spander wonders how the golfing legend can adjust after the upheaval in his personal life So much has changed for Tom Watson since that Sunday half a lifetime ago when he pumped his fist on Carnoustie's 18th green in a gesture that seemed as much a rebuke to his critics as a gesture of elation.

That 25-year-old is now a few weeks from 50, and his golf and life are changing, not necessarily for the better. He is about to move to the Senior PGA Tour, which is hard enough to believe for those of us who remember the gap-toothed youth with the long red hair. And he has already moved away from his former wife of 24 years, which is even harder to believe.

Passages are what mark our trip through time. Nothing stays the same, and so we adjust, whether it's philosophically, politically or socially. And so Watson, a man who has always prized integrity and loyalty - and privacy - finds himself adjusting on all fronts. We think we know people, but we rarely do. Even when it comes to family members. What we do know about Tom Watson is that he won eight major championships, including five Opens; that he prizes decorum and decency, even to the restriction of free speech; that integrity has always been important and that he's had problems very few suspected. There has been a high degree of respect from this writer for Watson since the time when, as a Stanford student, he called a shot on himself when he nicked a ball out of sight of everyone else during the 1968 San Francisco City Amateur. And yet Watson was always an unwilling interviewee, an individual guided by his background, having grown up in middle-America, Kansas City, a region that honours hard work and decries pretension. Once, Watson read one of my stories on Dave Stockton, a Californian, and said, "I really liked it. But I wouldn't have told you a lot of those things." It is not surprising then that Watson has been tight-lipped about the divorce that shattered too many people, not the least of which is his manager, Chuck Rubin, who is also Tom's ex-brother-in-law. "Whatever you think it's been like, it's been worse" was the only comment Rubin would offer. Tom Watson and Linda Rubin were high school sweethearts, and when he went west to Stanford, she followed and enrolled at Mills College, an all-woman's school in Oakland across the Bay. When he played in US Amateur qualifying, Linda caddied. Their union produced two children, the older of which, Meg, has completed a freshman year at Duke University, making her the first Watson not to attend Stanford. Tom's father and two brothers were Stanford graduates, as is Tom. Michael Watson, living with his mother in the home Tom left, is a golfer whose first love is soccer but someday may follow his father. The previous summers Tom and Michael have played together the week before The Open. It was November 1997 when the monumental shifts began for Watson. An individual who liked his Scotch whisky and wine to a point that might be described as more than moderation, Tom quit drinking. A month later, Linda Watson, the lady who had shared his victories and defeats, filed for a divorce that is now legal. When someone later asked about the alcoholic abstinence, Watson, true to his convictions, responded: "I don't want to discuss that. It is a private thing." This may be the confessional age, but Watson is guided by a different set of ideas. Where public and private merge is difficult to fathom. Did Watson play poorly for so long - actually putt poorly - because of factors we may never understand? Or did problems on the course lead to problems off the course? Those who have known Watson through the years, who respect his intelligence, are unsure how to react to the divorce. "I have a personal, legal and emotional responsibility to all parties, including the children, and my parents, and they're very angry," Chuck Rubin told Sports Illustrated. "Tom was literally and figuratively a member of our family. It's been very difficult for all of us." Sandy Tatum is a San Francisco attorney who also is a Stanford graduate and Rhodes Scholar. Now 77, Tatum was once a scratch player and 20 years ago president of the US Golf Association. He and Watson are not only close friends but longtime partners in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Tatum says he finds the Watson's breakup wrenching, for he and his wife, Barbara, have a great friendship with both Tom and Linda. Half of all marriages in the US end in divorce, but the Watson split caused a stir in golf. That was possibly because of Watson's perceived probity. There were two moments that defined his public image. One was in 1983 when he accused Gary Player of cheating in the first Skins Game, insisting Player plucked a weed that was firmly growing. The other came in 1990 when he quit the august Kansas City Country Club when an applicant was rejected because, it seemed to Tom, the applicant was Jewish. Tom is not Jewish, but Linda and the children are. Three other incidents also stand out. When in the 1993 AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach actor-comedian Bill Murray did a lot of wild and crazy things, Watson complained. Then, later that year, as Ryder Cup captain, he refused to sign a programme for Great Britain-Europe team member SamTorrance after a group dinner. Finally, Watson took offence when, during the 1994 Masters, announcer Gary McCord on CBS said the greens were so fast they seemed to have been bikini-waxed and had body bags underneath. His protest resulted in McCord being removed from the broadcast permanently. When the hate mail poured in against Watson, all he would say was: "It bothers me. I don't have the thick skin of a politician." What he does have is a desire to step from one world to another, to leave behind what he knew - and we knew - and try something new. Whether that's a step forward or backward is up to him to determine, and knowing his style, something that we'll never learn.