By John Huggan
He’s had his moments before, of course. Welsh Amateur champion in 1989. British Amateur champion that same year, before he was a member of the first Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup side to beat the Americans on home soil. A 1992 victory on the European Challenge Tour punctuated a few years of early professional struggle before three European Tour victories came along between 2004 and 2006. In 2005 he teamed with compatriot Bradley Dredge to claim the World Cup of Golf for Wales. And just over a decade later, he recorded the first of three wins on the European Senior Tour.

So, all good, all memorable, all things to be proud of. But nothing that would quite qualify as truly life-changing.

Until now that is.

With a seemingly nerveless birdie on the 72nd hole, Stephen Dodd’s 13-under-par aggregate of 267 for four circuits of Sunningdale’s Old Course was just enough to clinch the Senior British Open title by a shot from Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez. A pair of major champions in Darren Clarke—bidding to become only the fourth man after Gary Player, Bob Charles and Tom Watson to win both the Open Championship and the Senior Open—and Bernhard Langer pulled up in third and fourth places respectively. Jerry Kelly, whose erratic putting over the four days proved to be an adventure like no other, was the leading American alone in sixth place, one shot behind the 2016 champion, Paul Broadhurst.

“I knew exactly where I was,” said Dodd of his thoughts standing over the 6-iron he struck from the right rough to eight feet on the finishing hole. “I like to see the scoreboards and know what I need to do. For me it focuses my mind more on what I need to do. I hit some decent shots coming down the last few holes.”

MORE: Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau out of Olympics after positive COVID-19 tests

For Dodd, who had played very little competitive golf—one tournament, in fact—over the previous 18 months because of the global pandemic, the perks of victory will surely outweigh the $375,000 first-place check he will be soon be banking. An exemption onto the PGA Tour Champions beckons, and just under a year from now the 55-year-old will be able to tee-up in the Open Championship at St. Andrews without having to qualify.

“That will be special,” he said with a smile. “I’ll have to start trying to hit it a bit harder and further.”

“This is an amazing feeling,” continued Dodd, who’s record-equaling third round of 62 provided the basis for the biggest win of his golfing life. “I was in control of my emotions out there, I just wasn’t in control of the ball, which was a problem. It was a bit of a battle out there. But luckily, I gave myself a few chances. I really didn’t know what sort of game I was going to wake up to. Today wasn’t a great one, so it was a challenge. I scrambled my way around because I hit a lot of bad shots. Holding the trophy was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to come in and do myself justice. Hopefully I’ve done that.”

Dodd’s immediate future remains unclear, but it would be something of a surprise if his hope is not to parlay this victory into at least a few years on the lucrative senior circuit in the States. As Kelly, his playing partner over the final 18-holes, remarked as the pair left the historic 18th green that sits directly in front of the iconic oak tree that forms the Sunningdale club emblem: “See you in the States.”

In that respect, Broadhurst is a fine role model. Since his 2016 win at Carnoustie, the former Ryder Cup player has won four more times across the pond, including another major, the 2018 Senior PGA Championship. So there is, potentially at least, much for Dodd to look forward to. As ever though, this understated soul wasn’t giving much away.

“I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet,” he said. “I’m sure on the drive home I’m reflecting on it all. I’ll look at it over the coming weeks. I’m not sure what lies ahead at the moment. It’s just too early for me to decide what’s going to happen, but I would like to play a bit in America.”

Don’t be fooled by all that diffidence though. Stephen Dodd has always been a golfer you need to keep an eye on. You just have to be patient.

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For those of us who finish runner-up in one B-flight tournament and insist on displaying the bowl prominently in our living-room bookcases to the despair of our wives, this sounds like a good problem to have. But for Langer, it is a real problem, as evidenced by this video shared by the PGA Tour Champions.

The video showcases that Langer has been incredibly successful while also placing a priority on family. He keeps pictures of his wife and four children throughout the house but leaves many of his trophies scattered on the floor for lack of display space. And again, these aren’t participation trophies, but some of the highest honours in his sport.

And Langer’s home isn’t exactly a studio apartment.

The moral of this story is that every athlete’s success comes at a cost. For some it’s quality time with friends, for others it’s creaky joints. And then there are guys like Bernhard Langer, who has so many damn trophies he probably doesn’t have room for a pool table.

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Watson has played very little golf this year; the Senior Open was his fifth event of 2018 and he hadn’t played anywhere since April. The reason for his absence was simple—and sad: His wife, Hilary, has been battling cancer. There was no way he was leaving her side during chemo and radiation treatments that began last fall. Only during respites in her treatment—at her urging—did he play.

A few weeks ago, Hilary Watson completed yet another painful round of chemo, this time in Houston. Still, she wanted her husband to play at St. Andrews, a golf course and a place he loves. It was at St. Andrews three years ago that Watson said farewell to the Open Championship—an event he won five times.

Remarkably, Watson opened the Senior Open (which he’s won three times) by shooting 69 on Thursday, missing shooting his age by one shot. Then, on Friday, he DID shoot his age—68—and found himself two shots out of the lead after 36 holes.

Watson went out in 33 on Saturday and actually held the lead at 10 under par. For all golf media’s yammering six days earlier when Tiger Woods briefly led a few miles away at Carnoustie, this would have been a story for the ages—not just because of Watson’s age, but because of the hell he and Hilary have been through since last October, when she was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Sadly, it didn’t last. Watson began to fade on the back nine Saturday and then struggled to a 77 on Sunday, leaving him in a tie for 21st place—11 shots behind winner Miguel Angel Jimenez. “I just hit it in too many bunkers today,” he said on Sunday. “You find the bunkers around here, the old lady will get you.”

Phil Inglis/Getty Images

The old lady Watson was referring to, of course, is St. Andrews. To him, the great golf courses are living, breathing things that he loves to duel with. Once, when talking about Oakmont, the place where he should have won the PGA in 1978 and could have won the U.S. Open in 1994, Watson said, “Oakmont has been a friend.”

Related: Miguel Angel Jimenez wins Senior British Open on rainy Sunday at St. Andrews

If St. Andrews is golf’s elegant old lady, then Watson is the sport’s grand old man. He has been defying age barriers for years now: Most recently, he was the oldest man to ever break par for 18 holes at the Masters, when he shot 71 in the first round in 2015. A year earlier, he made the cut at the Open Championship—not the Senior Open, the real one—at age 64. In 2010, at 60, he made the cut at both the Masters (T-18) and the U.S. Open (T-29). He won the Senior PGA Championship in 2011 at 61.

But his most memorable defeat of Father Time took place nine years ago at Turnberry, when he literally came within inches—or a bad bounce, depending on your point of view—from winning his sixth Open Championship, just a few weeks before turning 60. Anyone who follows golf remembers that weekend. Watson would have been the oldest man to win any major—regular or senior—had he won.

He led Stewart Cink by one coming to the 18th hole that day and his tee shot found the fairway. From there, he took an 8-iron and, with the ball in the air remembers thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve done it.”

He had hit the ball exactly the way he wanted to. But links-golf luck came into play at the worst possible moment. The ball landed on a hard spot, took a huge hop and went over the green. Watson tried to putt from there and went seven feet past the hole, giving him a putt in the range that had bedeviled him for years: four to eight feet. He missed, and Cink easily won the four-hole playoff.

When members of the media walked into the interview room after the awards ceremony, they all looked so glum that Watson said, “Hey, this isn’t a funeral you know. It’s a golf tournament.”

Watson watched his best friend in life, Bruce Edwards, die painfully and horribly after being stricken by ALS. He watched his brother Ridge deal with the tragedy of losing a son in a car accident. And now he is watching Hilary try to fight off cancer. He knows the difference between a golf tournament and real tragedy. When he returned home from Turnberry, he admits he was haunted briefly by memories of the links hop on 18 and the missed putt.

David Cannon/Getty Images
Watson with his wife Hilary at the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Ryder Cup.

“But I was so completely overwhelmed by all the people who reached out to me afterwards,” he said. “There were so many letters and e-mails sent to my office and others directly to me that it took me weeks to even think about getting through them. None of them talked about my not winning, they talked about my competing, my having a chance to win. It meant the world to me. I never had a second to feel sorry for myself even if I had wanted to.”

Related: Brandel Chamblee misses Senior British Open cut, says he putted like a ‘buffoon’

Watson won’t feel sorry for himself flying home from Scotland. He’ll wish the last 27 holes at St. Andrews had turned out differently—he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t. But he showed himself and the world that—amazingly—he’s still got some gas left in the tank that first began to take the golf world by storm 43 years ago when he won the Open at Carnoustie, a few miles up the coast from St. Andrews.

Watson has no need to add to his legacy: the eight major titles; the six senior majors; the 70 professional wins around the world not to mention the millions of dollars he has raised for ALS research since Edwards’ death.

But when he plays the way he did for 45 holes at St. Andrews—still somehow defying Father Time one more time—he reminds us all how inspiring golf and golfers can be at their best.

Regardless of where he finished, Watson gave us all one more thrill this past weekend. Now, he will return to the work that is the most important thing in his life right now: helping Hilary beat cancer.

Theirs is a truly inspiring story.

Phil Inglis/Getty Images

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By John Huggan
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Brandel Chamblee won’t be playing the Old Course at St. Andrews this weekend. After adding a second-round 75 to his opening 77 in the Senior British Open, the Golf Channel pundit is off to East Lothian where his goal is to get in 18 holes at North Berwick. Once there, he’ll be hoping to swing and putt a bit better than he did at the Home of Golf. Despite claiming to have, at times, hit the ball “fabulous,” the 56-year-old former PGA Tour pro failed to make a birdie during his second circuit and comfortably missed the halfway cut.

“It was tougher than I thought it would be,” Chamblee admitted. “Yesterday I wasn’t sharp hitting the ball, and I putted atrociously. Today, I was pretty sharp hitting the ball, but I found my way into a couple of pot bunkers. And continued to putt like a buffoon.”

As he is sometimes accused of being from his perch in the television booth, Chamblee was being a little hard on his subject. Given how little competitive golf he has played since his retirement from the tour at the end of 2002, his level of performance was hardly surprising. But this was a golfer talking, not an announcer.

“I didn’t enjoy the experience,” he continued. “You only ever enjoy golf when you play well. It is misery when you don’t play well. I’m a competitive person. I came in here thinking I could have a chance if I played well. But all my golf did was make me want to go practice.”

Related: Pro’s tee shot hits seagull on Road Hole, ball ricochets OB

There were some lighter moments. As you’d expect, Chamblee’s presence inside the ropes provoked a mixture of praise—he qualified comfortably with a 69 at nearby Scotscraig—and good-natured banter. Colin Montgomerie softened-up Chamblee by telling him how impressed he had been by his qualifying score. Cue the tongue-in-cheek zinger: “But do you realize how many players wanted you to shoot 90 and/or break a rule and suffer a disqualification?”

“I’d like to say that having the players watching me wasn’t in my mind on the course,” said Chamblee with a smile. “But I’d be lying. Whatever notoriety I have in the game right now is not because of my golf. It’s because I talk for a living. So everybody was watching. And I’m not quite as good as I used to be. Kirk Triplett asked me if I had any idea how good my qualifying round was. I was telling him I didn’t but he was like, ‘no, no, no. I’m sure you will tell them.’”

All in all then, it seems like Chamblee left the Old Course feeling something akin to ambivalence. He admitted to having tears in his eyes playing the 18th—where he hit the pin with his approach shot—for perhaps the last time in competition, but the frustration with his performance was equally obvious.

“The last two days I have never ever played golf like that,” he sighed. “I’ve played plenty of bad golf, but never bad golf like that. I’ve never made so many ridiculous mistakes. I know that’s what you’re expected to do when you haven’t played much. But it’s not what I expected me to do. If I were commentating I would think a lot of the shots I hit make perfect sense. But as a player I know better.”

The post Brandel Chamblee rips into another player with his harsh analysis: himself appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
Colin Montgomerie press conferences have always been a bit like a round of golf. They ebb and flow. They have their ups-and-downs. A few of his better lines are birdies, even eagles. Others are the verbal equivalents of double-bogeys. Sometimes he even veers out-of-bounds. In contrast to the metronomic play he exhibited at his peak, chatty Monty rarely sticks to the middle of the fairway.

On the eve of the Senior British Open at St. Andrews, the rotund Scotsman brought all of the above to the media centre. As ever on a Wednesday—no poor shots having yet been struck—Monty was in fine fettle as he settled into a suitably well-upholstered chair in front of his eager audience. When the press officer’s mobile phone went off seconds into the interview, the eight-time European number-one was quick to quip: “That’ll be Darth Monty,” a reference to the spoof character on Twitter.

As ever too, no subject was off the Monty radar. So it didn’t take long for him to get stuck into Tiger Woods, the man who beat him into second place in the 2005 Open over the Old Course, and his performance in last week’s Open at Carnoustie.

“Tiger has been in a position to win many, many times recently,” said the 55-year old Scot. “And hasn’t finished any of them off. Last week he was in ‘the zone’ as much as he has ever been for the first 61 holes. He was leading on the eighth tee, then things started going wrong. He started shouting at the ball. He was tenser and more anxious about where the ball was going.

“You could feel his tension. He’s not immune to that. He’s not immune to pressure and how much it means. And around the turn to began to mean too much. He sort settled down after he bogeyed 12 when he was out of the lead. He got back to what he was doing and finished one-under from there but it wasn’t enough.”

Okay, which brings us to the biggest question. Can Tiger win a tour event again, ever mind a major?

“He was leading after 64 holes for goodness sake, or damn close,” said Monty. “Can he finish that off? Yes, I think he’ll learn from that experience. It was his biggest test yet since he’s come back. And he’ll learn from that.”

Okay, what’s next? That would be the biennial contest between Old and New Worlds. Eight times Monty played a singles match in the Ryder Cup. Not once did he emerge defeated. Francesco Molinari’s Open victory will, he says, provide the European team with a huge boost. Certainly, he likes Europe’s chances in Paris come September.

“It is amazing what an Open victory does to a team mentality,” he said. “(European skipper) Thomas (Bjorn) is probably looking at the best team that we’ve had for, well, almost ever. Alex Noren hasn’t played before, but he’s a world player. Jon Rahm, world player. Molinari has played before, and Tommy Fleetwood is another world player. We’ve got a great strength in depth. It’s looking extremely good for Thomas.”

With that, Monty was off. All smiles. How long that lasts is anyone’s guess though. Wonderful on Wednesday. Tetchy on Thursday. Furious on Friday. Stormy on Saturday. And Stroppy on Sunday.

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A Golf Channel analyst, Chamblee has informed and often unpopular opinions that he isn’t timid about expressing and defending, vexing those among the Twitterati who are certain he could fertilise a golf course with them. “Please dump Brandel Chamblee,” one man posted on Twitter recently. “He has no creds to offer player evaluation at the Master’s. Low end player, good grief.”

It might surprise him and others that Chamblee, in addition to knowing there is no apostrophe in Masters, once shared the first-round lead at Augusta National, that he won on the PGA Tour, that he once ranked as high as 58th in the world. Can we just stipulate here that whatever one does for a living, if they’re the 58th best in the world at it, they qualify as an authority on it?

Chamblee’s critics will persist nonetheless, and the 55-year-old is going to risk empowering them by reviving his dormant competitive career, at least on a trial basis. He will enter a Senior British Open qualifier this summer and is considering entering some PGA Tour Champions qualifiers and possibly its Q-School.

“I get a chuckle out of people who try to denigrate my career,” Chamblee told Golf World. “I was an extraordinary golfer. I say that with all humility. There are 25 million who play this game, and I was 58th in the world. I was a decent tour player. I played at the highest level for the better part of 15 years. At times I got damn close to being really good. “I don’t at all look back on my career with any regret. I gave it my all. I burned the candle on both ends, practicing sunup to sundown and thinking about it until I decided to do something else. I didn’t quit because I was playing bad or was hurt. I quit because of life matters, family matters and a goal of wanting to do something else in my life and see if I could be any good at it. That was it.”

Related: Jason Dufner roasts Brandel Chamblee after getting blocked by him on Twitter

Chamblee left the PGA Tour in 2003 and joined the Golf Channel, creating more time at home with his three young kids. Fifteen years later, the Senior Open at the Old Course at St. Andrews, set for July 26-29, “was too strong a lure to ignore,” he said, noting that he’ll already be at Carnoustie the week prior as part of the British Open coverage on Golf Channel.

Stan Badz/PGA Tour
In his playing days, Chamblee was a winner on the PGA Tour and ranked as high as 58th in the world.

“When I’m playing and practicing a week or two at a time, my game gets pretty good. I have roughly three months to try to get my game in order. Every day I go out and try to swing like Ben Hogan, chip like Jose Maria Olazabal and putt like Bobby Locke or Horton Smith. I don’t, but I’m not afraid of failure.

“I want to be as smooth as Rich Lerner or Mike Tirico, too, but I don’t know that I get there all the time,” Chamblee continued. “Big goals, they’re fun. If you fail, you pick yourself up, get after it [again] and narrow your focus. I’m 55. I’ve got five more years probably to do it. I’m probably not as banged up as most 55-year-old golfers. Physically, my body is in pretty good shape. I don’t hurt. I’ve still got a lot of flexibility, a decent amount of speed.”

Related: Brandel Chamblee: Jordan Spieth ‘on his way to becoming one of greatest frontrunners in history’

He, too, has technology that was unavailable to him when his livelihood depended on how he played. “I was out pitching the ball today and I was really, really close. I YouTubed Jose Maria Olazabal and there it is, the greatest chipper who probably ever lived. How can I duplicate that right here right now? Boom, my contact got better immediately. I felt like Jose Maria Olazabal chipping the ball today. Before, you’d have to go to a short-game guru and pull up one or two grainy tapes.”

Yet technology, for all its advances, can’t turn back the clock. Inevitably, Chamblee’s effort will elicit the Charlie Rymer example. Rymer, Chamblee’s Golf Channel teammate, also re-entered the world of competitive golf. He has played two PGA Tour Champions events and has a scoring average of nearly 80. He shot 87 on two occasions.

Chris Condon/PGA Tour
Chamblee says he’s not afraid of failure, whether it be on the air with his analysis or on the course in his return to competition.“I’ll defend Charlie all day,” Chamblee said. “I commend him for putting it all out on the line. He didn’t withdraw or get himself DQ’d. He posted those numbers. I’ve got tremendous respect for Charlie wanting to challenge himself. Charlie’s got a dream. He got healthier, fitter, lost weight, got excited. So what that he went out there and got slapped in the face by the game of golf. It happens to all of us.”

A segment of viewers no doubt will be watching Chamblee’s bid eagerly, ready to pounce in the event that he similarly is slapped in the face. “They have the right to say what they want and to think what they want,” he said. “That’s the nature of our social-media world. Everybody has a voice. I’ve always thought the greatest challenge anyone of us has is to be criticised or complimented and not be affected by either one of those.

“The goal is to have in your mind what you want to do and be true to that and go have fun doing it. It’s just sport.”

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It’s been quite the opposite so far this week at the Senior British Open, taking place at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Wales. The elements have been the story in the first two rounds, with winds reaching well over 25 mph and rain pouring. It’s been so brutal that 13 over will make the cut, and two players posted rounds of 94 and 96 on Friday.

Despite the weather, an illness and questions about his putting stroke, Bernhard Langer finds himself in a position he’s often in at the top of the leader board. The two-time Masters champion holds a share of the lead at one-over 143 after posting a three-over 74 on Friday. He’s looking for his second Senior British Open victory, the last coming in 2014 at Royal Porthcawl by 13 strokes.

Tom Lehman, who carded a one-over 72, is also at one over for the championship. The 1996 British Open winner has made the cut in all seven of his Senior Open Championship appearances, but has finished no higher than T-10. A victory this week in Wales would give him his fourth senior major championship.

Steve Flesch, Billy Mayfair and Mauricio Molina are also at one over through 36 holes.

Four shots back at five-over 147 is Colin Montgomerie, who shot a five-over 76 in his second round. While the Scotsmen has won three senior major championships, he’s yet to win a Senior British Open.

Tom Watson is six back at seven-over 150.

Those looking for more carnage will certainly get it over the final two days. More rain and high winds are on the way on this weekend at Royal Porthcawl.

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