Champions Tour Insider: Watson's post-Open life

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Tom Watson (right) smiles at his caddie Neil Oxman after finishing second at the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship.

On a golf course, Tom Watson's focus is riveted on the competition. At that point, what might happen afterwards is hardly relevant.

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So it is that what has followed the events at Turnberry in July has left Watson surprised and appreciative.

"I wouldn't call it emotions so much as the warmth that I took away from it, from how people responded to it," Watson said recently. "They responded from e-mail to a pat on the back to letters to all sorts of different ways of communicating that really humbled me.

"The enormity of the response was unforeseen."

That's because of the enormity of what Watson, then 59, almost accomplished at the Open Championship. He was within a few inches of winning a sixth Claret Jug at an age when nobody has ever before come so close to winning a major championship.

The man whose remarkable career has included so many historic twists and turns almost achieved another, and most unlikely, crowning victory.

For much of that week in Scotland, Watson turned back the clock in a way that nobody could possibly have imagined. He was brilliant in every way at Turnberry until that fateful bogey on the 72nd hole led to a playoff against Stewart Cink. Watson lost the playoff but once again won the hearts of golfers everywhere. If he wasn't aware at the time of what was unfolding on Scottish soil, he certainly discovered the reality in the days to come. And he's still finding out.

"I was just trying to win a golf tournament when I was doing it," Watson said. "A lot of people were there pulling for me, and I knew that. I'm kind of an honorary Scot. But afterwards, the response from the people in America and around the world, it was very special.

"I really felt it when I got back to the States. My e-mail broke down. I had so many e-mails coming in, Outlook Express broke right down ... there were thousands. (The computer) just said, 'Nope, I'm not doing this anymore.' You know how computers are."

Watson's intention is to answer every correspondence.

"I've been answering the letters," he said. "I've still got a big box of letters that I still haven't answered. The e-mails will be answered, too. They're all in a special folder right now. I'll answer those.

"It's just that I didn't realize I was creating such a stir. I really didn't."

Watson already had a busy second-half of 2009 scheduled. It got a lot busier with the demands resulting from his near-miss at Turnberry.

"I'm just doing a lot of different things," he said. "Producing an instructional videotape, for instance, a set of DVDs that have been planned for a long time. I'm going to Iraq with a group called Troops First. Got a couple of golf courses. They've been working on new projects.

"That, playing golf, and learning how to ride cutting horses has been full time."

Cutting horses? Really? Watson got on a cutting horse for the first time two weeks before the Charles Schwab Championship.

"And now I'm hooked," he said.

"We have had cutting horses in our family for six, seven years. I've never ridden one because my hip wouldn't let me. Now I've got a bionic hip and I can get on a horse. I did fall off but didn't hurt me. He went one way and I went the other and it was, 'See ya.'"

The hip degeneration was the result of severe arthritis, a problem corrected by hip replacement in October, 2008.

Champions Tour Insider notes:

• Watson's performance at Turnberry, on the heels of Greg Norman's third-place finish in 2008, has led the R&A to change one of its exemption categories. The R&A has amended a rule to allow former champions who finish in the top 10 in the previous five Opens to get a five-year exemption. Norman is a two-time Open champion.

• The 2010 Open Championship will be held on the Old Course at St. Andrews, July 15-18.

• Chalk up a win for Fuzzy Zoeller. Fuzzy's Ultra Premium Vodka has been awarded the prestigious gold medal and a very high rating of 94 by Chicago's International Beverage Testing Institute. The rating means Zoeller's vodka is considered "exceptional" by experts.

"I have always said I will put my vodka up against any other vodka in the world," Zoeller said. "The key factor in the vodka category is smoothness, and smoothness is what our vodka has."

Judges said Fuzzy's Ultra Premium Vodka is "clear, very clean, mild aromas ... the faintest hint of citrus talc and cream following through on a round, satiny entry ... will make an awesome martini." Zoeller launched his vodka at this year's Senior U.S. Open at Crooked Stick.The product is currently available in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, California, Georgia, South Carolina and Arizona.