What Tom Watson accomplished Sunday in the British Open is beyond belief — at 59, with an artificial hip, he almost won a major, the third leg of golf’s Grand Slam. It says he’s tough, tenacious and a great competitor.  It also says a lot about the difference in athletic ability required of the game of golf, versus tennis, a sport.

Watson fell just short of surpassing Julius Boros, who won the 1968 Masters at the age of 48, and Jack Nicklaus, who won the 1986 Masters at the age of 46.  (Nicklaus, now 70, suprisingly, spent Saturday playing tennis in Florida).  There have been three other winners of golf majors above 43 since 1967.

In contrast, the oldest man to win a Grand Slam singles title in tennis is eighteen years younger than Watson, and that record dates all way back to the 1909 Wimbledon won by Arthur Gore at the age of 41.  In the modern tennis era beginning in 1968, feats of age drop into the thirties:  Andres Gimeno won the French Open at 34 in 1974, and Andre Agassi won the 2003 Australian Open at the age of 32.  Jimmy Connors, at 39, reached the semifinals of the 1991 U.S. Open, and the oldest to go that far before him was Ken Rosewall seventeen years earlier (whom a young Connors drilled in the final). 

Gore’s record is 100 years old and will stand forever.  Never again will you see a male tennis player in his forties compete for a major (I’m not going to rule out the Williams sisters doing it on the women’s side in a dozen years or so), and certainly not past champions nearing sixty.  Footspeed, strength, eyesight and speed matter too much when the ball is moving instead of sitting on a tee.

Maybe Nicklaus wanted to get some exercise.

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