Golf: Watson warming up Toshiba Senior Classic

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - Aside from a $1.4 million playing purse, one of the

greatest attractions of the Toshiba Senior Classic for members of the

Senior PGA Tour is the golf course at Newport Beach Country Club.

This week, however, could include the darkest clouds in tournament

history if the weather doesn’t break.

While rain put another damper on things Tuesday in Day 2 of Newport

Beach’s Senior Tour stop, one of its top newcomers, Tom Watson, warmed up

an audience of about 500 people at a breakfast hosted by the Newport

Beach Marriott.

Watson, a true golf legend who grew up loving Arnold Palmer, then

battled and often defeated Jack Nicklaus in one of the game’s best

rivalries, said his hero as a kid was wrong for endorsing a Callaway golf

club that has been declared illegal for tournament use according to the

United States Golf Association.

Watson, who fielded questions from a three-man panel of media members,

attributed his five British Open championships to “luck” and added that

Casey Martin should have to walk in a PGA Tour event like everybody.

A winner of eight major championships and 34 PGA Tour events, Watson

is strict with the game’s rules.

“(The issue) is difficult and sad,” Watson said of the ongoing Martin

case. “I’m on the side of walking, definitely. It’s part of the game and

it should be required.”

Watson, who has never played Newport Beach Country Club, admitted the

Senior PGA Tour is lacking in “star” power with Nicklaus and Palmer not

playing much.

“But the competition is extreme out there,” said Watson, who added

that, if he could, he would reduce the amount of tournaments on the

Senior Tour, which will have 38 official money events this year, plus

seven unofficial events in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico and The

Bahamas.

Watson, who placed the U.S. Open at the top of his favorite-event list

and Cypress Point at Pebble Beach as his No. 1 golf course, will play

only 15 events on the Senior Tour in 2001, in addition to the four major

championships and a PGA Tour event at Hilton Head, S.C., the MCI

Classic.When it’s all said and done, Watson hopes his peers will judge

him favorably.

“I wish my fellow players would think of me as a heck of a golfer,”

Watson said, the 1993 U.S. Ryder Cup captain in the team’s victory at The

Belfry. “Like Winston Churchill once said, it’s what your peers think

about you that really matters, not the press or anybody else.”

Watson, who said Ryder Cup competition is the toughest event in golf,

was a weekly news highlight from 1977 through 1982, when he won an event

at least three times each year, including the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach

and British Open in ’82. Watson is one of just six golfers who have

captured both national championships in the same year.

“I was really tuned in back then on how to play the golf courses,”

Watson said. “I was very good at getting a strategy around a golf

course.”

Watson, who frequently teams with Nicklaus during events in golf’s

“silly season” in the fall, said that when he turned professional in 1971

after a brilliant Stanford career, he thought of Nicklaus as someone who

“must be pretty good, because he’s beating Palmer.”

In the 1970s, the rivalry between Nicklaus and Watson for golf’s upper

echelon was among the most heated in history. But no one besides them

will really understand the significance and intensity of their battles.

“Winston Churchill once said in the heat of competition, only those

involved truly know what’s going on, and that’s the way it was with me

and Jack,” said Watson, who appears to be a fan of the British in more

ways than golf.

Now, at 51, Watson’s a youngster on the Senior Tour.

“Yeah, Chi Chi Rodriguez said there’s an extreme case of aids on the

Senior PGA Tour this year,” Watson said, “ ... Band-Aids, hearing aids

and Rolaids.”

Watson won British Open championships in 1975, ‘77, ‘80, ’82 and ‘83,

and added two Masters titles (1977 and ‘81) and one U.S. Open.

The PGA Tour’s leading money winner five times, including four

straight years (1977-80), Watson went nine years between titles, after

capturing the 1987 Nabisco Championships of Golf. In 1998 at age 48,

Watson became the oldest player to win the PGA Tour’s MasterCard

Colonial.

Watson, elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1988, was made an

honorary member of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in 1999,

joining fellow Americans Palmer, Nicklaus, former President George Bush

and the late Gene Sarazen.

Weather permitting, Watson will make his Newport Beach Country Club

debut Thursday in the Toshiba Senior Classic Pro-Am.