Why profile Watson:
For starters, it would be fascinating to get his thoughts on an age-defying run at the 2009 British Open, when at 59, he barely missed capturing his ninth major championship only to lose a four-hole playoff to Stewart Cink. And going back much further, his reflections on his battles with Jack Nicklaus and others, especially between 1978 and 1982, when he was the world’s top-ranked male golfer, would make compelling reading.
Watson has always respected the game’s traditions and was not averse to criticizing fellow Stanford grad Tiger Wood for Woods’s on-course swearing and club-throwing. Surely, the refined Kansan is well positioned to offer his insights on course etiquette and the state of modern golf.
Other topics a biographer would want to explore with Watson: his reputation as one of the greatest links players of all time; his close friendship with golfing great Byron Nelson; the unforgettable chip-in from thick rough that gave him a win in the 1982 US Open at Pebble Beach; his attachment to his home state, where and his wife have brought up five children in Stillwell, an outlying suburb of Kansas City; and his victory in this year’s Senior PGA Championship in Louisville, Ky., which made him, at 61, the oldest player to ever win a major on the senior tour.
