Old News

JW,

Let's be honest. Watching Phil Mickel . . . er, Tom Watson choke away the British Open this weekend had all the emotional significance of seeing a billionaire lose at five-dollar blackjack. Yeah, I feel for the guy, but there's plenty more where that came from. After all, this is a guy who made a living playing golf, who holds the adoration of millions of fans, and who has to be in the top five for best white celebrity voices of all time (right behind Barack Obama). Watson has had a better life than I have any chance of having, and it's not close. So pity him? Not bloody likely!

If anyone deserves our sympathy, it's the media, for whom a Watson win could only have been topped by Tiger snatching the victory from Colin Montgomerie on the 72nd hole before beating Monty about the head with the Claret Jug. Talk about getting your journalistic rocks off! Now, instead of celebrating the athletic prowess of the aged with golf's largely aged viewership, sportswriters are stuck with the most depressing story I may ever have heard: Old people are almost good enough, but not quite. Yikes.

Still, Watson's saga is a good reminder of why golf can compete with sports that move at speeds greater than a brisk walk. A Hail Mary pass lands in three or four seconds, a jump shot in just over one. Golf's clutch moments, on the other hand, last forever. I made a sandwich in the time it took Watson to miss the clinching putt, and my hands were shaking the whole time! By dragging out its crucial segments, golf gives us time to pass through the whole spectrum of emotional fanhood, from hopefulness to abject despair and back again, depending on the player. With Watson, just like with Mickelson, we knew it was lipping out, or not getting there, or disappearing into the tall stuff, but that hope still existed that just maybe we were wrong about him. You can't get that deep into other sports' individual plays, and I can't help finding the experience exhilarating.

How about you?

-GM

GM,

Golf gives us something that other sports struggle to give: honest emotion from people who look like us. Watson looked like he was about to cry on the 75th hole as his hopes slipped away. And yes, his voice is incredible, which means that his life likely would have been far better than ours regardless of his chosen field--a sad truth, to be sure.

We've been doing this blog a little over a week now, and I think it's time for the usually-to-be-avoided Top-10 list. So you're welcome, folks. My portion of today's blog will be an easy read, as I present to you...

"JW's Top 10 Choke Jobs of All Time That He Has Seen Live and Not Used The Internet to Recall"

(Hey, it may be a long title, but I'm not going to do any cheap stuff like combine similar choke jobs to make for one big one. Chris Berman, I'm looking your way. Oh, and I'm sure I'll miss some good ones, but I'm really not using the Internet except for name spelling. I dare you to check my facts.)

10. Chris Webber's timeout (1993 NCAA Basketball Championship Game)

- This barely, barely made the list. The chances of an entire group of college sophomores executing a game-winning play against North Carolina are slim at best. A choke, in my opinion, is when you have it won and give it away. Remember that Michigan was behind. Also remember that Webber definitely traveled in the backcourt, and that the referee definitely saw it but didn't call it anyway.

9. Trailblazers' Squandered Lead (2000 NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 7)

- An incredibly talented Trailblazers team blew a 15-point, fourth-quarter lead to lose Game 7 and the series to Phil Jackson and the Lakers. Replace "Lakers" with "Bulls" and "Game 7" with "Game 6," and the exact same event occurred in the 1992 NBA Finals, but it's not part of the list because I cannot stand rulebreakers on top-10 lists.

8. Chuck Knoblauch Bamboozles Lonnie Smith (1991 World Series)

- Smith would have scored the eventual game-winning run for the Braves had he not been fooled by Knoblauch's half-hearted fake throw, which led Smith to believe that the ball was back in the infield when it was actually still bouncing around near the fence. The Twins won 1-0 in 10 innings. Still the best I've ever seen, this was the first World Series I watched every game of. The last was 2002.

7. The Bluegrass Miracle

- In 2002, Kentucky had a respectable football team--for the first time since Tim Couch. With one second left on the clock, LSU connected on a 70- or 80-yard pass that was tipped and hauled in for a touchdown--behind the Wildcats' last line of defense. I don't remember a single name from that play, but I do remember a closeup of one of the Kentucky players, who was being comforted by one of the assistant coaches. He was so heartbroken that he punched his coach in the stomach! OK, probably not, but you be the judge (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1ANN6EVyU&feature=fvw 1:25). That's the main thing I remember, but of course the Kentucky players drenched the coach and the fans stormed the field thinking they had won. They did this after the final play. Way to watch the whole game, fairweatherers. The only thing that could have made it better is if the situation had been completely reversed. It's unthinkable that LSU fans would ever storm the field after beating Kentucky in football, but take your average degenerate LSU fan. You're drunk off your ass from the 12-hour tailgate, and you're ready to go eat some alligator or tip over a fan bus. You hop on the field, help rip down the goal post, and proceed to commit heinous and lewd acts on anything and anyone in blue. You're finally arrested on a number of charges, some felony, and you learn the next day that your team actually lost. At this point, you're angry enough to drop out of sch . . . er, quit your job at the oil refinery.

6. The Mavericks' Should-be Championship (2006 NBA Finals)

- I don't know if the bigger choke was in Game 3 against the Heat (when Dwyane Wade went crazy to lead a late comeback) or the series as a whole. Either way, I'm irritated that Dallas couldn't stop Pat Riley, Shaq, Jason Williams, Antoine Walker, and Gary Payton from getting rings.

5. Cubs (with Steve Bartman) Fail to Clinch Penant (2003 NLCS)

- The Red Sox had a similar mishap a few days later, but we're still waiting for the Cubs to redeem themselves. Not me, actually; I hate that organization.

4. Mickel-slam Avoided (2006 U.S. Open)

- Phil Mickelson would have won his third straight major if he hadn't used driver. I could be wrong, but I think he missed every fairway on Sunday.

3. Phoenix is San Antonio's Bitch... Again (2008 Western Conference Semi-Finals, Game 1)

- Must I even talk about it? Michael Finley. Tim Duncan. Manu Ginobili. In that order. I knew each of their shots were going in, and there was nothing anyone could do. The NBA god is a boring one who enjoys the halfcourt game, team defense, and rebounding. In the Steve Nash era, the Suns were incapable of losing to the Spurs in a non-devastating fashion.

2. Nick Anderson's Free Throws (1995 NBA Finals, Game 1)

- This would be number 1 if I didn't firmly believe that the Rockets would have won the series anyway. They swept the Magic, but only because Anderson missed four straight foul shots in the closing seconds of regulation, opening the door for a Kenny Smith three.

1. Jean Van de Velde (1999 British Open)

- Need I say more? This guy was put on earth for one reason--to blow a three-stroke lead on the 72nd hole of the British Open by acting brave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XU94TwmmYk. This was the wackiest moment I've seen in golf, and it happened when everything was on the line for a guy who, to my knowledge, hasn't contended for anything else in his career. Best of all, Van de Velde is a Frenchmen, and his choke job came from trying too hard to be brave!

-JW