Tom Watson is hopeful he can cap a memorable fortnight on British soil by claiming an unprecedented fourth Senior Open Championship at Sunningdale this week.
The American legend made his final appearance at The Open Championship at St Andrews last week before traveling south to the picturesque Old Course in Surrey.
Emotions ran high for the 65 year old and the thousands of watching fans in Scotland last Friday, and for Watson those memories will live long in the mind.
“I've been around 40 years playing The Open, and it was a joyous occasion last week,” he said. “I'm a little bit disappointed about my play but it was just a wonderful last Open Championship having all of my friends and family there, just to be there with me.
“That was the joy part of it. That was why I said to my son, ‘this is joyous. Let's just walk up the 18th hole and embrace the moment.’
“Now we’re onto this week, and Sunningdale is a wonderful golf course. We professional golfers look forward to coming to golf courses that we love to play and this is one of them.
“This is a course you look forward to coming to play, and the reason is the variety of the shots that you have to play here. You have some blind tee shots you have to understand. You have to deal with flag positions on greens.
“And of course there's always the halfway house and the sausage rolls you always come back for!”
If I won here and qualified for The Open at Royal Troon next year, would I play? Unequivocally yes
The two-time Ryder Cup captain thinks that familiarity around Sunningdale’s Old Course could be pivotal this week and is positive about his game despite a missed cut at St Andrews, though he knows top form will be required to beat a stellar field.
“I thought my game going into The Open Championship last week was in really good shape,” he said. “I was playing well with the exception of my iron play. My long iron play wasn't particularly good and it got pretty bad there at the end.
“But yesterday in the Pro-Am here I took a hard look at the golf course and remembered some of the things that you need to have in your arsenal to play this golf course. So it's fresh in my mind and I'm looking forward to putting it to the test again tomorrow.
“To win this week would be extra special at my age of 65, but I have to go through a lot of players to get there – Monty, Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer, Miguel Angel Jiménez.
“I’m playing with Monty and Jeff Maggert in the first two rounds and they’ve really been running the tables in the Senior Championships lately.
“I played with Jeff in the Senior US Open, in the third round, and he played very well. He's, again, another man I have to go through to win this tournament. He's playing very well.
“You have to kind of give the edge to a guy like Monty. He's probably played here 50 times at least. When you play a course like that, and you're that familiar with it, you have an advantage.”
As you might expect from an eight-time Major Championship winner and six-time Senior Major Champion, the competitive fires still burn fiercely in Watson.
Despite his seemingly perfect send-off from Open Championship golf at St Andrews, when Watson was asked whether, if victorious this week, he would use his automatic exemption for next year’s Open at Royal Troon, his answer was simple: “Unequivocally yes.”
Watch this space.
