Tom Watson

IT'S HARD to imagine a more unlikely champion for America's working people than Pat Buchanan.Buchanan served as an adviser to pro-business presidents, Nixon and Reagan, and has spent most of his life as a Washington insider. But just pick up a newspaper or flick on the TV, and you'll find him shaking hands with beleaguered steel-workers or telling farmers and ranchers that they are "getting the shaft" because the U.S. government won't force other nations to open their markets.And recently, with images of the rioting in Seattle fresh in the public's memory, Buchanan told members of the Texas Reform Party that the protesters had "outed the World Trade Organization."

SAN FRANCISCO -- They were supposed to have taken over the sport after winning each of the first three major championships last year. Twentysomethings named Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Justin Leonard were supposed to have made the thirtysomethings and fortysomethings and one notable fiftysomething golfer insignificant.And then something happened.The older guys rebelled.First Davis Love, a 34-year-old purist who had held onto his persimmon driver until last year, won his first major title at the PGA Championship at Winged Foot last August.

TROON, Scotland -- He drives a Ferrari Testerossa and looks like he would be more comfortable in a pickup truck. He is considered the next great player on the European Tour, but has yet to win a tournament of consequence. He comes from Northern Ireland, which isn't exactly as big a hotbed for golf as it is for religion and politics.Meet Darren Clarke, the second-round leader of the 126th British Open and, quite possibly, its next champion. Slightly overweight and largely unrecognized, Clarke has been smoking cigarettes to calm his nerves and making birdies to build his lead.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- They heard the roars and saw the fist pumps. They watched the scoreboards at Augusta National and waited for a blip or a bogey or something to give them the tiniest shred of hope that someone other than Tiger Woods will win the 61st Masters.It happened just once, but that was before Woods continued his obliteration of the course's fabled back nine.It did not happen again yesterday, and might not for the remainder of the tournament.By the time the 21-year-old marvel had left the course last night, after a 6-under par 66 had given him a two-round total of 8-under 136 and a three-shot lead, what nearly amounted to a collective concession speech was being given throughout the grounds.

TULSA, Okla. -- David Leadbetter was an obscure golf teacher who had set up shop just outside Orlando, Fla. Nick Price was an obscure European tour pro who was looking for help with his game. They had known each other from their days as junior players in Rhodesia."He wanted to play on the American tour," Leadbetter recalled Sunday night. "There were a lot of pieces missing, but the one thing Nick could always do was strike the ball."That was the fall of 1981. The following summer, Price nearly lost his obscurity forever when he almost won the British Open at Troon.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Memories often play a role at the Masters. The more you have, the better the chances that you'll get to repeat them, or create new ones. The more positive they are, the better the chances that somebody will remind you of them.Larry Mize revived a few more yesterday at Augusta National. One day after taking the opening-round lead in the 58th Masters, Mize got halfway to bringing back the memories of his sudden-death victory here in 1987. And Greg Norman, the player he beat, got a little closer to exorcising them.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- There is always something of an unreal sense at Pebble Beach, a sort of vaguely mystic quality to the golf and the surroundings.But old Pebble Beach has never been as mysterious and dreamlike as yesterday when, out of the mists of time, a retired golfer stepped up and won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.Johnny Miller, 46, playing in just his fifth tournament since 1990, reappeared yesterday like some specter from another era. He then beat his nerves and he beat Tom Watson down the stretch to capture his first tournament victory since he won at Pebble Beach seven years ago."

TOLEDO, Ohio -- There will be one more walk to the first tee at the Inverness Club for Greg Norman, barring a playoff in the evening hours today. When he arrived here for the PGA Championship in 1986, he had won his first major championship, the British Open at Turnberry in the west of Scotland. History bespeaks the rest of it, as Norman watched Bob Tway hole a sand wedge on the 72nd hole to win the championship.This time Norman heads into the final round of the PGA Championship in the lead again, fresh from a pulsating triumph in the British Open at Royal St. George's, where he exorcised all those demons that had haunted him for seven years.

GULLANE, Scotland -- The 121st British Open, which started today at Muirfield, provides the American game with the opportunity to confirm its renewed dominance of international golf.After years of yielding much of the high ground to European stars, the Americans have recovered to the point that they hold three of the game's four major championships, as well as the Ryder Cup.The only big prize not now in their grasp is this one, now claimed by a quasi-American, Ian Baker-Finch, an Australian who lives in Florida and plays the U.S tour.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- The U.S. Golf Association is convinced that Pebble Beach is primed for the assault of 156 of the world's finest players in the 92nd national Open, which started its 72-hole run early today.And most of the 156 players are just hoping the USGA hasn't overdone it."This is a very hard golf course," said Tom Watson, who captured the last Open (1982) played over the same terrain. "These are the smallest greens we play. They're firm and a little bumpy -- you won't see many putts go in."

Tom Watson, the craggy-faced legend who came within an 8-foot putt of winning a major championship at age 59, remains an inspiration for senior golfers everywhere. Count John Howson among his most fervent admirers. Howson, 50, a vice president of engineering for Black & Decker's DeWalt division in Towson and one of the best amateur players in the state, is gearing up to play in the big Middle Atlantic Amateur Golf Championship at Four Streams Country Club in Beallsville in October. But he's still buzzing from his performance in the U.S. Senior Open last weekend, where he finally got to meet Watson just weeks after Watson electrified the golf world by nearly becoming the oldest player to win the British Open in Turnberry, Scotland.

The British Open has been over for a couple of days, and Tom Watson is probably home taking a blowtorch to his 8-iron, but I'm still sitting exactly in the same position I was when he overshot the green at 18 and came up just short of what would have been one of the most amazing feats in the history of professional sports. I'd like to say I'm still sitting here in front of the television in disbelief, waiting for one of the SportsCenter replays to show he actually made that 9-foot putt on the 72nd hole of the tournament.

Thousands of golf fans watched as more than 70 players, including Tom Watson, Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Kite and Curtis Strange competed in the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship at the Baltimore Country Club. It was the first major professional event to be held at the Timonium course since the 1988 U.S. Women's Open. As part of an agreement with the PGA Tour, it will be an annual event through 2011.

Don Pooley was born in Phoenix, played for the University of Arizona and makes his home in Tucson. That doesn't sound like an ideal background for a mudder, but nothing brings out the best in Pooley like a visit to Baltimore's brand of sea level. Pooley, whose signature golf victory came in the 2002 U.S. Senior Open at Caves Valley, thrived on a soggy second day of the Constellation Energy Classic, as he shot an 8-under-par 64 that moved him to 10-under and gave him a one-stroke lead heading into today's third and final round at Hayfields Country Club.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The crowds stood 10-deep yesterday afternoon at Augusta National, watching legends and relative unknowns alike as they played one of the most beautiful golf courses in the world. It wasn't the 7,445-yard, par-72 monster that will begin to swallow up the field in the 70th Masters beginning today, but the 1,060-yard, par-3 course on which one of golf's most charming events takes place the day before the season's first major begins. It's the tournament that everyone loves to play and few, if any, want to win. Ever since the legendary Sam Snead won the inaugural par-3 tournament in 1960, nobody has gone on to win the main event come Sunday.

Unlike the Champions Tour, Rick Rhoden wasn't idle last weekend. While the tour's top players took a week off before resuming their pursuit of points and position in the Charles Schwab Cup in the Constellation Energy Classic, Rhoden teed it up in Denver. On Sunday, the former baseball All-Star pitcher won his third consecutive John Elway Celebrity Classic, but he's had enough of beating the likes of Al Del Greco, Mickey Tettleton and Jack Marin in his second professional life. Playing on his third sponsor's exemption of the year, Rhoden was the first of the six men in at 68 in the first round of the CEC. He's not knocking being the best ever on the Celebrity Players Tour, but wants to be a regular on the Champions Tour.

Hale Irwin is out, but Tom Kite has been added to a Constellation Energy Classic field that includes 20 of the top 25 money-winners on the Champions Tour. Irwin notched his 43rd victory among the 50-and-over set Sunday, at the First Tee Open at Pebble Beach. After competing three straight weeks on the Champion Tour's just-concluded West Coast swing, the most successful player in tour history notified local organizers late Monday that a sore back would prohibit him from coming to Baltimore.

The 2002 U.S. Senior Open brought big names and big crowds and a big-time golf setting to Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills. The event had a little of everything, but for much of yesterday's final round, there seemed to be an ingredient missing from this recipe. Drama. Don Pooley and Tom Watson more than made up for that. After Watson climbed back from a five-stroke deficit in the last 10 holes of regulation, he and Pooley clawed their way through a five-hole playoff that ended when Pooley made an 8-foot putt on the second hole of sudden death.

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. - It didn't take long for Tiger Woods to be asked about next month's British Open and his pursuit of golf's Grand Slam. Shortly after Woods had finished the 102nd U.S. Open on Sunday night on the Black Course at Bethpage State Park, he was asked on national television about his trip to Muirfield, Scotland. It came up later in a news conference. "Right now, I could care less about it," Woods was saying about an hour after his three-shot victory over Phil Mickelson. "I'll be honest with you: I want to celebrate this one. It's going to be awhile before I start working on my links game."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Tom Watson talked in historical, if significantly exaggerated, terms. "Not as bad as the Bataan Death March, but close," Watson said after he came off the 18th green at Valhalla Golf Club last night. "Six hours kind of takes the starch out of you." Justin Leonard was a little more blunt. "It's pathetic," said Leonard. And Ernie Els had a suggestion.`They should see how it goes and maybe change the venue in the future," Els said. "That was ridiculous. I'm not saying they need to rethink the golf course, but they've got 150 guys playing a really tough course and they're not going to get them all."