It’s a cruel game.

Always has been, always will be – but come on!

For 71½ out of 72 holes, 59-year-old Tom Watson cheated time, history, the elements and our fundamental sense of what was humanly possible, only to come up inches shy in the end. It was, for many, the most heartbreaking thing we’ve ever witnessed in the game – and while I wasn’t of age to see Hogan’s watery demise at the 71st hole of the 1960 U.S. Open, Roberto de Vicenzo’s scorecard problems at Augusta, or one or two other moments of epic sadness, it’s hard to imagine that any of them would have left us as disconsolate as this.

Watson was just astonishingly good, his swing looking as crisply aggressive as ever, his putting stroke greatly resembling that which carried him to world-dominating heights in the late 1970's and early 1980's – at least for 71¾ holes. His undoing at the last might have seemed a bit less sad had it been the result of finally caving in beneath the suffocating pressure – had he, perhaps, badly hooked his tee ball into trouble, or fanned his approach wildly into the grandstand. But instead, stuck between an 8 or a 9 iron, Watson bet that if he missed, trickling off the back edge beat coming up short of the green, or facing the sort of monster two-putt that Lee Westwood had failed to execute just a few minutes earlier. His 8 iron was pure enough – too pure, in fact – and one big bounce and a bit of roll later, he faced a cuppy lie along the collar, and perhaps the saddest five in the history of the game.

There will be many things recalled from this truly remarkable Open Championships, but what resonates the most may simply be the lesson Watson provided regarding the tenacity, the character – the sheer guts – that the truly great champions possess. He did, after all, struggle mightily in the early going on Friday (at one point recording four straight front nine bogies), then again through the middle holes on Saturday, and during the opening hour on Sunday. Yet each time, when even his most ardent supporters surely felt the end was near, he rallied remarkably, seemingly willing himself back atop the leaderboard with a brand of golf that genuinely did feel the equal of his best 1980s stuff. It was as though Watson had dug his teeth into the Claret Jug on Thursday and, in a manner unattainable to all but a very precious few, simply would not let go. It was as resolute a golfing performance as we shall ever see, and one destined to be talked about for decades, if not centuries.

In the realm of conjecture, a Watson victory would have re-framed the record book in a great many ways, the most obvious being that Harry Vardon would finally be joined in that very rare club of men who can arrange six Claret Jugs atop their personal letterhead. But beyond this, and the somewhat quirky fact that neither player ever won at St. Andrews, there is another interesting thread that ties Watson to Vardon:

Contrary to what was just sort of assumed this past week, there actually is precedent for so old a competitor having a real chance to win a Major championship, for in 1920, a then-50-year-old Vardon(in real terms, essentially the equal of Watson’s current 59) very nearly pulled it off at the U.S. Open, leading through 63 holes at Inverness before ultimately finishing one behind his fellow Jerseyman Ted Ray.

It was every bit as remarkable a feat then as it was in 2009, at Turnberry.

And what can we say of Stewart Cink, who holed the clutchest of birdie putts at the 72nd just to make Watson’s closing eight-footer relevant, then played rock-solid golf over the four-hole playoff? An affable and well-liked sort, Cink not only faced the unenviable task of playing off before a golf world that was 99.9% against him, but also of knowing that his moment in the sun will always, inevitably, be remembered as “Watson’s Open.” So here’s hoping that Cink wins another Major one of these days, allowing him the chance to more fully bask in the glory he most certainly earned.

But in the end, Turnberry 2009 will forever be remembered for Tom Watson’s surreal run, a performance which had some speaking of “the greatest achievement in the history of sports” had he managed to pull it off. Such is extremely tall praise and, regardless, was rendered moot in the end. But I will say this:

If golf is played professionally for 200 more years, and the average human lifespan reaches 150, somebody, someday will likely win a Major championship at age 59. But it’s not going to happen in my lifetime, because yesterday was its one-in-a-million, it-can’t-possibly-happen, Hollywood-wouldn’t-even-believe-it chance.

In the end, the already immortal Tom Watson came within a whisker of achieving a sort of immortality that would have completely reshaped the world’s sporting paradigm.

It’s a cruel game indeed.