WHEN FICTION BECOMES FACT

In a film, it would have gone in. In a film, Tom Watson would have holed the putt, lifted his tired but exultant arms above his head, embraced his tearful wife and drunk in the emotional ovation of the delighted crowd.

But it wasn’t a film. It was real life and, in real life, he missed.

No, that’s doing the word ‘missed’ a disservice. In truth, the putt dribbled and died and with it so did the hopes of the watching world.

Everyone knew it was over then. Watson had had his chance and now it was gone. There was to be no fairytale ending, only a humiliating hour hacking around in a play-off while Stuart Cink, serene and with plenty left in the tank, secured victory.

Nobody, with the exception of his wife and gamblers who had backed him, was supporting Cink. But nobody thought he would lose.

In sport, as in life, the chance comes and you must seize it otherwise it will fall from your hands forever: asking out or not asking out that person you fancy; giving up or not giving up your job for something else which may, or may not, work out; quitting alcohol to stay healthy or carrying on drinking because, let’s face it, we’re all going to die and it could be tomorrow.

Films show us life as we would like it to be. Sport shows us life as it is: full of joy and full of sorrow but not in any prescribed order.

For Tom Watson the Open Championship ended in sorrow at what might have been. Nobody could believe he would win until he was on that final green.

Yet this was perhaps the one time Watson himself did not believe the title would be his.