Old farts rule

Last year it was Greg Norman. This year at the Open Championship, the man who everyone's talking about is 59 year-old Tom Watson. He's now become both the oldest leader ever in a golf major, and the oldest player ever to lead a major heading into the final round.

Watson's performance at Turnberry has been nothing short of incredible. Sheesh, the guy's nearly 60; he's had a hip replacement, yet he still swings just as purely as he did in his heydey, when he was for a time in the late 1970's/early 1980's the best player in the world.

Tom Watson is golfing royalty, and the Scottish crowds have treated him as such this week as he's hit fairway after fairway and made putt after putt. The latter in itself is amazing - in the late 1990's Watson lost his putting stroke completely - a condition known universally as "the yips". Watson's response was to give up alcohol, and eventually, his game returned. And his putting stroke at Turnberry has been silky-smooth.

The wind blew again at Turnberry for the third round, and there are now only seven players under par, compared with 50 after the first round. But with 26 players within six shots of the lead, there's still a lot of golf to be played. Surely, it's too much to hope that Tom Watson will still be at the top of the leaderboard walking up the 18th fairway tomorrow. But what a story it would be if he was, and what an inspiration for all of us old farts!