At around 6.20pm yesterday the veteran American golfer Tom Watson stood over a putt on the 18th hole at Turnberry. He was winning. His ball was about 8ft from the hole. If he sank the putt, he would complete one of the most extraordinary — and unlikely — of sporting achievements.

At the age of 59 he would win the 138th Open Championship, having won five of them already, in 1975, 1977, 1980, 1982 and 1983. He would be the oldest man by more than a decade to accomplish this feat. To do this would not just be remarkable, or a little bit interesting. It would be absolutely phenomenal.

Take 1975 away from 2009 and you get 34 — that’s an incredible 34 years between his first Open and his last. Naturally, a lot of people wanted to see him make that putt. But he didn’t. He missed. And never has the difference between winning and losing been made more graphic than when that ball slid past that hole.

Within an hour and a half, after a rather tragic four-hole play-off against a steady Stewart Cink, Tom Watson was receiving a standing ovation from the crowd as runner-up, and smiling a brave, generous smile, while umpteen records — records that had braced themselves for smashing — suddenly discovered themselves to be safe and sound and unsmashed after all.

Times Archive 1977 Duel in the sun

Tom Watson beats Jack Nicklaus at Turnberry in thrilling climax to the Open

• Budding champion with time to flower, 1975

• Watson's joy at Price freeze, 1982

• Watson's five-pointed star in ascendent, 1983

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“This ain’t a funeral, you know!” Watson joshed at his press conference afterwards. I think he was sensing how badly everyone felt for him. But honestly, what a ghastly ending — and I say this as someone who has been tipping Cink (sometimes in the face of ridicule) for two or three years now. So if anyone should be happy to see this tall Alabaman (ranked 33 in the world) declared Open champion, it’s me. Watching Cink demolish Watson in the play-off was about as pleasant as watching the systematic murder of kittens. No, this was Watson’s Open and I can’t tell you how well prepared I was for him to win it. At my fingers’ ends I had statistics about long-ago chaps such as “Old” Tom Morris (all of 46 years old when he won in 1867), statistics about the longest previous gap between victories (set by Sir Henry Cotton when he won in 1948, after 11 years).

And I was even ready with several sturdy counter-arguments in case anyone dared to say that a victory by a 59-year-old man was proof in itself that golf wasn’t a proper sport.

You know how they always say, “Ah, but golf was the true winner here” — as if it actually meant anything? For once, this may be true. No other sport could have produced this extraordinary story — because no other sport is the focus of a person’s life for his whole life in the way golf is.

There are many ex-tennis players; zillions of ex-footballers. Let’s face it, reality TV couldn’t function without all those ex-cricketers and ex-rugby players. But there are no ex-golfers; there are just chaps who can still miraculously have a magical four days where everything works for them up to the very, very last minute, on a course that has blessed them in the past.

One can’t imagine what Tom Watson must have felt as the 138th Open Championship slipped away from him. But one thing is for certain: it was huge.