Puskas: Rooting against Father Time

There’s nothing like 30 years to alter your perspective.

I cheered a 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus like it was my job when he became the oldest Masters champion in 1986. The odds were long, but Nicklaus turned back the clock for four wonderful days at Augusta National Golf Club. The image of him watching the clinching putt on No. 18 — putter raised in triumph — is one I’ll never forget.

I still had a few weeks at 19 then. The teenaged me was going to remain so forever. We all think that at the time, right?

I couldn’t relate at all to a man approaching 50 as he tried to beat much younger, stronger rivals — some of them half his age — on perhaps the most unforgiving layout in golf.

But I wanted Nicklaus to win that tournament as much as I ever wanted to see a player or a team win anything.

A lot of years passed before I really grasped what Nicklaus accomplished in 1986.

By the time Tom Watson, then 59, made his near-historic run at the British Open in 2009, I had a much better idea of what it meant. Watson, with a hip replacement and the same shaky putter he’d battled for years, turned back time for most of a memorable weekend and needed only an eight-footer on No. 18 at Turnberry to become the oldest player to win a major.

Suddenly it was 1986 again and one of my favorite players was about to make history. I cheered just as hard for Watson, but the putt he needed most wouldn’t fall.

An entire bar in Portland, Maine — where I was on what, fittingly, Europeans call “holiday” — groaned in unison because we all knew it was over. The clock had struck midnight. Watson went on to lose. Stewart Cink won.

We all went home disappointed.

So you know who I’ll be rooting for today in the final round of the Masters — Bernhard Langer.

It’s a longshot, but when the leaders tee off at Augusta today, the 58-year-old Langer will be chasing Jordan Spieth and one last taste of the greatness he once knew a lifetime ago.

As a young boy, I used to naively wonder what would happen when the baseball stars of the time grew old and retired.

Who would win 20 games when Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver were too old to pitch?

Who would hit the prodigious home runs when Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt couldn’t do it anymore?

Not to worry. There’s always someone new on the way.

In golf, Ben Hogan gave way to Arnold Palmer and he gave way to Gary Player, Nicklaus, Watson and Langer.

I don’t want to watch the new guys today. I’ll root for the old guy because I always have and because I am one now.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.