In golf circles, the argument rages: Did Jack Nicklaus face tougher competition than Tiger Woods does, or is Tiger's dominance the reason his competitors look unimpressive?

The British Open of 2009 can be considered a large check-mark on Nicklaus's side of the argument.

It was thrilling to watch Tom Watson battle time, age, and logic for four days, but as the bumper sticker says, Nature Bats Last. Experience and guile can carry you far, but only for as long as the putter goes with them.

The 138th Open Championship was lost, lost, and lost again, even by its eventual winner. "If you make four birdies on the back nine in a major," said Mike Tirico on the U.S. telecast, "you usually win." Perhaps, but if you make three bogeys on the back nine in a major, you usually don't. Stewart Cink did both, generally negating his gains with an immediate giveback, a pattern weekend hackers recognize as the PBFU. (That's Post-Birdie Foul-Up, more or less.) An important exception was his birdie at the 72nd hole, which left him no immediate follow-up to foul.

The golfing gods are not merely sadistic, they're ageist. In other sports, time's ravages affect an athlete's speed and strength in obvious, demonstrable ways. In golf, the big-muscle parts of the game are less affected than the small, fine motions of the shots on and around the greens. It's nerves, not muscles, that break down with age.

Watson held on as well as he could, but his shaky stroke from short-to-middle distance was the demon on his shoulder, lurking and waiting to strike. He bogeyed two of the first three holes, then steadied considerably, matching bogeys and birdies over the next thirteen, until his virtual tap-in on the seventeenth gave him a one stroke lead.

While Watson was defying and marking time through those holes, where were the challengers? One after another, they poked their heads above ground like prairie dogs, only to retreat below the surface when they saw what awaited them.

First Ross Fisher, awaiting word of his wife's imminent labor, took a snowman on the par-4 fifth, playing himself into irrelevance. (No word on whether the child will now be named Frosty.)

Mathew Goggin, playing alongside Watson, bogeyed two and four, got those strokes back with birdies on seven and ten, but made three straight bogeys from 14-16, rendering him a spectator to Watson's finish.

Lee Westwood demonstrated why he is a frequent contender at the majors, vaulting to a tie for the lead by going birdie-eagle on 6-7, then showed why he has never won one with bogeys on three of the last four holes.

On a day when the holes were cut in accessible locations - there were 27 rounds of even or better - only one of the thirteen golfers within five shots of the lead at the start of the day managed to break par. That was Cink, whose one-under 69 posted the 278 score that became the target for the final groups.

Watson played the eighteenth hole beautifully, driving long and straight, then hitting his eight-iron approach just a touch too well. The ball bounced and rolled, passing the pin and finally settling an inch into the longer grass behind the green. He faced a shot that 21-year-old Chris Wood had left short on the way to a final-hole bogey, the young man finishing with a 67 that put him one behind Cink. Watson used the putter and hit it firmly, too firmly, the ball coming to rest eight feet past the hole. His putt from there was an awful thing to see, a tentative effort that had no chance to reach the cup.

The less said about Cink's subsequent six-shot victory in the four-hole, lingering-death playoff, the better.

How could Watson, who has just one top-ten in a Champions Tour event this year, come so close to winning a major championship? It didn't hurt that the number-one player in the world was absent the last two days, while number two stayed home to be with his ailing wife. Of the remaining players in the top ten of the official world rankings, five have never won a major, two have won just one, and the last, Vijay Singh, has not won one since 2004 and shot 75-74 on the weekend.

The only player in contention on Sunday who looked like he knew how to win a major was Watson, right up until his 277th stroke of the tournament on the final green.

Turnberry's three previous Opens were arguably won by the greatest golfer in the world at the time: Watson in his unforgettable duel with Nicklaus in 1977; Greg Norman riding a second-round 63 to victory in 1986; Nick Price converting a 50-foot eagle putt on the 71st hole in 1994. Nonetheless, the Royal & Ancient felt that Turnberry needed revising, and reworked the majority of the holes, adding bunkers and length and significantly altering the finishing stretch.

If the worth of a championship venue can be seen in the leaderboard, what are we to make of those changes? Stewart Cink is a fine player, one long expected to win a major (and, for that matter, a lot more than his five previous PGA Tour victories). Still, the list of the twelve men within three shots of the winning score includes just one in the world top 20 (Westwood), but three ranked over 140 (Wood, Thomas Aiken, and Richard S. Johnson), and one unranked near-sexagenarian.

A Watson win would have been one for the ages, but it was ultimately age itself that took the Claret Jug from his hands and gave it to Cink.