Watson believes Woods has greatness of a unique kind

The man Jack Nicklaus came to fear more than any other has turned his back on the Golden Bear and his version of golf history. Tom Watson, who won one of his five Opens here 22 years ago with some of the most sensational shot-making ever seen in a major tournament, flatly contradicts Nicklaus's recent claim that the stranglehold of Tiger Woods is at least partly due to the feebleness of his challengers.

Woods is where he is, declares Watson, because he is the first great golfer to eliminate any trace of an Achilles' heel.

It is a startling endorsement on the eve of the 131st Open. So I ask the man from Kansas if he really is implying that Woods is the greatest golfer who ever lived. He says: "I am implying that, sure. You can't concede that completely until Tiger passes Jack's 18th major, because longevity is also part of it, but obviously you have to make the comparison now. I said four or five years ago, when Tiger started this thing, that you better get on this bandwagon real quick because this guy may be the best player who has ever played the game. Who else is winning? Nobody. In a sense that makes it boring, but on the other hand what an era to live in."

Watson talks of an age of super sportsmen and women, of Lance Armstrong churning through the Pyrenees in the Tour de France, of the Williams girls mopping up the major tennis titles, and, most of all, Woods ransacking all the old judgements on what it took to separate yourself from the rest of the field.

As Watson speaks of Woods' growing mastery, an old memory comes sharply back into focus. It is of a Nicklaus pleased with himself after shooting par on a day of gale and driving rain at his Ohio course named for Muirfield, and then looking up at the scoreboard in amazement as red numbers went against the name of Watson. "Goddamit," said Nicklaus, "that may be the greatest round of golf ever played."

That was in 1979 – the year before Watson's third Open triumph at Muirfield, after which Watson picked up some old hickory clubs, hired a piper and played the 10th and 18th holes in the Sunday night gloaming in the company of Ben Crenshaw. Watson escaped detection by the ferocious club secretary, Paddy Hamner, unlike the unfortunate Crenshaw, who was ordered to report to Hamner's office on the Monday morning, after his then wife Polly's stiletto heels were found to be imprinted on the greens. Watson won two more Opens, but he could not sustain his challenge as the man who would eventually surpass Nicklaus.

Why? "Because I had an Achilles' heel. Lee Trevino said that all great players have an Achilles' heel, but Tiger seems to have none. So if you put the longevity question aside for the moment, you have to say it is fantastic what Tiger is doing. He is doing something that nobody else has ever done before, winning major tournaments like they are club medals, your weekly stablefords."

In this stream of astonishing facility, this growing conviction that the ancient mysteries of golf have been unravelled, one by one, by the 26-year-old from southern California, there is inevitably the point of head-to-head comparison with Nicklaus.

Watson is ready to draw the line, saying: "If you look at Jack, I think his only shortcoming was his short game. He was a wonderful putter. When he had to make a putt, he made the putt. I don't think anybody has ever been better at that, but his play around the greens was not the best. Tiger has that dimension of greatness around the greens; he is right up there among the best, just wonderful. So if you compare the two I think they're very similar with the exception of that one little Achilles' heel that Jack had."

If Nicklaus feels pain at Watson's revision of the league table of golfing greatness, he may be equally unenthusiastic about his old rival's dismissal of his argument that Woods is currently lacking the test of genuine competition. "If was 25 now, and facing the problem of Tiger, I would be doing what the rest of the kids are doing out here, trying to get stronger, working out, improving their flexibility. When I was young the advice I always got was to watch and play with the great players. If I had the chance to play with Jack or watch Sam Snead swing I always took it. The kids today are giving it their best shot. They are trying to emulate Tiger. It is not so easy."

No one is feeling the pressure of it more acutely than Phil Mickelson, the world No 2, who yesterday was revealing a new approach to links golf which he hopes might just bring him a breakthrough in the majors. He says that he did not take personally Nicklaus's blanket criticism of Woods' challengers, but you didn't didn't have to be a master of decoding to understand that he too was consigning the great man to an honoured but not supreme place in the annals of golf.

"Jack Nicklaus didn't mention my name," says Mickelson, "but I certainly know he was referring to the top players and I would include myself in that number. But no, it didn't bother me. I feel it's been difficult for him to equate how he played the majors 30 years ago with how they are being played today. His style is no longer effective. As I've mentioned before, I've tried to play much the same way that was so successful for him in 18 majors by just keeping myself in the tournament and let the others make the mistakes.

"That just doesn't apply to the game any more. So you have to look at a different style to win majors, a more attacking, aggressive style. You have to do this knowing that you are competing against somebody who doesn't make mistakes."

Neither Tom Watson nor Phil Mickelson have quite got round to saying it, but there is really no diluting of an awful truth. It is that Jack Nicklaus has paid a high price for opening an argument in which he lacked the power to win. He is, more than ever it seems, locked into a corner of golfing history. Where he sits, like the rest of golf, at the whim and the disposal of Tiger Woods.