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"It tears at your guts," Tom Watson said after letting the Claret Jug slip from his grasp. And you knew exactly how he felt.

After four days of brutal links golf, 59-year-old Watson arrived at the 72nd hole with an improbable one-shot lead. The dream had refused to die. And just a par would seal the greatest victory of them all.

But not even eight Major victories and a lifetime in the game could prepare Watson for the magnitude of the occasion.

Having split another fairway, with another of those rasping, drawing drives, half a century in the making, Watson drew an eight-iron and took aim for the green.

He struck it straight and true, but the 18th green was not for the holding and his ball zipped excitedly through and into the fringe. Adrenalin had added 10 telling yards.

It was there Watson's fantastical quest finally came to rest. Fear entered his mind and what should have been a regulation chip became an over-eager putt past the flagstick.

Suddenly Watson looked every one of his 59 years. And he never looked like making the putt for par.

The play-off was a formality, Stewart Cink won comfortably and he did so with dignity.

Watson, with shoulders slumped to the floor and his lined face forced into a smile that nobody believed, was spraying shots all over the place and ready for it to be over.

It was heart-breaking stuff, the likes of which we will almost certainly never witness again.

But while Watson received the groundswell of sympathy, you couldn't help feel for the likeable Cink - who achieved the greatest of victories in the most anticlimactic of circumstances.

Sadly for Cink, we will look back at the 138th Open Championship not for what was, but for what could have been.

Will Tidey / Eurosport