After four days of big crowds at Royal Birkdale it was a pity only a handful turned out to see Mark Wiebe beat Bernhard Langer at the fifth play-off hole before the morning rush-hour
The irony was that only a handful of people were present to see the culmination of the Senior Open, coming as it did after an 8am start on Monday and a lost three hours due to electrical storms the evening before which saw the play-off between Mark Wiebe and Bernhard Langer adjourned after two more trips down the 18th had failed to separate them and night had fallen.
Three more times the pair played the hole before Langer blinked and made bogey, allowing the unsung American to slip away with the Claret Jug-lookalike for the over 50s.
The drama on the Sunday evening, when they finished in near darkness at 9.41pm, had been beamed around the world, delaying Sky's coverage of the Canadian Open, and by the end of it the Senior Open had registered in the consciousness of the armchair golf watcher as much as it had with the Merseyside public who turned out in record numbers over the previous five days at Royal Birkdale.
The Senior Open has been contested 27 times but it first appeared on the rotation as a major in 2003 and slowly but surely it has found its place on the calendar. More than 45,000 people wandered round the historic Lancashire links last week, paying £30 a day for the privilege and only £10 for Wednesday's practice, with Friday's attendance of 12,218 an individual record for the Senior Open. The five-day total was up 10% on the previous best, the 41,170 present at Royal Troon in 2008.
Decent weather marked the majority of the tournament and that helped but so did the working man's price, a marked contrast to the Open at Muirfield the previous week, which had the R&A hoping for 170,000 – 10,000 more than the course got previously in 2002 – and getting 142,000-plus, thanks largely to the £75 admission price and the BBC's excellent TV coverage.
This time Birkdale was treated to a field responsible for 25 major titles in total, with next year's USA Ryder Cup captain Tom Watson responsible for eight of that number, quite apart from winning the Senior Open three times in the 10 previous years since its inception as a senior major.
"It has developed beautifully as a tournament because we play such great courses," the American said after finishing at eight over par on Sunday and in a disappointing tie for 36th place. "We play these classic, wonderful golf courses every year and that brings people over here from across the pond. These are great tests of golf and that's fitting for the Senior Open."
Watson, now 63, is looking forward to 2014 already and not just because he will be bringing the USA team to Gleneagles to try to regain the Ryder Cup. "I'll be back playing next year, sure. I'll be back at the Open at Hoylake and will play at Royal Porthcawl down in Wales, which is a damn good golf course."
Cynics may point out that Senior Open fields are not as deep as those at regular majors but the fact that this year's tournament was played off the back tees which were used for the 2008 Open won by Padraig Harrington meant the Birkdale course was playing its full length, albeit with a tolerable wind, and there was nothing dumbed down about the spectacle. Langer and Wiebe finished at nine under for their four rounds, with the German two shots better than that when he botched his 72nd hole by taking four to get down from a green-side bunker and slipped into sudden death. Wiebe had returned a four-under 66 just to give himself an outside chance of a play-off.
For Colin Montgomerie, just past the age threshold and without a European Tour win since 2007, it was a first appearance in Europe's only senior major and, though he was typically disappointed after failing to challenge in the final round, he was positively ebullient about the tournament beforehand and the opportunities the Champions Tour offers for the older generation.
"This is the most important event of the year for a British over-50 player," the Scot said. "It's the most important and the biggest one. This is very rare in sport that you get an opportunity for a complete new chapter in one's life at 50. It's the only sport I can think of that you can start again and really mean it at 50. We're very fortunate to have this facility."
Wiebe, a Colorado-based 55-year-old who won only twice on the US Tour – and those in the mid-80s – would concur. This was his fourth victory on the Champions Tour since he joined it in 2007 and, as well as a cheque for €240,000 and the Senior Claret Jug, he secured a place in next year's Open at nearby Hoylake.
