OPEN GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP: YOU FELT it last evening, a cold chill passing over the grand links of Turnberry as the ghosts of Old Tom Morris, Willie Park, Harry Vardon and all those other greats of bygone times accepted it was not to be and returned to their spiritual resting places.

Tom Watson, after all, was not destined to win the 138th British Open. He had been spurned, granted the role of main character in the drama which unfolded on the craggy Scottish shore but ultimately condemned to play second fiddle.

In the end, after a dramatic final round, Stewart Cink – who had prepared for this greatest day in his life by playing the links of Lahinch, Doonbeg and Ballybunion ahead of the trip across the Irish Sea – captured his first major title, defeating Watson in a four-hole play-off that was an anti-climax to the roller-coaster adrenaline rush that had gone before it.

For 72 holes, Cink and Watson – his 59-year-old body rebuking the years and playing with an elasticity that revived glorious memories of his five British Open wins, the last of them at Birkdale in 1983 – had proved inseparable. In yesterday’s final round, Cink shot 69 to Watson’s 72 for the two of them to finish on 278, two-under, a shot clear of Englishmen Lee Westwood and Chris Wood.

However, in the four-hole play-off, Watson played like a man who had spent all the mental and physical energy his body had displayed over four wonderful days here. When it really mattered, and the two protagonists went head-to-head, Watson couldn’t match his younger, hungrier opponent: over the four-hole play-off, Cink took 14 strokes to Watson’s 20. Cink went par-par-birdie-birdie, Watson bogey-par-double bogey-bogey. The six-stroke differential, perhaps, was a cruel way for Watson to lose out.

What did Watson take away, we wondered? “Warmth . . . and spirituality, by which I mean there was something out there that helped me along,” said Watson.

Still, even if it must have felt as if he had just shot Bambi, Cink could savour a first major success. The 36-year-old 6ft 4in American – whose best previous British Open finish was tied-sixth at Carnoustie, where he played with Pádraig Harrington in the final round and claimed to have learned a lot from that experience – was the only one of the seven players who had started the final round under par to produce a sub-par closing round.

Oh, what a day. Early on, Ross Fisher had seemed destined to claim the great prize when he started birdie-birdie. As he stood on the fifth tee, he held a two- stroke lead and was playing with a rhythm and fluidity that suggested he was in control.

However, Fisher ran up a quadruple bogey eight on the fifth – a par four that played the toughest hole of all throughout the championship – and, thereafter, he was relegated to bit player in the drama.

Thereafter, Westwood – who birdied the sixth and eagled the seventh – sought to take a grasp of affairs only for the Englishman to falter over the closing stretch with three bogeys over his last four holes. Westwood was to shoot a closing 71 for 279, where he was joined in tied-third by Wood who finished with a fine 67.

But, though it all, Old Tom stuck to his task. Watson hit fairway after fairway, hit green after green . . . . and, most crucially of all, his putter held good. Until the death, that is.

Just as you are required to do in a major, Cink reserved his best play for the back nine of the final round. Even when he stumbled and seemed certain to be cast aside, he recovered. Having bogeyed the 10th, he responded by birdieing the 11th. After another birdie on the 13th, he then bogeyed the 14th. His response was to birdie the 15th. Then, he bogeyed the 16th – where he drove into a gorse bush – and failed to birdie the par five 17th. It looked as if he’d missed his chance.

Cink, as we’ve found in Ryder Cup matches, is not one to drop the head. On the 18th, in regulation, he found the fairway off the tee with an iron and then hit a nine-iron approach to 12 feet. He sank the birdie putt, and posted the clubhouse mark – with Westwood, Watson et al in the three groups behind – that was there to be beaten, but never was.

Westwood, playing in the penultimate pairing with Fisher, suffered a three-putt bogey on the last which would rule him out of the play-off. And, then, Watson – who birdied the 17th to move to three-under, and in sole possession of the lead – suffered a bogey five on the finishing hole, where his approach took a hard bounce and ran through the green and barely into the first cut of rough. Watson chose to use a putter, his Texas wedge, for the third shot. But it was overhit, finishing 10 feet beyond the hole. And the putter that had served him so well then let him down. The bogey left him in a play-off with Cink.

But the play-off – which took in the fifth, sixth, 17th and 18th holes – proved to be a one-sided affair, as Watson immediately gave Cink the initiative when failing to get up-and-down from a greenside bunker at the first play-off hole.

The real damage, however, was done on the 17th where Watson hooked his tee-shot into rough and could only move his recovery shot a few yards into yet more rough. Watson could only muster a double-bogey seven, while Cink birdied . . . and finished in style with another birdie on the 18th.

“I’ve never heard my name tossed in there with the best guys who’d never won a major . . . but I believed I had something good this week, I felt so calm. I never felt nervous at all. I felt totally at peace . . . on the front nine, even after the bogeys on the 14th and 16th. I felt calm the whole way. Someone at a major always has that peace and, this time, I had it.”

For Watson, there was acceptance, but also regret. “It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it? It would have been a hell of a story. It wasn’t to be. And yes, it’s a great disappointment. It tears at your gut, as it always has torn at my gut. It’s not easy to take.” No doubt, Old Tom Morris and the others would agree with Old Tom Watson. So, too, you feel, would Cink.