Tom Watson blamed old age and jet lag for his latest flop at The Lakes after crashing back to earth during the third round of the Australian Open.
After blazing his way to the day’s equal-best round on Friday, Watson followed up his blistering 68 with another horror six-over-par 78, the same sorry score he opened the championship with.
Watson’s slide left the 63-year-old living legend back at eight over and no hope of repeating his 1984 Open triumph at Royal Melbourne.
“It was ugly out there today for me, very ugly,” Watson said.
“I struggled on the practice area warming up, I didn’t have any feel for the club and didn’t put the clubface on the ball.
“As Don January said: ‘I never laid a glove on it the whole day’.”
The eight-times major winner admitted his recent globetrotting of three continents in a fortnight had taken its toll.
“Well, I’m not blaming anything but I woke up at 3 o’clock this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep,” the American said.
“I’m jet-lagged pretty good coming back from South Africa. I’m in good physical health, just tired.”
Watson conceded it was getting harder and harder to throw up consistent rounds the older he gets.
“The thing I used to pride myself on is how solidly I hit the golf ball,” he said.
“I rarely had a day where I would miss many shots – everything was on the clubface.
“I just hit some awful shots … everything was just kind of a brush across or trapped.
“As I said, it was ugly and I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board and just see what’s wrong with my swing.”
Watson, though, had no immediate plans to go back to the drawing board.
“No, I’m going to go take a three-hour nap.”