This article is, excerpted by permission from the book "Stories of Pinehurst."

Tom Watson knew how to play golf when he came to Pinehurst for the first time in 1973. But he didn’t know how to win. There was still something separating him from all those magical golfers whose huge photographs graced the hallway leading toward the pro shop.

"I was very young when I played Pinehurst the first time, I guess it was my second full year on the tour," he says. "I can still see all those pictures in the clubhouse: Billy Joe Patton, Charlie Coe, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, all those people who won the North and South when it was considered a major tournament."

The North and South Open was long gone when Watson was introduced to Pinehurst (it was discontinued in 1951, but the North and South Amateur has run continuously since 1901). Having grown up in Missouri and played golf collegiately at Stanford, Watson never had the opportunity to visit Pinehurst until the tour brought him here. Wake Forest golfers had Pinehurst No. 2; West Coast golfers had Pebble Beach. And though it wasn’t a major tournament that ushered No. 2 back into the pro spotlight in 1973, it was a special one. The World Open lasted two weeks and 144 holes and offered a cash bonanza unheard of at the time: $100,000 to the winner.

It also produced some golf never before seen on a course that previously had yielded competitive course records of 65s to Ben Hogan and Johnny Palmer.

On the first day of the tournament, played in early November, Gibby Gilbert constructed a nine-under-par 62 with eight birdies, one eagle and one bogey, setting back for the moment his earlier plans that year to retire from the tour. He was playing horribly after the old American Golf Classic at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, and had lined up a job back home in Florida as a golf manufacturer’s sales rep. But a lesson with noted instructor Jack Grout, he of Jack Nicklaus fame, put Gilbert’s game together and helped him scorch No. 2, which now was played with bentgrass greens.

"It was certainly the greatest round of golf I’ve ever played," Gilbert said. "By far the greatest. It was just one of those days. It was a freak round. It was one of those rounds you dream about."

His peers dropped their jaws like Gilbert was dropping 20-foot birdies.

"I played 18 holes out there and I haven’t seen a birdie hole yet," said Bobby Mitchell, who shot a one-over 72. "And he shoots it nine-under?"

"No way to shoot that kind of score out there," added Leonard Thompson.

World Golf Hall of Fame official John Derr was equally impressed. He interviewed Gilbert for a tape to be shown in the yet-to-be-completed shrine and concluded by predicting, "This record won’t be equaled for 50 years."

He was wrong. It didn’t last one week.

The year had been a good one for Tom Watson so far. He married childhood sweetheart Linda Rubin in July and had won nearly $58,000, 44th on the money-winning list, guaranteeing his spot among the 60 players who would retain their cards for the following season. He shot lackluster 74s in the opening two rounds at Pinehurst and then retired to the practice range, where eight buckets of balls and some adjustments in his takeaway and set-up helped him improve to 69 and 68 and survive the cut.

Wednesday, Nov. 14, dawned warm and sunny (temperatures would hit an unseasonably warm 80 degrees). Watson turned in three-under, made a 12-foot putt on the par-five 10th to go four-under but three-putted the 13th for his only bogey. He then unleashed an assault that eclipsed the heroic stretch of four-under golf that Hobart Manley played on 14 through 18 in the 1951 North and South Amateur.

It began with an eight-iron on the 438-yard 14th that bounced into the cup for Watson’s first career eagle on a par-four. "I was in a daze after that," Watson said. "I felt I could make everything after that."

He did. Ten-foot birdie on 15. On 16 green in two, two putts for birdie. Twenty-foot birdie on 17. Twelve-foot birdie on 18.

Another 62. John Derr had to update his videotape.

"You can’t explain a round like that," Watson said after bolting to a six-shot lead at 347 (Gilbert was his nearest competitor, at two-under 353). "It just seemed to happen. Everything fell into place. I didn’t work hard for it, either. I had confidence and just stepped up to the ball and hit it."

Watson was now in the lead, just as he had been 10 months earlier in the Hawaiian Open. He led by three strokes after three rounds in Hawaii, shot a 75 and finished third. "I choked and blew it," Watson remembered later in Pinehurst.

He’d still not learned to bring it home. Watson exploded the next day with a 76, including an out-of-bounds tee shot on the fifth hole, and followed with another 76 and a 77. He finished in a tie for fourth with Al Geiberger at 576, six shots behind winner Miller Barber.

"I certainly didn’t handle it very well," Watson says today. "The conditions turned very difficult. It was windy and cold and there was hardly anyone out there following the tournament. It’s one thing to shoot good scores early in a tournament. It’s another to win the golf tournament. I wasn’t a winner when I started. I had to learn to be a winner."

Watson would soon suffer another celebrated collapse — he led the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot by one shot after three rounds but bombed to a 79 on Sunday and finished five behind Hale Irwin. Then he won the Western Open later that year, took first in the 1975 Byron Nelson Classic and won four times in 1977, including the Masters. Watson was the best golfer in the world when he teed off in the 1978 Colgate/Hall of Fame Classic. Make no mistake, he’d learned to win by now. And he was ready to win at Pinehurst two years in a row, in fact.

"I love to win on great golf courses and Pinehurst is one of my favorites," he said that last week of August. "Just coming here gets me fired up."

The No. 2 course the players found in 1978 had been made more difficult by Pinehurst and tour officials after the assault it withstood a year earlier, when Hale Irwin shot 62 in the second round and won the tournament at 264, 20-under.

That’s the year Watson made the famous statement that haunted Pinehurst officials and had Donald Ross turning over in his grave: "The course is playing the easiest ever. The fairways are perfect and the greens are like dartboards."

The winning score in 1978 was 277 — 13 strokes higher. The rough was thick and high and the greens were firmer than a year before.

Irwin led Watson by one shot after three rounds, but Irwin played badly early on Sunday and Watson led by five shots through the turn over Irwin, Howard Twitty and Tom Kite; the latter would have trailed by only four had he not called a penalty on himself when his ball moved a fraction of an inch on the fifth green.

The leaders were bunched up when Watson bogeyed 12 and 15, but three straight closing pars held off the pursuers by one stroke each.

The 1979 Colgate/Hall of Fame Classic yielded two more 63s — one from Dana Quigley, another from Johnny Miller — and would be the last one played on No. 2 with the old bent greens. They were returned to bermuda following the tournament, which will be remembered not as much for Watson’s victory but for the return to competitive stardom for Miller, who was mired in a lengthy slump.

Miller led Watson and Keith Fergus by one stroke through three rounds, but bogeyed the 18th on Sunday to fall into a playoff with Watson. Miller missed the second green of the playoff with his approach, couldn’t get up and down and Watson won the $45,000 first prize with a three-footer for par. That gave him $447,636 winnings for the year and capped off a five-win season.

Watson would play one more tournament at Pinehurst, the following year when the event was the Hall of Fame Classic after Colgate dropped its sponsorship.

He made the cut by one shot and fashioned a nondescript 283 as Phil Hancock won, eight shots ahead. Watson returned in 1988 to be inducted to the World Golf Hall of Fame but didn’t have the chance to play No. 2. It’s been 1987 since he finished among the Top 30 money winners on tour, but Watson hoped his game and putting stroke would be in order enough in 1991 to earn him a spot in the PGA Tour Championship, scheduled Oct. 31-Nov. 3.

"You bet I’m looking forward to coming back," says Watson, knocking on wood. "I hope I’m lucky enough to get there. I understand the greens have been redesigned, or resurfaced, I should say. I hope they haven’t been redesigned. I hear they’re very close to the original greens. I’m looking forward to playing, even though they are bent. Hopefully, they’ll get a break from the weather. If you have soft greens on No. 2 it takes the shot-making skill out of it.

"That’s one of the problems they had in the ’70s. I remember the greens were very soft. The comment ‘throwing darts’ came out and that was right. We played a little earlier in the season, and it was very hot. The bentgrass was not in very good shape. They watered it a lot. That’s not the way Pinehurst was designed to be played."

Watson’s most vivid memories of Pinehurst — besides his two victories, his eagle and the 62 in 1973 — are of the resounding influence of golf that engulfs the community.

"I remember the smells and feels of the golf course, the pines of North Carolina," he says. "It was very special. I loved the gentility of Pinehurst. The area itself, it’s such a very majestic area as far as golf’s concerned. It reminds me of a quote I read not long ago. ‘Golf is not a matter of life and death to these people. It’s more important than that.’"

This story is from "Pinehurst Stories: A Celebration of Great Golf and Good Times" by Lee Pace.