Taste the Victory
It’s customary in many sports championships for the winner to pucker up and give their trophy a big kiss for the TV cameras. Once at home, some people place their trophies on the mantel piece for all to view and admire. Some do even weirder things.
Stewart Cink won the British Open in 2009, and took home the Claret Jug where he treated the historical cup to 51 weeks of partying. Cink used the treasured hardware as a beer stein, even when they were steins available, loaned it out to friends, had it star in a television commercial and most surprisingly of all, used it to marinate meat.
“One of my buddies is a huge barbecue guy. I mean, he's like an authentic smoker of meats. He's a master," Cink said in a recent interview. "He wanted to use it to baste a pork shoulder on the Fourth of July. And so during our picnic, he filled up the jug with home-made baste that he uses and we poured it over the smoked pork butt.”
Perhaps this week’s winner will enjoy a lingering odoir of BBQ when he raises the cup to kiss it.
During the very first Open championships, winners were awarded a belt similar to the belts won in boxing matches now. The Claret Jug has circulated amongst Open winners since Young Tom Morris won three straight editions of the tournament. The jug was thus inaugurated and every year it must be returned for the next champion. Winners are given a replica of the Claret Jug to keep forever, but Cink didn’t see the fun in using the replica for his extracurricular pursuits:
"The replica doesn't count," he admitted, "We're pouring things out of the real one. We were drinking our wine out of it, our Guinness out of it. The kids drank milk out of it. Everybody had a chance to do what they wanted to do with it and I approved."
Cink is best known as the man who prevented then 59-year old Tom Watson from winning the Open. The two played a close game last year at Turnberry but Cink didn’t let the potential for a good Watson story – the man hadn’t won a tournament since he won at Turnberry three decades before – stop him from taking all the glory.
For Cink, the past year has been the best of his 14-year stint on the PGA tour, and he has extended the celebration of his victory at Turnberry to the last 12 months. Many were disappointed that Cink beat Watson in what could have been the sports world’s greatest story in years. In retrospect even Cink is able to separate his own achievement from the situation to acknowledge the importance of the elder statesman nearly claiming a sixth title at the Open:
“It had to be great to watch," Clink said of the 2009 Open. "To see if [Watson] could hang on and do it, then the play-off -- it just had to be really interesting competition.”
Clink hasn’t lost any sleep over robbing Watson of his sixth title though, saying: “I'm fine with it. I ended up with the Claret Jug and I don't care what the circumstances were. I don't care how you do it. When you get your name etched on that thing forever, there's no bad way for that to happen, so I'm okay with it."
Cink is happy the win gained him recognition from fans as “The British Open guy” and he has been lapping up the celebrations, something that is evident in his win-less 2010 year. He made top-10 four times in 22 starts during the span of the season, but Cink doesn’t feel that’s anything to worry about, he’s still got four more days as “The British Open guy,”
"I got one and I don't feel pressured to win another one," he said, "I just feel very satisfied that I got one. I don't mean that I'm lying down at all. It's just that the satisfaction trumps every emotion or pressure that comes along with it."
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