Trout fishing and air golf

What does a fellow with 39 PGA Tour victories, eight Major Championships and two green jackets from Augusta do when he comes to Central Oregon? Well, if that guy is Champions Tour player Tom Watson, he tears up the trout on the blue ribbon waters of the Deschutes River.

In town for the Jeld-Wen Traditions Golf Tournament at Crosswater Golf Course last week, Watson and his caddy Todd Newcomb booked a guided fly fishing trip with The Fly Fisher's Place in Sisters to float the 10-mile stretch of the Deschutes River from Warm Springs to Trout Creek.

I was appointed the duty of catering to Watson and Newcomb for the day.

I didn't really know what to expect. As a struggling golfer myself, I certainly knew who he was and what he had accomplished in his career. As it turns out, he is just a down-home mid-western farm boy. It was a lot of fun to spend a day on the river with him.

And he's a good fisherman, too. Although the hot, late summer weather generally slows the fishing (or at least the catching), both Watson and Newcomb landed nice fish throughout the day.

You can certainly see what makes Mr. Watson a great golfer. His hand-eye coordination and ability to feel the equipment is extraordinary. I'm sure he holds and feels his golf club just like he does a fly rod.

The highlight of the trip, however, (at least for me) was at the end of the day, after all the fish catching was complete. On the drive home we stopped at the Fred Meyer shopping center in Redmond, at 11 p.m., to borrow the grassy median for an impromptu swing lesson.

I'd been working on Mr. Watson's cast all day long, and he decided it was time to work on my golf swing. We stood there in the parking lot, swinging golf clubs under the street lights, while nighttime strollers of that hot August night walked by and made jokes about us playing "air-golf" in the middle of the night.

It was the best 20-minute lesson I ever had.

Watson went on to finish tied for sixth at the Jeld-Wen Traditions tournament.