Golf Digest's equipment editor Mike Stachura is usually a pretty astute guy.  He teams with Michael Johnson to write the Bomb and Gouge blog over at that shop.  While their long-standing favoritism for equipment over the integrity of golfers and golf architecture is puzzling, the writing is quality.

This time, though Stachura may well have went too far.  In his story on GolfDigest.com, he suggests that Tom Watson was only able to achieve what he did because of modern technology.

Watson's whip-crackin' swing may seem to hardly have mellowed with age, but let's not suggest that he's playing exactly the way he did 20 or 30 years ago just because he's getting more Omega 3s in his diet, is still as crafty as a boomtown gambler and is sporting an artificial hip that's 58 years younger than the rest of his body (but more on that later). No, you're leaving out one key detail. It's not like the man was tearing his way through all the young bucks at the British Open with a persimmon driver and a forged muscle-back 1-iron. Fact is, modern equipment technology played no small part in helping Watson compete with men half his age.

The problem with this notion is that there is too much evidence to suggest the contrary of his thesis.  In fact, Stachura wrote some of it. 

Stachura talks about the differences in equipment between this year's Open and the '87 US Open, when he lost to Scott Simpson at Olympic Club.  The end conclusion?  Watson is 17.5 yards longer off of the tee than 22 years ago. 

That's great and everything, but the average driving distance difference over the last 22 years on the PGA Tour is actually greater than 17.5 yards.  In 1987, PGA Tour drives went 262.2 yards on the average.  This season, they go 286.7 yards.  That's a 24.5 yard difference.  Even with Watson's 17.5 yard gain, he is still a full seven yards behind the average gain seen on Tour.  His driving average at the Open - 287.1 yards - is shorter than the average on Tour today.  In 1987, Watson was 28th in driving distance on Tour.

Stachura then implicates the advent of the hybrid for Watson's success.

A second boon to Watson's game at Turnberry was the hybrid. Instead of a bag that included a 1- and 2-iron, Watson now carries an 18- and 20-degree Adams Idea Pro hybrid. A bigger, forgiving head with a much lower center of gravity (data from Adams engineers suggest the center of gravity on his hybrids is almost 25 percent lower than it was on his old 1-iron), coupled with a lighter, longer shaft means more consistently successful shots.

True, yes.  But it seems like hardly anybody has a 1 or 2 iron in their bag anymore.  In fact, Stachura made that observation in his preview piece for the 2009 US Open.

At Bethpage in 2002, 70 players carried either a 2- or 1-iron. Today on a typical week on the PGA Tour you won't find a single one of those, while the number of hybrids in play is well over 100. Given that Bethpage will feature more 500-yard-plus par 4s (three) than any other major championship in history, expect even tour players to be hitting a lot of low-lofted clubs into Bethpage's elevated greens. Hybrids may make that task a little easier.

So, what makes the game easier for guys that are 30 is good for them in response to longer golf courses.  But, for 59 year old Tom Watson, it is what keeps him relevant at his age.  That's a double standard and it makes no sense.  If only God and Greg Norman could hit a 1 iron, then the advent of the hybrid should have made his run at last year's Open that much more difficult to achieve.  After all, everyone had a better stick.

Stachura raises a good point about the response of golf courses to technology.  Major championship golf courses are dramatically longer than they were when Watson last contended in a major.  Turnberry was lengthened by 247 yards for the 2009 Open Championship.  That averages out to an additional 13.2 yards per hole as compared to 1994.  In 1994, Watson drove the ball 268.5 yards on average.  He had gained 18.6 yards per drive in the fifteen years hence.  Basically, he was even from fifteen years ago in terms of distance.

More than that, Watson hit 70 percent of fairways at Turnberry.  This allowed him to be in prime position to score.  It gave him more roll off of the tee and prime positioning for approaches.  He rarely had to face the deep stuff that surrounded each fairway.  When he did get into the deep stuff - like in the playoff on 17 - Watson and modern technology had no answer.  In fact, it was his undoing when he missed the fairway that poorly.  Then again, an 18 year old man would not have been able to play out of that cabbage patch.

Stachura does have a point when he says that the ball, hybrids, irons, and drivers have all been made easier to hit than fifteen or twenty years ago.  The sweet spot is bigger on the driver.  That ball flies through the air with better protection against the wind.  Hybrids have replaced the challening 1 iron. 

The problem with those suggestions being the factor behind Watson's success is that every player today benefits from that equipment.  Watson gained no particularly special benefit in terms of performance as compared to other players who exploit the lighter, bigger, and father clubs with swing speed and physique that Watson would never try to match. 

Further, the rise in technological advances has arguably reduced the need for many of the skills that Watson has which are lacking in modern Tour players.  Watson said as much himself.

"They have that big old thing about like that, and you swing it as hard as you can, and if you mis-hit it off center it still goes out there. It makes you sloppy. The big-headed clubs make you a little sloppy."

In other words, ball striking is not quite the same art that it was twenty or thirty years ago.  The club and ball have taken care of a lot of that for players, which allows them to be both more sloppy in their mechanics and have less shot tricks in the bag.  Considering that Watson is one of the game's all-time best ballstrikers, imaginative players, and workers of the golf ball, many of Watson's hypothetical advantages have been made moot by modern technology.

Further, no modern technology can make up for poor putting - the biggest nemesis in Watson's career after 1983.  At Turnberry, he was able to sink putts from nearly everywhere, including the many close ones that have eluded him in years long gone.  Generally, it was Watson's capacity to putt under pressure that made him formidable.  It was his short game genius that got him to within an eight-footer of a major win at 59.  He didn't have to play a flop shot.  He couldn't spin one back from off of a putting ledge.  He had to do it the old-fashioned way - the way we will hopefully see more of next season with the return of V-styled grooves.

What Watson achieved was an anamoly.  It was a beautiful anamoly made of a man who felt confident that he could play a golf course in the same way as he did thirty-two years prior.  The equipment may have changed.  The faces definitely changed.  The course changed.  Still, Watson was able to hit the familiar fairways and greens just like he did so many years prior - and like in 2003 at the Senior British Open.  Yes, even with his replacement hip.

It is fair to suggest that modern technology may have aided Watson against this rendition of Turnberry and the Open Championship.  To suggest that it was the primary reason behind what Watson achieved, though, is heresy and reduces what happened to being a product of the AutoCAD Revolution in golf.