Poor Tom Watson. I really don’t think this is the way he wanted to go out. In what’s becoming de rigeur for any retiring legend playing their last Open round at St. Andrews (see Palmer, Arnold, 1995 and Nicklaus, Jack, 2005), it was arranged that his final walk down the 18th would include a posed stop for pictures at the old stone bridge spanning the Swilcan Burn (you didn’t really think that was a spontaneous event that a few lucky photographers just happened to catch, did you?). What wasn’t arranged was that this historic moment would have to wait until near-darkness, when most of the crowd had already gone home, and that the thunderous applause that greeted his predecessors would be reduced to, well, pretty much a golf clap.

We had all, of course, planned ahead, and I took up a position in a photo tower overlooking the 17th green, for a wide shot of the bridge, the town, and the R&A clubhouse. I got there early, figuring it would be packed. It wasn’t. My good friend Fred Vuich had gotten there before me, and for the next hour or so we waited, freezing our asses off and trying to talk to each other above a howling wind. Thanks to the weather delay earlier, it was 9:45 p.m. and barely bright enough to see–let alone shoot–by the time Tom crossed the bridge. In a stroke of good fortune, I managed to catch a few strobes from the photographers who were lined up in front of the bridge for the occasion.

On a related weather note, can we talk about something else? It rained today.

Let me amend that: It rained sideways today.

It was, in short, typical Scottish golf weather. Cold and chilly in the morning, with a little mist that gave way to intermittent showers, and then all hell broke loose. The wind kicked up and a cold, driving rain, its heavy drops pushed sideways by the gusts, hammered the course. And then, the sun popped out, for a little while anyways, until the clouds rolled back in. And then, as the evening arrived, the sun broke through the clouds one last time, bathing the 18th hole in a glorious, golden light.

It was the kind of day when you had no choice but to leave the rain gear on all day, because you just never knew. Okay, here comes the shameless plug: Thank heaven for Think Tank rain covers.

Here’s what I love about these things: You can leave them on all day. They go on in a second without having to disconnect the lens from the body, sure, but here’s the problem with that: In Scotland, you may not have a second. And today we didn’t. Once the covers are on, its just as easy to shoot with them as if they were off. The peace of mind that that offers (not to mention the ability to not miss a shot as you scramble to find shelter to put covers on, as was the case in the past) cannot be underestimated.

I remember a few years ago, shooting the British Open at Hoylake, we had a similar day. I was very excited to test out a new cover for my 400 f 2.8 that Think Tank had sent me to evaluate. It rained sideways that day, too, and while the covers repelled everything, I noticed a few flaws. That night I e-mailed Mike Sturm and Doug Murdoch at Think Tank, and told them what I thought. The cover was fantastic, I said. But it needed a flap to cover the eyepiece, and they needed to work on some kind of cap for the front of the lens, too.

Now, I’m sure I couldn’t have been the only one who noticed this. But a week later, a package arrived at my door. Mike had sent along a cap he’d devised, and asked me to give it a go. Fast forward a year or so. the Think Tank Hydrophobia for the 70-200 comes out–with an integrated eyepiece flap and a drop-away cover for the front element. These guys listen. they implement. And it shows in their finished product. When I took my 70-200 cover out of the box earlier this year, I e-mailed Mike and told him that, just after looking at it and not even testing it, I think he may have just created the perfect camera rain cover. This week, the true test occurred. In two days of hard rain so far, I’ve had zero equipment failures. None.

In fact, I haven’t even been worried. That’s how confident I am in their stuff.