Fate was what found Newton eight years later. Rushing to catch a flight at a Sydney airport, he jogged onto the tarmac and into the spinning propeller of a Cessna. The blades took his right arm, a chunk of his stomach, gouged his right eye and missed his brain by millimeters. It should have taken his life. "I’ve come to believe that things happen for a reason," says Newton, 63. "Coming as close to death as I did, the birds now chirp a little louder." At the time of the accident, Newton was 33, a young talent in ascendance. He’d notched 13 victories, including his home country’s biggest tournament, the Australian Open. He arrived at Carnoustie in 1975 in the zone.

Newton held a two-stroke lead on Sunday when he came to a bottleneck on the 16th tee. After the delay, Newton bogeyed 16 and 17, then parred 18 to tie Watson, who’d birdied the final hole. In the playoff, the two stood even at 18, where Newton’s approach caught a greenside bunker. He made bogey to Watson’s par.

"For the next 10 years, he was the best player in the world," says Newton, who wasn’t bad himself, including a win at the 1978 Buick Open. Everything changed on July 24, 1983, a rainy night in Sydney. He hopped a cab to the airport for a puddle-jump to Newcastle. Rumors later had it that he’d been boozing, but he says alcohol wasn’t a factor. Visibility was poor as he stepped onto the tarmac. Newton recalls little of the gruesome collision. But he says the long recovery—the coma, eight weeks in intensive care, a dozen operations, and a deep depression—evolved into a fresh outlook on life. "The way I see it I was lucky to have 13 great years on Tour."

Newton has forged a new career: as a course designer and golf commentator on Australian TV, where he wears his trademark blue blazer and a bow tie (a clip-on). After the accident, he taught himself to play one-handed, and whittled his index to 13, once shooting a 78. "Most golfers who don’t play often have a rough go of it," he says. "Imagine a guy with one arm and one eye."

If Newton has left his accident behind, others haven’t. A few years ago, a man tried to sell him a morbid souvenir: the propeller that nearly killed him. "I don’t know how he got it, but he had quite a hide asking me to buy the bloody thing."

His sense of humor intact, Newton lives with his wife, Jackie, in Newcastle, where he raises horses. He likes to watch the animals romp in the pasture, his days having taken on the pleasant rhythm of a life that was meant to be.