Great sporting moments don't usually come in pairs, so inexorably linked by time, location and pure individual genius.

But August 19, 2009, will go down in sporting history as probably the greatest Super Sunday we have ever experienced, and are ever likely to.

America's absolute finest; Australia's undoubted grittiest; England's almost accepted inevitability to finish up second best.

It was all laid out for the best part of 10 hours before a global television audience of millions (if not billions) at two of sport's iconic venues – Lord's Cricket Ground and Turnberry Golf Course – 460 miles apart yet joined at the hip by the most astonishing team and individual events sports enthusiasts are ever likely to witness.

Let's take The Open at Turnberry first. Dear old Auntie Beeb put on her finest (and all too infrequent) show of truly professional TV coverage as she captured every dramatic second of Tom Watson's spell-binding bid to win his sixth Claret Jug.

Peter Alliss, Ken Brown, Wayne Grady and Maureen Madill kept us enthralled throughout an unforgettable day.

Watson, shoulders occasionally hunched but a smile never far away, strode the bracken-strewn hills and sandy dunes of the Ayrshire coastline like a man intent on proving to the world that 60 is indeed the new 30.

His swing, his demeanour, his genial approach have not changed since the day he won his first title in 1974 with the Western Open.

Since then he has won eight majors, including five Opens, two Masters and the US Open. But here he was, 40 days short of his 60th birthday, showing that true class never fades.

He never flinched as Lee Westwood, Ross Fisher, Luke Donald and Chris Wood threatened at various times to produce an long-overdue English victory.

And it was only on the very final green, with his very last putt that Watson showed his first sign of fatigue, misjudging his hitherto perfect line, and collecting a bogey five.

That pitched him into a four-hole play-off with his American buddy Stewart Cink, who had clawed his way past the English threat over the closing holes.

Alas, Watson couldn't fire up the energy levels to compete with Cink over four more strength-sapping holes, and the dream simply faded. Cink's name might be on the famous jug, but Watson's name will forever be engraved in our hearts.

Lord's, not for the first time, provided the setting for an unforgettable day's cricket as England started the day as virtually unbettable favourites to win the second Ashes Test against the Aussies, and finished it as probable favourites to lose it.

How on earth they managed to let Australia back into the game from a position of 128 for five chasing an impossible fourth-innings 522 to win, will go down as one of the biggest mysteries of this sporting age.

Perhaps that's being unfair on Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin, Australia's last two recognised batsmen, who kept England's bowlers at bay for three and a half hours, carried the score to 313 for five and, horror of horrors, put the baggy greens almost within touching distance of an amazing victory.

The biggest ever fourth-innings victory target was achieved by the West Indies when they scored 418 for seven against Antigua in 2002-03, and you can bet that Clarke and Haddin will stride out on the final day with the sole purpose of assigning that record to the history books.

Whatever your taste, cricket or golf, you couldn't deny that Super Sunday will dominate the old memory bank for years to come. A day in paradise, to be sure.