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As Phil Mickelson watched his final putt curl into the hole on Sunday, the colorful combination of joy and relief and amazement washed over his face in plain view, and everything else in a wildly unpredictable British Open melted away. As it turned out, Mickelson didn’t even need that final birdie to win his first British Open, but what a punctuation mark it put on what may be the crowning moment of his incredible career.
GULLANE, Scotland — On a daunting, historic course that has routinely separated the great golfers from the good, greatness had to come from behind on Sunday.
With it, Mickelson put the final touch on the major he thought he would never win, his go-for-broke game so unsuited to links golf, particularly at a place like Muirfield, where menacing rough and golfer-swallowing bunkers snare unwise shots without forgiveness. It took 20 years of trying, but Mickelson finally imagined himself around an Open course successfully and etched his name on a Claret Jug.
Phil Mickelson started the final round of the British Open five shots behind the leader, Lee Westwood. After nine holes, Mickelson was still three shots behind the barrel-chested Englishman with the mirrored sunglasses and so much to prove.
“That was one of the best rounds I have ever played,” Mickelson said after his final round 66, which included six birdies and only one bogey. “This is just an incredible feeling. I didn’t know if I would ever develop the game to win this championship. I can’t explain the feeling of satisfaction to finally win this tournament.”
But Mickelson, at age 43, is now more than one of the very finest players of his generation. He is a great links golfer, too.
It certainly helped Mickelson’s cause that his closest competitors on Sunday all came with psychological baggage heavier than Mickelson’s. After all, Mickelson, despite his travails at both the British and United States Opens, had won four other major titles. The 40-year-old Lee Westwood, who brought a two-shot lead into the final round, hadn’t won a single major despite years near the top of the world rankings. And Adam Scott, despite his victory in the Masters earlier this year breaking his major drought, had botched a four-stroke lead in the final four holes of last year’s Open at Royal Lytham for his own memorable heartache.
Born and raised in the target golf mecca of Southern California, where loft and length and backspin rule, Mickelson has gradually acquired the skills and self-control required to become an honorary Scotsman with a club in hand.
Westwood seemed to be crusing along early in his round and had a three-stroke lead heading into Nos. 7 and 8, where back-to-back bogeys suddenly sent him reeling backward. On No. 7, he needed two shots to get out of one of Muirfield’s diabolical bunkers and his momentum hit an insurmountable bump.
“Hate-love,” he said last week of his relationship with links golf. “I used to hate it, and now I love it.”
Scott seemed to take advantage with three straight birdies on Nos. 7, 8 and 9 and had a one-shot lead for a bit, but then he sprayed his tee shot wildly on No. 13 and started a string of four straight bogeys that dropped him from the scene.
On Sunday, Muirfield, a classic course that plays very hard to get, loved Mickelson back.
Henrik Stenson made a bit of a run, as did Ian Poulter, but neither could keep a head of steam through the punishing back nine. Stenson finished at even par, three behind Mickelson, and Poulter was one over, tied with Scott and Westwood.
With the many other contenders faltering or failing to ignite, including Mickelson’s longtime American rival Tiger Woods, Mickelson slowly gathered great momentum. He made birdies on all three of Muirfield’s par-5 holes for a round of five-under-par 66 and closed with a flourish that gave him a three-stroke victory over Henrik Stenson with a three-under total of 281.
Tiger Woods, trying to snap his five-year major drought, seemed to have a chance despite a leaky driver, but bogeys kept creeping in at the worst possible times and he settled in to finish at two over.
His wife, Amy, said that when he left for the course in the morning on Sunday he told her, “I’m going to go bring home a claret jug.” He ended up doing just that.
That left the stage to Mickelson, who started the day five shots behind Westwood’s lead but managed to avoid the kind of huge mistakes that often mark his Open rounds. He also took advantage of nearly every good scoring chance he had.
“I just could not be more proud to be your champion,” said Mickelson at the awards ceremony, the claret jug in his grasp. “I never knew in my career if I’d be equipped, if I would have the shots, if I would have the opportunity to win a tournament here. And to do it, to play some of the best golf, probably the best round of my career, and break through and capture this claret jug is probably the most fulfilling moment of my career, because it was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do.”
He got himself rolling with a great approach shot out of the rough to the left of the fairway on No. 5 that gave him a short birdie putt. Another birdie on the par-5 No. 9 moved him closer to the lead, although he followed with a poor tee shot on No. 10 for his only bogey of the day.
It was the fifth major championship for Mickelson, who won the Masters in 2004, 2006 and 2010 and the P.G.A. Championship in 2005.
Picture-perfect approaches and consecutive birdies on Nos. 13 and 14 pulled him to one under, and suddenly he started looking like the man to beat. He made great par-saving putts on Nos. 15 and 16 to keep himself tied for the lead before moving ahead with the birdie on 17.
He has won three of the four major tournaments. The only major title he lacks is the United States Open, where he has finished second a record six times.
The relief he showed after saving par on 16, a hole that has tormented him all week including with a four-putt double bogey on Friday, indicated this just might be his day.
He was second at the United States Open again last month at Merion Golf Cub, but instead of letting that latest and perhaps greatest disappointment send him into a downward spiral of doubt and regret, Mickelson got away from it all with his family at the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana.
On No. 18, finally in position to win, he hit a great tee shot, but his approach flirted with landing in a greenside bunker. It rolled safely toward the hole, and he sank the eight-foot putt for birdie. That’s when the emotions took over. He shared a long embrace with his longtime caddie Jim Mackay and then with his family. There was much golf to be played behind him, but he seemed to know he had hogged all the magic on Sunday.
There was fly fishing. There was trap shooting, white-water rafting and zip-lining.
“It was such a great feeling,” Mickelson said of his finish. “I can’t even explain what that was like.”
That was clearly the right way to heal in a hurry, and when Mickelson arrived in Scotland two weeks ago, he was quickly back on target: winning the first links tournament of his long career at the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart in Inverness.
He has won two links tournaments in eight days and become the first man in history to win the Scottish Open and the British Open in consecutive weeks.
“Well, certainly the range of emotions I feel are as far apart as possible in the last month,” Mickelson said. “But you have to be resilient in this game. You have to accept losses and use it as motivation as opposed to letting it defeat you. You’ve got to use it as motivation to work harder and come back strong, and these last couple of weeks, these last couple of months, I’ve played some of the best golf of my career.”
