Maybe we should have seen this coming.
Perhaps the first hint was that final round 66 last Sunday at the Scottish Open.
Certainly it wasn’t his 13th place finish at Castle Stuart.
The first round table was set at the 145 Open Championship and Royal Troon was waiting for the guests to show up.
Surely it would be Jason Day, or Jordan Spieth or Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy, surely it would.
Just when you least expected it, there at the doorstep of history was old Lefty — yes the elderly Phil Mickelson, he did, after all, turn 46 last month. So what’s he doing there, walking up the 18th fairway at Royal Troon, sitting at eight-under par?
What’s Phil Mickelson doing hitting a cut six-iron in there to what he guessed was “about 18 feet” for a ninth and final birdie that would inscribe his name into the record books as the only man to shoot 62 in a major championship.
“I need your best read,” he told longtime caddy Jim “Bones” Mackay as they walked up the fairway. Moments before, playing partner Ernie Els checked in with his old pal: “You know this is for 62?” Els reminded Mickelson. “I know,” Lefty responded.
So off he strode, destiny awaiting.
Els got out of the way and left the stage for Mickelson as he stalked THE PUTT, the one for the number that had avoided all the greats. Even Jack Nicklaus couldn’t make one from just inside four feet on the 18th hole of the first round at Baltusrol for 62 at the 1980 U.S. Open.
No, 62 was the unconquered mountain in championship golf.
Day, Johnson and Spieth had already finished with their struggles. None of the world’s top three managed to break 70 on a day made for breaking 70 at Royal Troon.
Still, there was Lefty, two decades older than most of those young stars, waiting, stalking.
He hit what looked like the perfect putt. “With a foot to go I thought I had done it. I saw that ball rolling right in the center. I went to go get it. I had a huge surge of adrenaline that I had just shot 62 and then I had the heartbreak that I didn’t and watched that ball lip out — wow — that stings.”
At the front of the green, holding the flagstick, Bones fell to the ground in anguish. Disappointment painted its painful picture on Mickelson’s face. “This ball was rolling right in the center and didn’t go,” Mickelson later lamented. “It was just heartbreaking.”
Later, as Mickelson fielded questions from the international press corps, he unveiled another theory:
“Well it was obvious right there that there’s a curse because that ball should have been in. If there wasn’t a curse, that ball would have been in and I would have had that 62.”
Does Mickelson believe in the “golf gods?”
“I didn’t,” Lefty said. “But I do now.”
Just when you least expected him, Phil Mickelson showed up and walked off with his 63 consolation prize.
And just when Mickelson least expected them, the golf gods had their say.
