The Open Championship: Phil Mickelson proves good guys can finish first

Sometimes fairy tales do come true. Sometimes the most cruel heartbreak can lead to the most heartwarming triumph. Sometimes the Sporting Gods decide to smile just long enough to turn dreams into unexpected reality. Sometimes the good guy gets the girl.

A month ago Phil Mickelson was so devastated after practically giving away the US Open to Justin Rose, he spent two days in bed. His wife, Amy, told Yahoo Sports “he was totally almost a shell.” It was his record sixth second place finish in his national championship and, at 43, he had to think he wouldn’t have too many more opportunities to win the one tournament he has always craved more than any other.

The British Open? That has always been an afterthought for Phil, as he explained yesterday. He never thought he had the game to win this one. Despite all his talent, he didn’t even think he could learn the skills and the patience to become the “Champion Golfer of the Year”, traditionally the title given to the winner.

He was an afterthought for much of Fox Sport’s coverage on ESPN last night too. The focus was mostly on the last three groups and Ian Poulter’s charge on the back nine. It was shots of Tiger Woods missing putts and Lee Westwood hitting into bunkers. Mickelson meanwhile was holing putt after putt but if you were watching the telecast, you didn’t know that. They didn’t show Mickelson’s crucial par-saving putt on 16 or his two-putt for birdie on 17 that took him to 2-under and separated him from the chasing pack. Even the producers seemed to have been taken by surprise by Mickelson’s charge. Players in their 40s don’t normally rebound from such a crushing loss.

Thankfully, the broadcaster stayed with Mickelson all the way down the 72nd hole, which he played about as perfectly as it can be played to suck the drama out of the Open Championship. Thirty minutes before Mickelson’s birdie-birdie finish it looked like anyone of five or six guys had a shot. By the time he had finished, there was no doubt who had won the tournament.

His magnificent 66 – a round he called the best of his life - was all the more spectacular given how the rest of the leaders played. No one seemed to want to take control of the Championship.

The charge from Tiger never came. Instead, he looked lost for much of the round, as if searching the Scottish gorse for the magic he used to summon on command. Westwood looked like he might seize the day when he birdied the fifth after finding a bunker off the tee, but he promptly went backward. Adam Scott birdied four out of five holes around the turn and it looked like he would put last year’s disappointment behind him. Except he then resurrected the ghost of last year by bogeying four holes in a row to tumble from the top.

Henrik Stenson was tied for the lead at one point too. Zach Johnson, the first round leader, was hanging around as well. Hunter Mahan made eagle on the ninth to get in the mix. The leaderboard was changing so quickly it looked like a stock market ticker.

All the while Mickelson was quietly confident. He felt he was playing the best golf of his life. He felt he was putting better than he ever had. He trusted his game and he stayed patient. At 43, she showed he could still learn new tricks. Then over what might be the toughest closing stretch of holes in the Majors, he made his move and blew away the the field. It will go down as one of the all-time great final rounds in Major history, made even more impressive by what he went through at Merion.

Mickelson in some ways is the anti-Tiger. He has oodles of talent, but lacks the cold-calculating determination of Woods. He prides himself on being a good father and husband as much as being a good golfer. He is friendly with fans and almost always has a smile on his face.

Only Mickelson knows how hard it was to get over the disappointment of losing another US Open. Only Mickelson knows what he did to turn such a crushing negative into the best day of his life. Golf is about losing, he said after he had won, so you can’t beat yourself up forever. In that, he had a message for all of us. Absorb the heartbreak. Feel the pain. Then get back to work and get over it. Do that, and the good guy might just win in the end too.