USA TODAY International Edition
Mickelson doesn’t need Open trophy for legacy
SAN DIEGO – There have been a handful of accomplished U. S. Open performers over the last three decades, none more than Tiger Woods with his three wins and two seconds. In the mortals flight, there are a pair of South Africans each with two Opens: Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. Payne Stewart won two and should have won four, but the two he didn’t win went to Lee Janzen. Brooks Koepka is on that list too.
The second greatest U. S. Open player of this generation isn’t among the aforementioned. It’s Philip Alfred Mickelson.
Before y’all run for your pitchforks, even drive- by golf fans know that Phil Mickelson has won as many U. S. Open titles as Amy Mickelson. It’s simply that his lack of a trophy is incidental to the fact he’s been the ultimate survivor in golf ’s most cutthroat test of survival.
Vitas Gerulaitis delivered one of the great quips in sport more than 40 years ago when the professional tennis star said, “Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.” That was after he ended a streak of losses to Jimmy Connors. It wasn’t actually true – at the time, he had lost even more consecutive matches to Bjorn Borg – but his comment illustrated themes familiar to elite athletes: determination, hope, self- belief, frustration and futility.
Mickelson can surely relate since he first pegged it as an amateur at Medinah on June 14, 1990. He’s logged 8,032 strokes since then, 76 of which came Saturday in the third round at Torrey Pines. Short of him producing a score usually only seen in Golden Tee games, Mickelson will be 0- for- 30 in this championship when he drives home Sunday.
In the tradition of U. S. Opens, this has been a week that exposes the Achilles’ heel of any 51- year- old golfer, even one who claimed a sixth major victory a month ago: inconsistency. On days when the longest club in his arsenal cooperated, the shortest one didn’t. If Mickelson’s first- round 75 gave him much to do, his second- round 69 gave him hope, and it’s always the hope that kills you.
“I played really well yesterday and thought I had it,” Mickelson said Saturday. “I was going to make a run, and I just completely lost it today. But I was sure appreciative of the chance to play here in a U. S. Open on a place that is special to me and I grew up playing.”
With respect to his six majors, the U. S. Open has been the Sisyphean tale that has defined Mickelson’s career. In theory, it should have been the event least suited to his gambling, go- forbroke style. Granted, it was in that he hasn’t won it, but no one in the 121 years of this event put himself in the mix on the closing holes more often – a record six runner- up finishes and two fourths among his 10 top- 10s.
Above all else, the U. S. Open is designed to test resilience, the ability to take the gut punches and the crushing disappointments and the borderline malice of the setups and the nearmisses and yet keep coming back for more. No one keeps coming back for more quite like Mickelson.
His PGA Championship win exempts him into the next five U. S. Opens, but the odds of Mickelson winning one of these now seems so slender as to be preposterous. U. S. Open golf typically prizes execution, not the imagination that carried him at Kiawah Island last month. He hasn’t given up though, even 30 years on. After that 76 Saturday, he went right to the range. “I’ll come out tomorrow and do the best I can,” he said.
The 121st U. S. Open did to Mickelson exactly what it has done 29 times before: probe his nerve, frustrate his mind, expose his swing, break his heart. Yet he came back Sunday, shooting 75 to finish at 11- over 295. He’ll be back next year. Woods is the greatest U. S. Open player of our era, but when it comes to the resilience that is the defining characteristic of this championship, there has been no finer exemplar than Mickelson. Even if they never did give him a trophy for it.