Aging triumphantly

At 50, Mickelson surprisingly bags another major

At the end of an extraordinary day, there was an ordinary part of life mostly missing for more than a year: hugs. As Phil Mickelson walked from 18th green to scoring area early Sunday evening on Kiawah Island, the sweat of 72 holes yielding to the sweetness of what he had just accomplished—winning a major championship within shouting distance of his 51st birthday, a record achievement—he paused multiple times to embrace others. There were friends, business associates, fellow players.  His peers, some of them a generation younger, knew how hard the Ocean Course is and how difficult this feat had been. They, like most everybody watching a rollercoaster, ultimately historic final round of the 103rd PGA Championship, whether with sand in your shoes or in front of a television trying to keep crumbs out of your couch, hadn’t expected this.

In recent months Mickelson had seemed more and more like a golfer on an unannounced farewell tour, his ball-striking nor concentration what they needed to be in order to contend, much less win, at the highest level. Even having slimmed down and toned up over the last couple of years, Mickelson was showing his golf age, arriving in coastal South Carolina No. 116 in the Official World Golf Ranking, an unlikely springboard for what would occur over the last four days.

With a one-stroke advantage over Brooks Koepka after 54 holes, Mickelson was just the fifth golfer 50 or older since 1900 to lead/co-lead going into the final round of a major, joining Harry Vardon (1920 U.S. Open), Julius Boros (1973 U.S. Open), Greg Norman (2008 Open Championship) and Tom Watson (2009 Open Championship). There was heartbreak in each of those outcomes, particularly the first and the most recent. At 50, Vardon led by five shots with five holes to go at Inverness but had a pitiful finish and finished one behind Ted Ray. Watson was 59 and leading by one on the 72nd hole at Turnberry when his purely struck approach took a big bounce. He bogeyed and lost in a playoff to Stewart Cink.

With a background of infamous mistakes accompanying his many highlights, Mickelson seemed ripe to join the other senior stars who previously came so close, especially given the penal nature of the Ocean Course and his recent ineffectiveness. But the fellow who has been hawking the benefits of coffee played as if infused with chamomile tea and strolling for seashells on the beach. Mickelson is a techy but used a simple blade putter, the design so different from many used on tour these days and held it conventionally on Sunday as well until making a couple of strokes with the saw grip in the latter stages when the nerves understandably were cresting. A clean card on the Ocean Course is one without worse than a bogey, and Mickelson pulled that off in the final round: seven pars, six bogeys, five birdies. The leaderboard was volatile at the top early, but once Mickelson regained the lead with a birdie on the par-5 seventh to Koepka’s bogey he never trailed.

He was ahead by three stepping to the tee of the brutal par-3 17th, where the pond is topped off by tears each day. His ball settled into a snaky lie in tall grass beyond the green. But he hacked it out and got away with a bogey. Mickelson went to the last leading by two over Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen, and that’s how things ended. The drama came from spectators flooding the fairway as Mickelson and Koepka tried to make their way to the home green as was custom years and years ago. You half-expected the most beer-fueled and brazen of the fans to scramble for the ball as Mickelson finished out, the way it sometimes happened long ago before there was a glint of a hospitality tent in any marketer’s eye, but the perimeter held and the champion enjoyed a long, happy moment with his younger brother and caddie, Tim.

In addition to moving Mickelson up the majors ladder—this was No. 6, tying him with Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino—he supplanted Julius Boros as the oldest winner of a professional major. Boros had owned that  distinction since winning the 1968 PGA Championship at age 48, two years older than Old Tom Morris was when he won the 1867 Open Championship. (In the days when the Grand Slam events were considered to be the Open and Amateur championships of Great Britain and the United States, Michael Scott, a two-time Australian Open victor, was the oldest winner, claiming the 1933 British Amateur when he was 54 years old.)

Although Boros, an 18-time PGA Tour winner who died at 74 in 1994, would be bemused at Mickelson’s analytical approach to golf—for the Connecticut native, it was grab a club, eye the target, make a waggle and swing—the two men have in common skillful wedge play around the greens. During an era well prior to clubs with lofts of 60 degrees or more, Boros was a pioneer of the greenside flop shot with a 56-degree wedge and was really good from bunkers. (Julius would have nodded approvingly after Phil holed out from the sand for a birdie on No. 5 Sunday.) Sam Snead rightly is considered the standard for golf longevity—oldest winner of a PGA Tour event at 52 and change; tying for third in a PGA at age 62; still making cuts when he was in his late-60s—Boros, in addition to contending in the ’73 U.S. Open when he was 53, lost a playoff at the 1975 Westchester Classic when he was 55. But neither Snead nor Boros or anyone else can claim what Mickelson pulled off with his 45th victory at Kiawah: more than 30 years between first and last (for now) PGA Tour triumphs. If that isn’t longevity personified, then alligators don’t live in the marshes of Kiawah Island.

Mickelson’s 51st birthday (and, coincidentally, the 200th anniversary of Old Tom Morris’ birth) comes on June 16, the eve of the first round of the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Is it absurd to think Lefty, after a record six runner-up finishes, finally can break through in the championship that has been the greasy pole he can’t climb? After what transpired at Kiawah, Phil might not be out of thrills.