GULLANE, Scotland — At 43, 20-odd years into a career, athletic legacies are normally fully formed and appearances on the greatest stages seem fleeting, a memory of what once was. But in the gray Scottish light Sunday evening, with a leader board above the grandstand that reflected some of the stoutest names in golf — Woods, Westwood, Scott and others — Phil Mickelson watched a putt roll into the bottom of the cup at Muirfield’s 18th hole, thrust both his arms skyward and held them there on his joyous walk to retrieve the ball.
Right then, in accomplishing something even the supremely confident Mickelson thought unfathomable, the possibility jumped out. He won the British Open, a tournament he once found more perplexing than calculus. If that’s possible at 43, what next? What if — gulp — he’s just getting started?
“I never knew if I would be able to win this tournament,” Mickelson said later, greenside, as he waited to collect the claret jug. “I always hoped and believed, but I never knew it — until about an hour ago.”
What Mickelson did Sunday in winning his first British Open, his fifth major championship, was play his best golf, a round both he and caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay called the best of his career. But there is more to it than that, more than just his closing 66 that put him 3-under par for the tournament — three shots clear of the field — and more, even, than birdieing four of the final six holes.
No, what Mickelson did at Muirfield both rounded out his résumé, adding a claret jug to his three Masters titles and lone PGA Championship, and opened up the possibility that if he’s playing his best golf now, more than two decades into his career, there could be more majors to come. He is an oddity: a Hall of Famer, one of the best players of his or any generation, who’s still a work in progress, perhaps improving.
“He’s stronger than he’s ever been,” said Mackay, the only caddie Mickelson has employed in a 21-year pro career. “He’s fitter than he’s ever been. He’s hungrier than he’s ever been. You can’t [overstate] how much he wants to compete and do well.”
That was right there Sunday, a day Mickelson began five shots behind leaderLee Westwood, with eight players ahead of him. Throw a dart at that 54-hole leader board, and you would have come up with a worthy champion: Westwood, 40, still on the eternal quest for his first major; Tiger Woods, desperately seeking to end a five-year drought; Adam Scott, who suffered through so much pain in last year’s Open, only to win this year’s Masters; to Hunter Mahan, Angel Cabrera and Zach Johnson.
But on the range before his round, Mickelson’s swing coach, Butch Harmon, spoke with Mackay. With Westwood in the lead at 3 under, Woods and Mahan two behind that and Muirfield intimidating but not impossible, they told Mickelson that even par or 1 under could win the claret jug.
“And he goes, ‘I’m going to be better than that,’ ” Harmon said. “He wasn’t lying.”
So off he went, on a wild quest over what became a wild day. England’s Westwood, the people’s choice when the round started, was up three strokes as he played the par-3 seventh — a lead over the early-charging Ian Poulter (who shot a closing 67), Sweden’s Henrik Stenson (the eventual runner-up with a final-round 70) — and Mickelson, who was just making the turn.