A Few Thoughts On Phil's Open Win And A Head's Up

It will be Light Posting Week here as I take a few days of holiday, but there will still be some news, notes and commentary worth highlighting in the wake of Phil Mickelson’s stirring Open Championship win.

Time and slow motion WiFi will forbid me from linking all of the super stories covering his win, but having picked up copies of The Guardian, Times, Independent, Telegraph and Daily Mail, the usual stellar reporting, analysis and imagery is certainly worth a few minutes of your day.  I was on Tiger duty for Golf World and so only saw some of Mickelson’s very relaxed warm-up and his post-round press conference. Therefore my only regret for the week was not getting to see his performance in person, as the conditions I saw and accounts read paint a picture of a skill display that will be go down as one of the very best.

Having slept on the events of Sunday, I can safely say the Lords of the R&A owe Phil Mickelson an enormous debt of gratitude. While Muirfield certainly did its traditional part to produce a championship of special merit, I continue to not understand why the R&A pushed the limit with green speeds and several hole locations. With even the slightest increase from breezes to wind, play would have been stopped on Thursday or Friday. All because of aggressive, par-protecting hole locations on greens too fast for even the relatively benign contours of Muirfield.

Why risk tainting the championship to fend off a few extra birdies?

The same could have been said of a few fairway contours that forced irons off tees in the transparent effort to offset distance advances. And as the championship rolled around to Sunday, it was looking dangerously like yet another last man standing finish, which is never satisfying as someone breaking through and asserting themselves as the champion golfer of the year.

Which is why Mickelson, who along with Ian Poulter rightly criticized the R&A setup Thursday (and backed off a bit Friday) and should forever be remembered within R&A circles as a hero for saving the 2013 Open Championship in more ways than one.

Oh and many thanks to Phil, Adam and Henrik for your stellar play and the extra spending money!