Phil Wins at Kiawah!!

I realize that we are now three days after the fact, but The Grandstander cannot let any further time pass without acknowledging the phenomenal performance by Phil Mickelson in winning the 2021 PGA Championship at the Ocean Course in Kiawah Island, SC this past weekend.  As everyone knows by now, at the age of 50 years, 11 months, Phil became the oldest golfer to ever win a Major Championship.  It was remarkable accomplishment by a popular player and was great fun to watch as Phil battled Brooks Koepka in that final pairing on Sunday.

(Little Known Facts:  The Grandstander is very much like Phil Mickelson.  I am a natural right-hander, I play golf left-handed, and I, too, am - ahem - over fifty years of age.  No wonder people are always getting us mixed up.)

This victory by Mickelson, a 3000-1 long shot who was ranked 176th in the world coming into the event, sparked comparisons to Tiger Woods' equally remarkable win at the Masters in 2019, and it reminded us all that both Woods and Mickelson will forever be linked as the greatest golfers of their generation.  One must wonder how truly staggering the wins and wins-in-majors totals for Phil would have been had he not been a playing contemporary of Woods over the last twenty-five years or so.

It is interesting that the two of them, who were never particularly close, and, in fact, may not have even liked each other all that much, have seemed to draw closer as they have aged, in  much the same way that Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus did when their glory years were behind them and they got older.  Think of Phil dressing in red and black on the Champions Tour the weekend after Woods' auto accident earlier this year, and think of Woods tweet saluting Mickelson  (and Phil's response) after the big win on Sunday.  It's kind of cool, really.

And as this Barry Svrluga column in today's Washington Post indicates, the injured and inactive Woods and the fifty year old Philly Mick are still the only gofers that really move the needle among the sporting public.

Two more comments on the PGA Championship. 

The Ocean Course is a gorgeous piece of golf property in a spectacular setting.  Wonderful to look at.  That said, I would have no desire to ever play on it.  I mean, it looks like just about the hardest golf course that I've ever seen.  I can't imagine having a bit of fun slogging through it.

The surging of the crowd onto the fairways after Mickelson and Koepka teed off on 18 can only be classified as an absolute disgrace.

"But that happens all the time at the British Open" I can hear you say, and that's true, but the Brits do it in a much more civilized manner.  What we saw on Sunday was the equivalent of drunken mobs storming a football field.  It's lucky no one was hurt (that we know of) or worse in that melee.  Say what you will about Brooks Koepka, he had every right to be thoroughly pissed off to be swallowed up in that mass while he - in theory - still could have hit shots that would have won the tournament for him.

Let's hope that the stuffed-shirts of the USGA learn from this and does NOT allow this scene to be repeated at the US Open next month.