Tom Watson was listening on the radio while driving around London. Jack Nicklaus was sitting at home in Florida glued to his television.
Nicklaus said it was rare he would watch all 18 holes of a tournament, but this one was different.
The stars of the Duel In The Sun at Turnberry in 1977, to that point the greatest final round head-to-head in the history of The Open, were now as gripped as the rest of us by its successor – High Noon at Royal Troon in 2016.
On the day, Henrik Stenson's 63 beat Phil Mickelson's 65. The golf was from another world and the rest were nowhere. JB Holmes was 14 shots back in third, similar to Hubert Green who was a distant third in 1977 – 11 behind the victorious Watson.
In his bewilderment Holmes would have been entitled to repeat the famous Green line four decades on.
“I won,” joked Green of '77. “I don't know what game those other two guys were playing.” At Troon, 10 birdies for the Swede and five birdies and an eagle for the American. Under the white heat of Sunday at The Open, they had a better ball of 59.
“Our final round was really good, but theirs was even better,” wrote Nicklaus.
“What happened at Troon was better simply because they played better. They shot better scores,” said Watson. Given Watson had shot 65-65 over the weekend in Turnberry with Nicklaus shooting 65-66, it was the compliment to beat all compliments.
By approval of golfing royalty, the quality in Troon outdid what we thought was the unsurpassable genius of Turnberry.
“I've never seen perfection like it,” said Nick Faldo of Stenson v Mickelson. Stenson not only took the Claret Jug, he wrote his name into Open history in other ways, too. His was the lowest winning total, 264, of all time. Still is. At 20 under, he tied the lowest-ever score to par.
He matched the lowest round in major championship history and joined Johnny Miller as the only player in the annals of the game who shot 63 in the final round to win a major. Miller did it 43 years earlier.
Mickelson, for his part, recorded the lowest score by a runner-up in Open history. He was joined five years later by Jordan Spieth when finishing second to Colin Morikawa at Royal St George's in 2021.
The story of Stenson's week is an epic one. He had walked the course on the Monday. He had never been to Troon before and it was raining so he left the clubs behind. He had no interest in thrashing it around in the wet. He just ambled and observed.
On the Tuesday, he played the front nine. On Wednesday, he played the back nine.
“I'd seen what I needed to see,” he told Golf Digest magazine. “I was on a mission. I had lost a good friend earlier that week [Mike Gerbich, an old pal from when Stenson lived in Dubai].
“Mike's son had put this on his dad's Facebook page: ‘Go win this one for Mike'. When I read that I shed a few tears.
“He was my cause that week. Mentally, that helped. I never got stuck thinking about why I hit it left or why I had a bad break.” Stenson tied a ribbon to his cap in memory of his friend. Mickelson had exploded out of the blocks on the Thursday. When he cut a six-iron into the left-to-right wind on 18, he left himself an eminently makeable putt for a record-busting 62.
Uphill, a couple of inches of break from the left, Mickelson thought he had nailed it. “It was in the middle of the hole with four inches to go,” he recalled. He was about to take his place in history as the first man to shoot 62 in a major, only it stayed up.
Microscopic replays show his ball hitting a tiny pebble, probably the debris from a bunker shot, and staying out. A sensational round of 63 – and he was crestfallen. He led Stenson by five after day one, but the Swede shot 65 to Mickelson’s 69 on Friday and the gap was down to one.
On Saturday it was 68-70 in Stenson’s favour. He now led by one with Sunday to come. The wind blew at 30mph early on Sunday and the R&A took the decision to make the pins more accessible. Then the wind died and the course was left vulnerable, to the chosen two at least.
To everybody else, it was still a bit of a grind. Only 13 players broke 70, Rory McIlroy's 67 the best of them. The top two were in a tournament of their own. In matchplay parlance – which is effectively what it turned into – the first two holes were won with birdie, the third halved in birdie, the fourth won with eagle and the sixth halved in birdie.
Both men went out in 32, then both promptly birdied the 10th. Mickelson drew level on the 11th, but Stenson went into overdrive soon after. He birdied 14, 15 – a 50ft putt giving him a two-shot lead – 16 and should have birdied 17 as well. These are supposed to be among the toughest closing holes in Open golf. Stenson demolished them.
Two-up on the 18th tee, he took out a three-wood and “nuked it” according to Mickelson’s caddie, Jim ‘Bones' Mackay.
“It came off like a rocket,” Stenson recalled in that Golf Digest piece – and headed straight for the bunker which sealed Greg Norman's fate in the play-off at the 1989 Open.
With a three-wood, sand should not have been in reach but with Stenson's adrenaline it flew like a bullet through the air.
“You can always have a two-shot swing on the last,” said Mickelson. “When he hit a three-wood and it came whistling straight off the face right at the bunker, there was a good chance it was going to go in.”
It was a nervy walk for the Swede until he saw what he called “a little white egg” 18 inches short of the sand. He had a perfect lie, the luck of the gods and the touch of a maestro. From there, he made birdie and won by three.
Mickelson had played the greatest final round ever by somebody who did not win the Open. In the entire history of the championship his total of 267 for the week has only ever been bettered by two people – 2021 winner Morikawa and Stenson.
Whatever the controversy surrounding their move to LIV – and it raged and raged – and whatever damage may have been done to their legacy because of it, the memory of 2016, the sheer gobsmacking brilliance of it, will never, ever fade.
— CutC by bbc.com
