The 144th edition of the British Open Golf Championship was a soggy, windy and rainy five-day affair that concluded this past Monday. Golfers who had afternoon tee times Friday didn’t finish their rounds until very late Saturday evening and had to deal with an 11-hour wind and monsoon delay. It wasn’t your typical Open Championship, but it was typical British Open weather.
The reason it wasn’t a typical Open was because it was constantly dramatic for all 76 holes with dozens of linksters capable of grabbing the Claret Jug. In the end, Zach Johnson of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one of the most normal people on the PGA Tour, emerged from the ever-changing leader board. One of the tour’s top wedge players and putters, Johnson is the poor man’s Jordan Spieth. Yes, he is 18 years older than the wonderkid, but their games and mentality are remarkably similar.
The Open victory was Johnson’s second major title and it was very much like his first one. When he won the Masters in 2007, he shot a 1-over-par aggregate in wet and windy weather. He won because of his wedge game, never attempting to attack Augusta National’s par-5s. With just two par-5s at St. Andrews, those holes didn’t play a pivotal role in the tournament. Yet with a handful of the par-4s at the Old Course playing to less than 400 yards, it was his wedge game on those holes that garnered Johnson the Open title. Zach Johnson has now won 12 times on the PGA Tour and has done it the hard way. A middle-of-the-road college golfer at Drake University, Johnson, who is the same age as Tiger Woods, won four times on the Hooters Tour in 2001 and 2002 and then won a pair of titles on the Nationwide Tour in 2003. That 2003 season earned Zach a promotion to the big tour in 2004 and he immediately became a top-20 performer, winning in Atlanta as a rookie. He’s been a solid professional ever since.
Zach Johnson has gotten the most out of his golf game since his arrival on tour 11 years ago. He has a 4-1 record in playoffs, has a pair of wins at Colonial, won a Fed Ex Cup event in 2013, and is now on a journey to golf’s Hall of Fame. No one will ever say that Johnson is the most talented guy on tour although he just might be the nicest guy. He is a most deserving Open champ.
While it was a most memorable week for Zach Johnson, others walked away from St. Andrews with mixed emotions. It was another close call for Louie Oosthuizen, who has one major title and two playoff losses in grand slam events. Marc Leishman let a career-defining moment get away in the three-man playoff. Dustin Johnson continued to provide head-scratching moments, playing brilliantly for two days and poorly for the other two. Sergio Garcia recorded his ninth top-10 finish in the Open Championship, yet remains majorless.
And then there’s Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. The 45-year-old Mickelson had a top-20 finish in this year’s Open, yet he was on the verge of a top-10 finish when he imploded on the Road Hole and recorded a triple-bogey-seven Monday. Phil has always been able to crash and burn with the best of them, but we need to remember that he is just five years shy of the Senior Tour. His remaining time on the big tour will continue to be impressive, but in the end he’ll be just like Vijay Singh in the years prior to turning 50 years old. Impressive, but winless.
As for Tiger, he has the triple whammy working against him. Injuries have hurt his ability to practice and play at the highest levels. He’s an old 39-year-old, having played golf on an international stage since he was 16 years old. The great European golfers who turned pro in their teens, namely Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle and Ian Woosnam, couldn’t sustain their careers into their 40s. Neither can Tiger. He may be six years younger than Phil, but he is much older than Mickelson in golf years. It’s hard to believe that David Duval made the cut and had a much better Open week than Tiger. So did a bunch of amateur kids who play college golf. Finally, and most importantly, Tiger is a head case. Multiple swing instructors, questionable decision making in his personal life, classless caddie firings, an inability to focus on the golf course, and a lack of overall golfing judgment makes for a questionable future. Correct that. He has no future on the golf course, shades of Ian Baker-Finch.
My final overall impression of this year’s British Open is the nice guy factor as evidenced by Zach Johnson and Jordan Spieth. To their everlasting credit, both played the previous week in the Quad Cities John Deere Tournament. Johnson is from Iowa and is on the tournament board. He is perhaps the most famous athlete from Iowa and he once again showed his loyalty to the tournament, taking the late Sunday night charter to St. Andrews after finishing runner-up at the John Deere to Jordan.
Spieth was granted an exemption into the Quad Cities as a non-exempt 19-year-old. He won his first PGA Tour event the following year at the Quad Cities. He has remained loyal to those events that supported him when he had zero status on tour, something Tiger never did to events in Milwaukee, the Quad Cities, Sea Island, Las Vegas and Disney World. After failing to get into the three-way Open playoff by one stroke, Justin showed himself to be the anti-Dustin Johnson on several accords. He applauded the gallery at St. Andrews after barely missing his tying putt. He willingly talked to the television cameras and went to the press room. He stayed around for the playoff and congratulated Zach Johnson after he walked off the 18th green.
It must have been a truly devastating moment for Jordan Spieth to come so very close to Ben Hogan and his three majors in 1953. Yet he had the grace and class to do what Dustin Johnson and Tiger Woods are incapable of doing. Yes, he couldn’t match up to Ben Hogan. Yet he did match up to Jack Nicklaus with the way he carried himself. Nicklaus was the greatest golfer of all time. He also showed great sportsmanship in his concession to Tony Jacklin at the 1969 Ryder Cup, his loss to Lee Trevino in the 1972 British Open when the grand slam was in his grasp, and his losses to Tom Watson at Turnberry during the Duel in the Sun in 1977 and the National Open at Pebble Beach in 1982. Spieth is way beyond his years in class and maturity.
The PGA Championship kicks off next month at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. The final major of the year should make an interesting conclusion to what has been a great summer of golf.
