Super-cool Swede Henrik Stenson consigned his reputation as the nearly man of golf to the history books, with a scintillating victory at the 145th Open Championship at Royal Troon.
Thirty-nine years after from the Duel in the Sun, the titanic battle between Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson at Turnberry, Royal Troon played host to a match of equally heroic proportions, when Stenson and Phil Mickelson went head to head for two long days over the weather beaten Ayrshire links, and produced one of the most dramatic and tension-filled denouements in the history of major championship golf.
But at the end of it all, there could only be one winner in this battle of the old timers, and that was 40-year-old Stenson, a mere spring chicken to Mickelson’s two score years and six. The Swede’s crushing final round of 63 took his total under par for the week to 20 – a figure normally associated with a run-of-the-mill PGA Tour event, not the one of the most challenging links courses on the Open rota played in almost wintry conditions.
In his 42nd major appearance, Stenson finally found the keys to unlock the door to the Promised Land. Rather, he broke it down with a pickaxe, consigning Mickelson’s role to that of best man to the winner’s dashing groom.
The mercurial left-hander, shooting a final round 65, more than played his part in driving Stenson on to very last hole. And although in the immediate aftermath of defeat the champion of 2013 will draw little consolation from his runner-up finish – he was 11 shots clear of third-placed JB Holmes – in time he may come to appreciate the part he played in creating a golfing spectacle the like of which has never been since 1977.
In claiming his first major title, Stenson not only broke the record for the lowest score achieved by an Open champion – eclipsing Greg Norman’s 267 in 1993 by three – and the lowest final round from the winner, but he also delivered Sweden its first triumph in one of golf’s four events. If he doesn’t already have them, the keys to Gothenburg surely await.
With Stenson enjoying a slender one-shot advantage over his rival at the start of the final round, the bookies made the Swede marginal favourite before play got under way, but within just one hole the odds had swung violently the other way, as Mickelson birdied and Stenson bogeyed to set the pendulum in motion on a match that, at times, resembled a Sunday Ryder Cup singles match than a full field stroke play tournament.
Walking apart, and barely acknowledging the other’s existence, the two players traded blows like Ali and Frasier over Troon’s supposedly easier front nine, both going out in 32 shots – with Stenson’s five birdies matched by Mickelson’s three birdies and a glorious eagle – his first of the week at the par-5 fourth.
After both birdied the 10th, Stenson bogeyed the difficult 11th to take the scores all square on 16 under. Mickelson’s par save on 12, converted from outside 20 feet, suggested the Open gods may have been smiling favourably upon him again, but Stenson refused to lie down, sensing his own time had come, and he bagged his 22nd birdie of the week from 12 feet at the 14th, to edge him back in front once more.
Minutes later, that advantage was doubled to two shots when, from off the 15th green, Stenson holed from 35 feet for birdie. Mickelson, a ferocious competitor but a respectful one, raised a smile. The American’s look on the 16th was of frustration as an eagle putt slid agonisingly past the hole. Typically, Stenson’s short putt to allow the relative cushion of three shots when standing on the 18th tee was to miss. The drama wasn’t over.
Stenson’s tee shot at the last – a monstrous, adrenalin-fuelled 312-yard blow with a 3-wood – stopped just 12 inches short of treacherous fairway bunker that did for Greg Norman back in 2004. Sensing fortune was on his side, a shot to the centre of the green and a single putt from 15 feet, sparked an outpouring of emotion from the normally ice cool man, as a lifetime of heartache at golf’s most important championships was finally laid to rest.
And in a week when the golfing gods chose not to shine on Troon for large parts of the time, when it mattered most they chose to put the spotlight on one man who has played so much of his career in the shadows. But no more. Henrik Olaf Stenson’s moment in the sun had finally come.
OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERBOARD: -20 Stenson; -17 Mickelson; -6 Holmes; -5 Stricker; -4 McIlroy , Hatton, Garcia; -3 A Johnson, Haas, Kjeldsen, D Johnson; -1 Southgate, A Sullivan, Z Johnson.