Body language spoke louder than anything else when Mickleson detonated that last-green roar at Muirfield, the one which told everyone that the Open-championship-winning putt had just been holed.
Those still out on the course slumped as one, their thrill for the chase exhausted.
One moment the cameras would pick up on these disheartened and deflated souls playing their way back to base and, the next, there would be a shot of Mickelson in one of his happy family huddles beside the home green.
If that particular juxtaposition of events will furnish one abiding image of the 2013 Open, the Muirfield bunkers will provide another.
It was Ken Comboy, Graeme McDowell’s caddie, who said that he had never seen more players having to exit the hazards in a less-than-orthodox fashion. Some contestants were on their knees as they played from a bunker’s upper or side lip, others had one leg in the trap and one out.
Jiménez, who played so well for so long before finishing in a share of 13th place, was pictured on the practice days playing a bunker shot on his knees whilst smoking his trademark cigar. So good was the result that you half expected this one-of-a-kind Spaniard to bring out the cigar when he had much the same shot to play again during his second-round 71.
The emcee at an HSBC luncheon asked Gary Player how many press-ups he did a day. "Twelve hundred," answered Player.
The emcee then turned to Colin Montgomerie, another HSBC ambassador. “And how many do you do?”
"Twelve hundred fewer," came the reply.
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