Worth Waiting For

Mickelson, 46, and Stenson, 40, are longtime rivals, playing partners, and colleagues. They’ve been paired together this year at the Masters, the U.S. Open and the Scottish Open. They greeted one another warmly and smiled at the others successes, at least until late in the round when the pressure ratcheted up and the time for conviviality passed.

Each player’s Achilles heel on this day was the size of a penny, ball mark but golf exposes every weakness. Stenson’s troubles came with the putter, three-putting on both the first and 11th to surrender the outright lead. Mickelson, meanwhile, so accurate off the tee all week, flashed a bit of his old play-it-from-among-the-customers style, drifting critical tee shots off among the populace.

But this was key: each man was able to mask his few misplays with torrents of brilliance. Stenson followed his initial lead-lost bogey with birdies on the next three holes and five of the next seven. Mickelson bailed himself out of an ugly 12th by going up and down from an almost blind hillside shot to hold onto a share of the lead.

The turning point came with just five holes left. Stenson poured in two birdies, including a magnificent 51-foot putt from the fringe on 15 that would have gone in if the hole was half its size.

That putt put Stenson up two strokes on Mickelson, and Mickelson’s eagle putt on 16 remained on the lip of the cup, ending his last, best chance to cut into Stenson’s lead.