Herrmann: Another winnable Open slips away from Mickelson

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.

How fitting that Phil Mickelson took his cue this week from the great Bobby Jones, the only golfer ever to have won a Grand Slam and probably the only one who ever will.

Mickelson was the only one eligible in 2010, and he took himself out of the running Sunday.

Anyway, what Mickelson said the other day was that he wasn't looking at the leader board in the U.S. Open. He said he was following the advice of Jones, whose motto was that you weren't playing against the other golfers on the course, you were "Playing against Old Man Par."

Old Man Par beat Mickelson by three strokes, as did Graeme McDowell, the champion. Both prevented Mickelson from having a shot at the modern Grand Slam. There is no crime in that. With all the competition these days, it is just about unimaginable that anyone could sweep the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship.

Jones didn't have a world filled with championship-caliber golfers in 1930, when he won the four majors of his era: the U.S. Amateur and Open and the British Amateur and Open. There weren't as many players capable of whipping Old Man Par in any given championship.

Mickelson's issue now is that he also is going up against Old Man Time. His elusive personal goal, his great white whale, isn't the Slam, it's the Open. And at 40, how many opportunities will he have? He has seen coming close so often as a positive. But when does he start to worry about maybe having missed his chance?

Like everyone else in the top 10 at Pebble Beach Sunday, Mickelson can look back and see a half-dozen ways he could have won. He wasn't as awful as Dustin Johnson, the two-time AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winner who yesterday played like Jack Lemmon, the actor who kept trying in vain to make the cut at the old Crosby Clambake here. Mickelson, with a lackluster 2-over-par 73, was two shots better than Tiger Woods.

But Mickelson didn't rise to the occasion, either. He didn't seize the moment as he did at Augusta this year. "I'm glad I wasn't second," he said, a wry reference to the fact that he has been runner-up at the Open a record five times. Sunday, he tied for fourth with Woods.

What made it so tantalizing was it had been there for the taking. Mickelson birdied the first hole and thought it was going to be a great day. Minutes later, he learned that Johnson, who began the final round seven strokes ahead of Mickelson, had triple-bogeyed the relatively easy second hole. Game on.

"It was a wide-open tournament. Many guys had a chance," Mickelson said. "It made for kind of an exciting Open, I thought."

He looked to be really on his way when he reached the green with his tee shot on the par-4 fourth. He missed a 15-footer for eagle and missed his birdie putt. Two holes later, he had a 6-iron second shot into a par 5 and did no better than par. "The first seven holes, boy, you could have made up some ground," he said.

But he didn't. His putting failed him as he shot 3 over on the back nine.

"At the turn, I was still 1 under for my round, even par for the tournament, which was ultimately the winning score," he said. "All I had to do was shoot even par on the back and I'm in a playoff. I wasn't able to do it."

This Open had appeared to set up so well for Mickelson: He was coming off the Masters triumph, Woods was hardly a dominant obstacle, and the Open was at Pebble Beach, where Mickelson had won three pro events.

That great lineup wasn't enough to beat Old Man Par, and end the 0-for-20 drought that got just a little frustratingly older.