Coming into Sunday at the 113th U.S. Open, the story was all about Phil Mickelson and his pursuit of his national championship. With five runner-up finishes, the most in the history of the event, Mickelson had some unfinished business with this tournament and the USGA. As is the case usually on U.S. Open Sunday, the winner would be crowned on Father’s Day, and with Mickelson seen as the ideal family man and loving father, the golf media worked itself into quite the lather leading into the final round. Did I mention that Sunday was also his 43rd birthday? You couldn’t write this stuff. The problem is, nobody told Justin Rose that he wasn’t supposed to win.
Even for the most ardent of golf fans, Rose has been a bit of an enigma. He first appeared on the national stage as an amateur in the 1998 Open Championship, where he ended up tied for fourth place at 17 years old. He turned pro the next day but struggled with his game, going winless until the 2002 Dunhill Championship. His father Ken, who had been fighting cancer, passed away soon after that victory. A few more wins and inconsistencies followed until Rose hired Sean Foley at the end of the 2009 season, leading to victories at huge PGA Tour events like the Memorial, AT&T, BMW and WGC-Cadillac, but the major championship still eluded him.
Highs and lows are common on the golf course, even for the professionals, but it’s magnified at the U.S. Open, where the USGA does it’s very best to manipulate the course in a way that protects par, as if the best players in the world breaking it would cause some kind of cataclysmic event. The list of players who missed the cut on Friday was littered with some of the game’s best, including twelve major champions. Another nine major winners who made the cut never threatened the leaders on the weekend.




