The tone and timbre of Pebble Beach's fifth defense of Old Man Par, otherwise known as the U.S. Open, was heard loud and clear by the world's best golfers last Sunday afternoon. I heard it, too, strolling the cliffs with 35,000 friends while all-out war was waged inside the ropes.
Turns out it was a war of attrition, as so many Opens are. Contenders started dropping like Wednesday afternoon hit-and-sip hackers from the get-go.
I'm still washing the blood off my eyeballs, most of it courtesy of Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson, who I followed from the eighth hole on.
We all witnessed the carnage, didn't we?
Dustin Johnson, he of two straight AT&T triumphs and 335-yard drives, was spectacular in his fall. A clumsy triple at 2 followed by a gut-punch double at 3 evaporated his three-shot lead over playing partner Graeme McDowell, a personable 30-year-old from Northern Ireland who did his best not to catch whatever foul virus had befallen Johnson. It worked through the front nine but McDowell got wobbly with bogeys at 9 and 10, the tail end of the hardest three-hole par-4 stretch in golf, especially this year with the USGA shifting and shaving fairways right down to the Pacific precipice. By then Johnson was a vapor, on his way to an 82 that puts him in the ignominious position of tying Gil Morgan for the highest final-round score in a U.S.Open (also accomplished at a windy, equally heartless Pebble in 1992). McDowell bogeyed 14 and 17 but still came to the 18th one shot clear of Frenchman Gregory Havret, who had just missed a birdie putt to tie — which would have most likely led to the most unexpected Monday playoff in U.S. Open history, and no doubt a ratings nightmare for ABC.
In other words, no Tiger in sight. No glorious replay of the Torrey temblor of two years ago.
Instead, Tiger looked on as Havret finished off what was probably his only shot at the Open trophy. Woods will have many more such shots, of course. At least we expect him to be there until he decides to go do something else. But in this purgatory of a comeback year, he was beaten again after a dismal 75 that left him in a tie for fourth with a guy named Phil.
Oh, how the mighty fell on the edge of the continent. How they strived and swerved and ultimately failed while the unsung McDowell managed to keep the blade of his own hara-kiri sword from finding lethal purchase. How? By doing what we all do at Pebble: Just letting the place's beauty wash over him.
"Any time I felt nervous or felt myself getting ahead of myself, I just took a look around, took in the scenery and used that to bring me back into the present. It's just a special place to play golf."
He's got that right. Special anytime and for anybody, but even more so with a first major and one-point-three-five million dollars on the line. Looking back, I realize that McDowell deserved this win just as much as Tiger or Phil or Ernie (the guy I thought was in the best position to take it halfway through his round, until he suddenly donned a duffer's cap on No. 10, hitting two shots into the hazard for a rally-killing double bogey) would have. He played Open golf over those last 18 holes — bending but not breaking, staying calm, trudging and tripping and pulling off enough shots to leave him at level par.
I could hear Mike Davis and the USGAers cheering with glee. Par was the winner, and Pebble did its job perfectly and prettily, with a knife in its pearly whites.
Not that the final round itself was anything resembling beautiful. To be honest, it was as ugly as they come. Only early-runners Brandt Snedeker, Ben Curtis, Bo Van Pelt and Jim Herman managed 68s on Sunday. Davis Love III had it going for a while, even coming within four shots of the lead, before his nerves got him down the stretch. Tom Watson made a brief surge toward another miraculous finish, as well, before the tears and memories got him. A precious few others looked like they might give McDowell a run.
The 110th U.S. Open's personality was crystallized most succinctly on the brutal 14th all week long. Not many love the hole, and on this week, many hated it. On Sunday both Phil and Ernie laid up there as prescribed — well, not so much for Phil, who hooked his second shot under a pine but still had a clear shot out of the rough — then botched their third shots too far right of the week's most accessible pin, their hopes for Open glory tumbling down the false front into bogeyland. Behind them, Tiger pounded his drive over the right-side bunkers and had only a mid-iron home but could only manage par. Not enough.
And then the final four holes played out as anticlimax for the most part, especially once Havret — ranked 391st in the world coming in — bogeyed No. 17. That set McDowell up for a ho-hum bogey of his own at the same hole, followed by a textbook lay-up and two-putt par from 30 feet on 18. Then relief, and a hug from his dad on Father's Day, and immortality.
"I'd take a U.S. Open championship anywhere on the planet, but to win it at Pebble is a special feeling," he said. "It was a lot of fun."
I've got to say I agree with him. It was fun, if painful at times, for everyone involved. And now that the USGA announced that we only have to wait nine years for the Open to return to Pebble — in honor of the course's 100th anniversary — we can look back on this one fondly even as we finger the scars.
Suddenly I wish Pebble was the Open's permanent home. Now and forever, it's the perfect place for exquisite pain, no matter who wins the prize.
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