Last weekend’s U.S. Open was the very essence of sports drama. By Sunday, the whole event seemed formulaic, written like a Disney Channel original movie that you love despite yourself. But it wasn’t a movie.
On Sunday when I watched Phil Mickelson, our chosen protagonist, walk down the 15th fairway toward a perfectly driven ball and noticed that there was a rainbow above him in the sky, I wasn’t surprised.
It was all so sickeningly romantic, especially in retrospect. Mickelson — the soft-spoken southpaw, the fan-favorite — would go on to bogey on 15, putting himself out of contention in what was one of the closest, most competitive US Opens in recent memory.