Phil Mickelson partnered Henrik Stenson in the final pairing in the closing round of The Open Championship in 2016 at Royal Troon. The American, the Open Champion of 2013 at Muirfield, began the day one shot behind Stenson’s 54-hole lead. On the first hole, Mickelson set the tone for this duel, delivering an 8-iron from the 1st fairway that only just missed the cup. He birdied while Stenson dropped a shot and the championship lead was immediately overturned.
Mickelson marched onwards to shoot a bogey-free six-under-par 65. On any other day, it would have been a convincing tournament-winning performance to leave Sweden still longing for its first men’s Major Champion after a decades-long catalogue of near misses, but Stenson was undeterred. He birdied the next three holes, reclaimed the lead and then shot 31 on Troon’s notorious back nine to post 63, eight-under-par, and beat Mickelson by three shots.
Stenson’s sublime round was crowned when he holed a 50-foot birdie putt on the par-4 15th hole to open a two-shot lead. His 63 remains the lowest final round by a champion in the long history of The Open, bettering 64s shot by Greg Norman at Royal St George’s in 1993 and Cameron Smith at St Andrews in 2022.
Stenson’s 72-hole total score of 264 also remains an Open Championship record, while Mickelson was left with a record he didn’t want: a total score of 267, the lowest ever by a runner-up. It was later matched by Jordan Spieth in 2021 at Royal St George’s when he lost out to Collin Morikawa.
Stenson also became only the fourth Open Champion to post four rounds in the 60s (68, 65, 68 and 63), following Norman in 1993, Nick Price at Turnberry in 1994 and Tiger Woods at St Andrews in 2000.
And, for the record, only one other golfer in the history of the Majors has scored 63 in the final round to win – Johnny Miller in the 1973 US Open at Oakmont. At Troon eight years ago, Stenson forged his way deep into golf’s record books and there he is likely to remain forever.
A modern classic
“Going up against a world-class player like Phil, I knew he was never going to back down,” starts Stenson in an exclusive interview with Golf Monthly, reflecting on the greatest day of his career. “I think that helped the way I dealt with the challenge mentally, in that I knew I just had to go out and go after it. I knew I could not tiptoe around and hope that Phil would shoot 73 in the final round – that was never going to happen. In the end it became a bit of a classic duel, in terms of the two of us trading punches all the way around the golf course.”
A five-time Major Champion at the time, Mickelson held the 36-hole lead that week and he and Stenson played the final two rounds together as they turned The Open into a two-way battle. American Bill Haas was in third place after three rounds, five shots adrift of Mickelson in second place, and on the final leaderboard, JB Holmes rose to third place. But he may as well have been playing in another championship – he was a full 11 shots off Mickelson’s score.
As Stenson and Mickelson walked off the 18th green on the Sunday, arms around each other, they knew they’d held the full attention of the sporting world between them for those two days. Mickelson might well have been regretting the prescient words he shared with Stenson a month beforehand, when they were paired together in the US Open at Oakmont.
“We had a bit of a wait during the early part of the second round at Oakmont,” recalls Stenson, now 48 years old and aged 40 in the summer of 2016. “I was hitting the ball nicely and Phil paid me a really nice compliment, saying: ‘The way you are playing is really well suited to the Majors and I think you are going to do really well in one of these.’”
Mickelson was referring in particular to Stenson’s accuracy with his long-irons, which was a cornerstone of the Swede’s success as he compiled a record of 17 wins across the DP World and PGA Tours between 2001 and 2017, including victory in the Tour Championship and the FedExCup in 2013.
“At the time, I told Phil that I appreciated the nice comment,” adds Stenson, “and that I hoped he would be happy if I won a Major as long as it did not come at his expense. That was four weeks prior to Troon. It was ironic.
“That was the first thing I said to Phil as we walked off the 18th green. We had our arms on each other’s shoulders and I said: ‘Do you remember the conversation we had?’ And he said, ‘Oh yes, I remember it clearly.’
“Getting praise from one of the best in the game is something you don’t take lightly. Phil knows what it takes and we know how he has played in the Majors over the years, so if Phil pays you a compliment like that, it is something to really appreciate.
“Unfortunately for Phil, I had one of those days at Troon that was one out of a hundred, I guess. He shot a bogey-free 65 in the final round of a Major, and 99 times out of 100 that would have been a winning performance, but it turned out to be my week.”
Not easy to get over
Two weeks later, in the US PGA Championship at Baltusrol, Mickelson’s manager, Steve Loy, confided in Stenson that Mickelson was left bewildered by what happened at Troon.
“Phil was a little shocked by the whole outcome, which is understandable,” says Stenson. “Phil said that it was the first time in his career that he had played that well yet not walked away with the trophy. We were both part of a great duel and a great moment in the history of The Open. Obviously I could talk about that Open for hours, but I am not sure Phil wants to!”
Mickelson would recover eventually and defy all odds to claim his sixth Major title five years later, at the age of 50, in the US PGA at Kiawah Island. His victory over Brooks Koepka made Mickelson golf’s oldest Major Champion, and it might turn out to have been his last hurrah in mainstream golf – the 54-year-old has been competing on the LIV Golf Tour since June 2022.
Stenson enjoyed his last win on the main tours at the 2017 Wyndham Championship and joined Mickelson on LIV just weeks after being named European Ryder Cup captain. Stenson lost the captaincy but won on his LIV debut at the LIV Golf Invitational Bedminster, which earned a $4 million winner’s cheque to ease the pain of being fired from the Ryder Cup.
Newspaper headlines dubbed the 2016 Open ‘High Troon’ and it has often been compared to the Open of 1977, the ‘Duel in the Sun’ at Turnberry, when Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus also enacted an epic battle over the final two rounds. In a rare Ayrshire heatwave, Watson ultimately edged Nicklaus by a single shot. Hubert Green finished third that year, ten shots behind Nicklaus, and American author Michael Corcoran even wrote a book about it, Duel in the Sun.
In 1977, Nicklaus finished four rounds with a total score of 269. That would have set a new championship scoring record had Watson not finished on 268. What made the Duel in the Sun even more significant was that the world of golf had been waiting for someone to rise up and challenge Nicklaus – the greatest player the game had seen. At Turnberry, Watson confirmed he would be the man to finally tame the mighty Golden Bear. That championship saw one generational great give way to the next.
Praise from a legend
“I received a hand-written note from Jack [Nicklaus] after he had watched our final round in 2016,” shares Stenson, who accepted honorary membership to Royal Troon in 2022 when he and his family visited to open a renovated short course. “He said he and Tom played phenomenal golf in 1977 at Turnberry, but that Phil and I had played even better. It’s pretty cool to have that note in my trophy cabinet. It was not something he needed to do.”
The 2016 Open did not match 1977 in terms of its bearing on the hierarchy at the top of the world game (Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy were competing for the No.1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking at the time), but the 2016 Open was the equal of 1977 in terms of the extraordinary quality of a two-man battle for the Claret Jug.
In an interview after the 2016 Open, 18-time Major winner Nicklaus said: “Phil Mickelson played one of the best rounds I have ever seen played in The Open, but Henrik Stenson just played better. He played one of the greatest rounds I have ever seen. He drove the ball well; his iron game was great; his short game was wonderful; and his putting was great. Henrik was simply terrific. To win your first Major Championship is something special in itself, but to do it in the fashion Henrik did it in makes for something incredibly memorable.”
The bigger picture
“The one thing missing for me was a Major,” says Stenson, who pocketed a first prize of £1.175 million that day. “I didn’t doubt I could win one, but when you turn 40, you know you are not going to have many more chances.”
In his acceptance speech at Troon, Stenson paid tribute to his long-time friend, Mike Gerbich, who died on the eve of the 2016 Open. Gerbich was a past captain at Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, and he and his wife Francie had taken the Stenson family under their wings for the few years that the Stensons made Dubai their home.
“I knew Mike was ill with cancer and battling away,” says Stenson. “I had texted Mike a few days earlier and didn’t hear back, and then I received word of his passing on the day before The Open, so it suddenly felt like Mike had a presence with us and we played for him.
“Did that make me play with greater freedom? It is always hard to tell, but certainly sometimes thinking about something else can help when you are playing golf. The old saying, ‘beware the injured golfer’ is true, because you are just focusing on making your way around the course and before you know it you have put a good score together. I am sure it can be similar when you are a little bit distracted in some way, and you play for a different purpose.”
Which is the greatest Open of them all? Well, that question is subjective, but ‘High Troon’ has to be among the contenders. As Troon prepares to stage the 152nd Open, the 2016 chapter remains unrivalled within the career and achievements of Stenson.
“The Old course at Royal Troon is among the top courses in the world, and the club will always have a special place in my heart,” he says. “I am looking forward to going back in July. Hopefully I can show up with some form and see how far I can go.”
