2014 PGA Championship results: Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler can’t keep up with Rory McIlroy

It pushed the limits of Louisville daylight, but Sunday was the best major championship day of the year. The perfect leaderboard came together on the perfect firing range of a course for a manic final round at the PGA Championship. It was the best non-Tiger scenario the PGA of America and golf fans could have hoped for, and in the end, the guy assuming the role of Tiger for the next generation clinched a one-shot win over a loaded superstar group of chasers.

Rory McIlroy started the day with a 54-hole lead, but found himself down three shots by the time he got to the back nine. Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler did the charging from one group ahead, throwing darts into the pins on on a soft Valhalla course and setting the pace.

Mickelson, the 2005 winner of the PGA, has had an awful year but found something in his final round last Sunday in Akron, where he shot a 62, his lowest score of the season. The putter kept rolling all weekend at Valhalla, and on Sunday, it finally pushed him into the lead on the back nine. The biggest sequence came on the 11th and 12th holes. He poured in a birdie from the back of the 11th green to match Fowler on the lead, and then drained a 30 footer on the 12th, with McIlroy watching back in the fairway, to save an enormous par. His run to a 6th major, however, came undone largely at the 16th. What was a near hole-out from the rough in front of the green became a bogey that basally ended his chances with McIlroy turning on the gas behind him. This was how close it got:

Dropping a shot there at the 16th really took it out of his hands, and he had to hope for an implosion by McIlroy behind him.

As for Fowler, 25-year-old just had the summer of his life on the golf course and doesn’t have a win to show for it. He joins Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only players to ever finish inside the top 5 at all four majors in one season. Fowler was dialed-in all day, playing perhaps his best golf in a week full of near-perfect golf and a season full of world-class golf. Like Phil, he was rolling in everything, especially on the front nine. He grabbed sole possession of the lead by the fifth hole, which capped a three-straight birdie stretch. That red number didn’t come with the putter, but rather wedge in hand.

Fowler’s form, however, would run out on the back nine. A lengthy birdie putt on the 10th signaled that he would keep pushing the leading number after the turn, but it ended up being his final birdie of the tournament. Some loose iron shots left him scrambling to save par, and pars were not going to get it done with McIlroy behind him. A bogey at the par-3 14th jolted him off the pace being set behind him. Rickie said this one hurt the most out of all his close calls at the majors this year, but he’s too good, and still getting better, to not contend and win in the future.

McIlroy is obviously on a historic path to at least become the most decorated Euro ever. This win under much tougher circumstances, thanks to the players around him, may be his most impressive major win yet. Down three shots in the fairway on the 10th, he ripped the shot of the summer some 281 yards for an eagle chance that brought him within a shot of Fowler and Phil (via The Big Lead)

That changed the entire dynamic of the back nine, and the players ahead of him receded while he went and grabbed his second Wanamaker Trohpy.

The PGA Championship sometimes gets knocked for having no identity or being the least prestigious major, but setting up a course that is not impossible and beholden to protecting par has delivered the most entertaining golf of the season. The U.S. Open can be such a grind, with players holding on and slogging through a brutal pace, especially for a TV audience. But both Saturday and Sunday’s PGA action was pretty much non-stop for the TV viewers -- the birdies came in waves. The best player, the No. 1 player in the world, still won. We just had a lot more fun along the way.

Here are the final results from Valhalla: