Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson deliver ‘the greatest Open ever’

After Henrik Stenson’s final putt of, arguably, the greatest golf round ever fell in the side door of the 18th hole, different social media accounts started sharing the clip of that ultimate stroke as “here it is, the putt to win The Open.” My reaction was “lol no.”

It was technically accurate and what was required in the customary condensing for social media, but I still could not stop laughing at that simplification of all that we witnessed on Sunday. There was no one putt, one shot, one moment that “won” Stenson the Open. He was too good on Sunday for the usual distillation. The problem is we’re confined to 140 characters or however-many-word columns or highlight reels. Even some 30-second or two-minute or five-minute highlight package of Sunday at Troon doesn’t seem fair.

Those who have seen many more Opens than I are calling it the greatest Open Championship ever. The quick and most prevalent comparison was to the 1977 “Duel in the Sun” between Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson at Turnberry. Nicklaus wrote of the 2016 edition on Sunday night, “theirs was even better.”

Those who can analyze the data much better than I said the effort approaches Tiger’s work at the 2000 U.S. Open, often cited as the greatest golf ever played.

It was an amazing Sunday, and one that Stenson started this arguably-the-greatest-round-ever with a bogey. He had two of them on the card! His opponent had no bogeys, an eagle and the best final major round of his Hall of Fame career and lost by three shots.

The presence of that opponent, Phil Mickelson, one of the great characters of the game and a 46-year-old who appeals to all ages in a time when there’s a desperate push to embrace the “young stars,” certainly amplified the day. He made the weekend, the one-on-one match and Stenson that much better. After the round, the new Champion Golfer of the Year relayed a scene from the scoring trailer where an incredulous Phil tallied up the scorecard. “I’m not going to repeat what he said in the recorder’s office,” Stenson said. “But he looked at the scorecard and said, ‘10 birdies’ ... and then he said a little fun comment to me.” The imagination takes off contemplating what that “fun” comment was, but one would assume there were friendly curses as they went through those post-round clerical matters. As much as it must hurt, Phil might have been the appropriate hard-luck runner-up in this scenario.

I’m supposed to find the words to neatly describe this final round. And I just can’t -- it’s hard to distill down those four hours, other than to say it was just f***ing awesome from start to finish. That’s crude and deliberately not profound, but I think it’s the best summation of the entire experience. Some majors have a turning point, where the leader implodes or hits the shot to decide it. Others have a signature moment, a spot that encapsulates the winner at his best.

I don’t know that this Sunday had that -- it was too damn good throughout and from two players. There was no hole out from the fairway for eagle. There was no miraculous dart fired just a foot from the cup in the deciding moments. There was not some catastrophic trip to a pot bunker that ended it all. It was just the greatest links golf ever played, a show from tee to green and from start to finish.

The highlight that I suppose they’ll run the most over the years as they talk about how incredible a Sunday it was is the 51-foot putt that Stenson drilled at the 15th. No doubt, it was an astonishing moment to give Stenson a multiple-shot cushion and a decided advantage in what, until that point, had been a seesaw ride that lasted an entire weekend. But we’ve seen lots of long putts before and that will never do justice to everything else in his game that was so historic all weekend.

As years pass, the little things may be forgotten in the general praise and remembrance of this just being some great final round day.

The afternoon was overflowing with these dramatic snippets that, in sum, made it the historic and striking show that it was. I chose just three from the last three holes! That neglects Phil’s outrageous start and the constant lead changes following birdie after birdie on the front nine. The recitation of records, the data, the historical anecdotes from experts who’ve watched for decades, start to impress upon you just how great it was. Yet they can’t fully capture it -- hyperbole doesn’t seem an option here.

All that Jordan Spieth did on Sunday at the 2016 Masters before the 12th hole, and largely what he did after, did not really matter. His front nine to get a five-shot lead is forgotten. What happened at the 12th hole was the tournament. The 2016 U.S. Open can be summarized by the USGA throwing up all over themselves, and then Dustin Johnson’s figurative middle finger toward the host organization with that laser into the 18th green.

I have no idea how we cram Sunday at Troon into something like that. Watch a full replay of the thing? Each hole was its own little episode in an incredible four-hour series that featured a) a one-on-one match for the ages between two of the game’s greats and b) finished in those final five holes with what is now arguably the greatest round ever.

Every major has little moments that are forgotten to history. It doesn’t feel right for any to be lost from this final round.