The Big 3? Henrik Stenson, Phil Mickelson leave golf’s next generation in their dust

Jason Day, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy, with some Dustin Johnson sprinkled in, owned the headlines — and oddsmakers’ nods as prohibitive favorites — entering last week’s Open Championship. When the dust cleared Sunday night at Royal Troon, though, 40-somethings Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson had left golf’s next generation in their well-trod dust.

“Some of them, I’m old enough to be their dads,” Stenson, Sunday’s record-breaking winner of the 2016 Open Championship, said in a Golf Channel interview that aired on Monday morning.

“I think that was the first comment I made in the first round I played with Jordan: ‘I could be your dad,’” the 40-year-old Swede with the dry wit added with a wry smile. “I’m not, but I could be.”

By the time Stenson buried his 10th birdie putt of the day on the 72nd hole, he and Mickelson were the only guys standing in a stacked field that included the world’s top four golfers, the oldest of whom, DJ, at No. 4, is 32.

Had Mickelson been able to fend off Stenson’s incredible, 10-birdie virtuoso performance in Sunday’s finale, he would have become one of the oldest major winners in golf history at 46. That honor still belongs to Julius Boros, who was 48-plus when he captured the 1968 PGA Championship.

So Stenson, with the first major win of his career at age 40, did not set any age records the way he set scoring marks such as his 20-under, which is now the Open standard by one stroke over Tiger Woods’ 19-under at St. Andrews in 2000. When his final putt dropped, Stenson matched the major record set by Jason Day last year at the PGA, and with his final-round 63 — just the second on the fourth day of a major after Johnny Miller’s in 1973 at Oakmont — he also set a new aggregate total major championship scoring record of 264.

Not too shabby for a guy who should be — judging by all the hoopla surrounding the changing of the guard as Rory, Jordan, Jason, et al, were supposed to jockey for position as the next coming of Tiger Woods — ready for Medicare.

And then there’s Phil, an arthritic golfer on the back side of his 40s, whose 17-under would have been good enough to win or force a playoff in 141 of the previous 145 Opens and outscored the wee lads to the tune of 13 shots (Rory), 15 (DJ), 18 (Jason) and 19 (Jordan).

Indeed, while Stenson and Mickelson were preparing for a major duel for the ages, the young guns were imploding — both on and off the course. Day and Johnson went about their business and just came up well short of the two contenders in the A-flight.

But as the old guys cruised into the weekend with scores in the 60s (including Phil’s almost-62 in Thursday’s opening round), Spieth and McIlroy were acting like children.

Spieth, who barely made the cut (71-75) blamed the media and the weather for his poor play of late.

“Most of the questions I get are comparing last year and therefore negative because it’s not to the same standard,” Spieth told reporters after posting a 1-over 72 in Saturday’s third round. “So that’s almost tough to then convince myself that you’re having a good year, when nobody else really -- even if you guys think it is, the questions I get make me feel like it’s not.”

Spieth was not done whining.

“I think that’s a bit unfair to me but don’t feel sorry for me; I’ll still be okay,” he continued. “But I would appreciate if people would look at the positives over comparing to maybe, hopefully what would happen a few times in my career, a year like last year.”

McIlroy, meanwhile, cited faulty stickum as the reason his 3-wood was unable to withstand the rigors of being smashed into the ground on his way to another in a series of third-round lapses that resulted in another back-door, top-10 finish for the four-time major champion.

“The club head came loose on it earlier on the week. I had to get the head re-glued. So it was probably partly to do with that and partly the throw as well,” McIlroy explained after Saturday’s 73, which included the club slam after an errant second shot on the par-5 16th hole, dropped him out of contention for a fifth major title.

“It was just I let one go right on the previous hole, the 3-iron, and I did the exact same thing there,” McIlroy added. “So it was basically just a bad swing. No one likes to make the same mistake twice, and that’s basically what happened.”

Both would-be superstars left the grounds with positives after ending their disappointing weeks on high notes and are likely to be favorites heading into next week’s PGA.

McIlroy booked a confidence-building, third-lowest score of the finale (after Stenson and Mickelson), good enough to lift him into a distant share of fifth place.

Spieth broke par for the first time in the majors since opening with a 66 at the Masters.

For now, though, the kids are in the back seat with the grownups at the wheel.