The last time an Australian won a major golf championship was in 1995, when Steve Elkington won the PGA Championship. Yesterday the drought was broken by Geoff Ogilvy, who claimed the US Open Championship in dramatic fashion. Phil Mickelson did his best Greg Norman imitation and choked on the last hole of the tournament. Needing a par for the win and a bogey to force a playoff, Mickleson took his driver out of the bag and let it rip. All he needed to do was to play it safe and use an iron off the tee, putting himself in a good position to win his third consecutive major championship. Instead, Mickleson was left to wonder what could have been and finished runner-up for the fourth time at the US Open.

Good job by Ogilvy, though. He finished the very difficult last four holes at even par, a feat that others around him couldn’t manage. It was meant to be Ogilvy’s day. On the 17th hole, Ogilvy chipped in for an unlikely par which turned out to be the most significant shot of the tournament for him.

I’m glad that finally another Australian has won a major championship. I thought Adam Scott or Stuart Appleby would be the ones to do it, but Ogilvy has been having a superb year, and this championship follows his World Match Play Championship from earlier in the year.

Thanks Phil!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Golf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.