Old man strength

 This one was for the Back In The Day crowd, when everything was better and we all performed wondrous, mythic feats.

It was for every snicker from every youngblood at the telling of those feats. For all the times the snickers came packaged with rolled eyes and a mighty whiff of condescension. For that great deafening unspoken that makes the Back In The Days crowd grind the enamel off their partial plates: Sure, old-timer. Whatever you say.

God love Phil Mickelson. He shoved all of that right back down their gobs.

Sunday afternoon he went out there at 50 with a one-stroke lead in the last round of the PGA Championship, lost it on the very first hole and then regained it. Then he brought it home with a 73 that was good enough on this day, because his 50-year-old hand was just as steady as any of the youngbloods'.

By the time he rolled in that last inchworm putt on 18, he had to wade through a grasping mob just to get to the green. Nothing remotely like it has been seen in over a year, since the Bastard Plague stole everyone's fun. It remains to be seen if the Plague, like Mickelson, stages a comeback thanks to it, as it has before. 

But enough doom-binging. Let's talk about what Lefty did, and what he didn't do.

What he did was win a major -- his sixth -- at 50, something no one has ever done in 161 years of championship golf. He hadn't won a major in eight years. And in the two tournaments prior to the PGA, he missed the cut in one and finished 69th in the other. 

Last tournament he won?

That was on the Champions Tour. Aka, Geezer Golf.

So, yeah, he had history on his bag Sunday. 

What he didn't have, or need, was a low number.

His 2-over 73 left him two strokes clear of Louis Oosthuizen and Brooks Koepka, a pedestrian round except of course for the circumstance. On three of the last six holes, he made bogey. So it wasn't exactly a finishing kick so much as a grim, determined slog to the finish line.

Give him this, though: He held it together better than the youngbloods chasing him, none of whom could muster the sort of charge that blows up a leaderboard. And when Mickelson lost the lead early, he responded with the shot of the tournament -- a chip-in out of sand on No. 5 for birdie, as ballsy a pressure stroke as you'll ever see.

No one else had that kind of shot in him Sunday. So there's that.

Oosthuizen matched Lefty with a 73 on the day, not the kind of number that reels anyone in. Koepka, breathing down Mickelson's shirt collar after three rounds, wobbled to a 3-over 74. Among the top seven golfers, only two broke 70 -- Sean Lowry and 49-year-old Padraig Harrington, who both shot 69.

They finished tied for fourth, having begun the day too far back to mount a real challenge.

So the Geezer did just enough, on a day when no one else could. 

I don't know how much of an epitaph that is. But it'll do.