KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Thirty years of adoration and one year of isolation intersected on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean Sunday afternoon, producing a mob for the golfer most comfortable amid one. So many fans crowded the 18th fairway that Brooks Koepka, a four-time major champion nobody seemed to notice, had to ask them to move back, then back again, so he could hit. Phil Mickelson said he had never seen anything like those fans. Well, they had never seen anything like him, either.
Mickelson … no. He is too familiar for that. Phil. Phil won his sixth major, his second PGA Championship, this one so unlikely that Phil said afterward, “it's very possible that this is the last tournament I ever win.