What a weekend it has been at Kiawah. Phil Mickelson is the ultimate group at age 50, swaggering across the Ocean Course in all black like some kind of golf Johnny Money. Beside him on Sunday will probably be Mr. PGA Championship himself, Brooks Koepka, battling by a knee damage, rebuilding the one ego can presumably compete with Phil’s with each 300-plus-yard bomb. Most vital, nevertheless, has been the raucous revival of the main gallery, which, ballooning to sizes we’ve got but to see within the late-pandemic period, has responded to the drama by whooping, hollering, and usually carrying on within the potato-mashing, booey-baba-ing method we’ve got come to count on through the years.
Regardless of the prevailing vibe, no single patron has summed up the gallery’s return to kind fairly as elegantly as this man—shirtless, satan horns a loft, chanting “LET’S GO PHIL!” in between slugs of home brew on Saturday. It’s good to have you ever again, America.
It’s maybe not shocking {that a} man proudly roasting his Metallica again tattoo within the South Carolina solar would deal with the PGA Championship like Ozzfest, but it surely’s additionally refreshing. A. It demonstrates that golf can nonetheless be a sport of the individuals, which is one thing that everybody talks about wanting till precise individuals enter the combo B. It’s proof that main golf, as we all know it and like it, is lastly again.
An enormous a part of that is the Phil impact, after all. If Kevin Streelman is atop the leaderboard come sundown, you’ll hear the chirp of each final cricket on Kiawah Island. However assuming issues proceed as they’ve the previous couple of days, issues must be alive and amplified down the stretch. Hit the lights.