Yeah, and Phil's "mental health" withdrawal and week off did the trick as well.

And Phil posts the highest score of the day on Sunday.

nice putt on 18 today tiger! forget to take your midol? lol, tiger's back!

Things getting interesting. Furyk feeling the heat, but holds them off for a bit with a monster putt on 12.

A lot closer than Phatty with his 78.

This course is difficult.

but phil's not back. tiger is back! seriously, don't even try to stick up for the guy after that chip at 18 yesterday.

2 Decent drives there. Needing burd to tie the US open and about a million people in the gallery... on 18, only 6 birds for the day...

yea no pressure there

And here, is the biggest putt of the young mans life

It wasn't the chip that got him, it was the approach shot that put him there. There was nothing easy about that chip, as Johnny Miller tried to suggest.

Tiger clearly still has issues to deal with and will never be the 2001 or the 2007 version, but he is still one of the best players in the world. He'll be in that position many more times and I expect that, going forward, he will win more Majors than anybody else in the next ten years. The guy that I saw who can get his act together and compete with him over that time is McDowell. He learned a lot yesterday and is young enough to use it to his advantage. Tiger just played bad golf over the weekend but he has been there before.

Furyk and Els don't have the nerves anymore. Simpson played well, but he just fell into it when everybody ahead of him just faltered. That might be the case more often than not. It's probably easier to come from behind, post a score and sit and wait, than to be playing in the last group of a Major.

I agree with pretty much all this, except.... I don't think Simpson fell into, he played very good. I think this was not a normal tournament. This was a TOUGH track. You have all the best golfers in the world, at one place, with optimal playing conditions and NOT ONE PRO could muster a sub par 72 holes? I loved this tournament, Olympic was the essence of what the Open should be.

There were 6 players ahead of Simpson going into play on Sunday (including 3 Major winners). They all had to falter for him to win. I acknowledged that he played well, but all it would have taken was one good round by the leaders to shut him out. He played in the 4th to last grouping, with less pressure.

I think they screwed it up by changing the conditions on Saturday. Friday's play (fast and hard conditions) are what everybody expects from an Open course layout. Softening it up on Saturday was stupid. The players practice all week expecting certain conditions, it's like that on Thursday and Friday, and then you throw a curve on Saturday like that? Devious, IMO. It's not like they do that every year and the players know what they're in for. Usually it gets even harder and faster on the weekend.