Vintage performances for 50-somethings Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson on Day 1 of British Open

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – How special, old boy, your name once again near the top of the famed yellow leaderboard here at the 153^rd Open Championship?

“Ohhhhh, yeah,” Lee Westwood said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Can’t beat seeing your name up there on a Thursday.”

Stated with a smile, it was the kind of self-deprecatory downplaying you might expect from a player making his 28^th career start in the game’s oldest major, an aging warrior who understands that a first-round 69 means next-to-nothing other than a tidy start.

But in the twilight of Westwood’s career, it should still have been a surprising moment worth savoring. Same as it was for 55-year-old Phil Mickelson, one shot worse on Thursday (70), but who was nonetheless in the clubhouse with his best major round in more than two years.

“Links golf, more than any golf, gives you a chance when you’re our age,” Westwood said. “There’s a bit more run on the ball. It’s not a golf course where it’s laid out where there’s a massive advantage to carrying a trap at 310 yards, which I don’t have anymore. You’ve got to use the conditions and hold the ball into the wind.”

Westwood was among the best stories to emerge from Final Qualifying earlier this month, after he was a late signup and played the course blind on little sleep but still medaled. It was the first time in three years that he’d even tried to compete in his favorite tournament in the world, and he didn’t have a satisfactory explanation why. Life. Mood. Schedule. Game.

But Westwood had started to see signs that, maybe, he should give it a try. His iron play was coming around. He closed with 62 at a recent LIV event for a rare top-10. “I played with him a few weeks ago, and he was striking it really nice,” said 2022 Open winner Cameron Smith. “This is the best I’ve seen him hit it in the last few years.”

That carried over to qualifying and here, too, to Royal Portrush, where Westwood placed a distant fourth in 2019. It still represented his best Open finish since ’13, when he kicked away the 54-hole lead, another major title that eluded him.

“Yeah,” Westwood agreed, “it’s as good as it’s been for a while.”

For Mickelson, Thursday’s 70 was his first sub-par score in his last 22 major rounds. It’s been that sort of pedestrian play, on the only big stages he now appears, that have made the now-55-year-old contemplate his competitive mortality.

Just last month, at a LIV event in Virginia, Mickelson said that he didn’t want to “hold back” his HyFlyers team with his performance and would promptly walk away whenever he deemed himself a hindrance. He could have been viewed that way during the league’s inaugural year, in 2022, when Mickelson’s game went in the tank after explosive comments that the Saudis were “scary motherf-----s” to get in business with, and that he still wanted to be one of the architects of the proposed breakaway league because he hoped to use it as leverage against the PGA Tour, remarks that ended friendships and torched sponsors and, at least in some circles, made him a pariah. His poor play continued throughout 2023, when he finished no better than 10^th in the short fields, just two years after becoming the oldest major champion of all time. And his competitive irrelevance seemed to peak last year, when he ranked 46th in the LIV standings, just outside of the league “drop zone” that – if not for the many contractual bailouts – could have led to an embarrassing relegation.

Mickelson, the 2013 Open champion, shot 1-under 71 in the opening round at Royal Portrush.

“If I’m not an asset, if I’m not helping, if I’m holding it back, then it’s time for me to move on and get somebody else in here who is going to really help the team win and succeed,” Mickelson said last month. “These guys deserve to experience that, and I want them to. As a partner in this team, I want that as well.”

But that’s no longer the case, neither for Mickelson nor his teammates (which might say as much about him as it does his supporting talent). Mickelson ranks 15^th this season – better than former world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, or European Ryder Cupper Tyrrell Hatton, or five-time major winner Brooks Koepka – on the strength of three top-6s. It’s somewhat extraordinary that a player of his vintage, now tasked with more international travel than at any point in his decorated career, in shorter events that prioritize hot starts, against competitors half his age, has performed this well. For his part, Mickelson credited the long offseason when he rededicated himself. And he pointed to the power of team play, how it has revitalized him in ways that individual play apparently never could.

“It makes me excited and looking forward to getting back out and playing so that we can hang,” he said.

Mickelson could have been doing myriad other things by this point in his life. He could have been a beloved presence in the broadcast booth, sharing with viewers his decades of knowledge in his inimitable style and wit. He could have been shaping this year’s U.S. Ryder Cup team in his own image. He could have been bullying the other graybeards on the senior circuit. But instead, he’s hawking HyFlyers merch and collaborating with YouTube influencer Grant Horvat and taking to X to weigh in on state politics, all while, in his spare time, keeping his game sharp enough to power his team in 54-hole shotgun-start events in far-flung locations like Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Spain.

For a swashbuckling star whose exploits, both good and bad, were must-see TV, it’s bizarre to see him now so subdued. He still grins and pops his thumb and engages with fans, but afterward, in front of the cameras again, he answers most questions – if he even speaks at all – with his hands stuffed in his pockets and without that usual twinkle in his eye.

Normally relishing the role of antagonist, he didn’t play ball with any of the touchy topics of the day, from Horvat’s decision to turn down a Tour invite because he couldn’t bring his own film crew, or the R&A opting to steer clear of Muirfield (site of his lone Open title) for the past dozen years because of supposed logistical challenges.

“I don’t really get into the politics on that,” he said. “There’s some things I get in politics on, but not that.”

Then came a wry smile.

Off in Game No. 5, Mickelson and his playing partners largely avoided the worst of the weather, getting soaked only on their penultimate hole of the day. That’s when the crafty lefty – sporting a blue, team-issued rain suit, all-weather gloves and aviator shades – carved a tee shot into the 17^th fairway, knocked an iron through the rain some 15 feet below the hole and poured in the birdie to get under par for the day.

Peake played alongside Mickelson in the first round of The Open at Royal Portrush.

More than any other major, The Open is conducive to these types of early-tournament stories, the old guy hanging tough, using his experience and guile to turn back the clock against players who are bigger, stronger, faster, better. But that well-worn trope implies a certain level of luck and fortune – that these past-their-prime plodders somehow used the ancient turf to slap some 250-yard drives up the fairways, or they trundled some top-spinning approaches into middle of the green and, for the first time in eons, rolled in putts from all over.

In reality, Westwood capitalized on the par 5s and, when he finished his round, was leading the field in strokes gained: off the tee. He gave himself “loads of looks” inside 20 feet – eight in all – and converted four of them during his opening 69.

Mickelson, meanwhile, missed more fairways (eight) than he hit (six) but ranked inside the top 10 both on and around the greens, including a slick hole-out from the bunker after his first sand shot buried under the lip.

How sticky their current positions are remains to be seen. It’s happened before at this championship, and it’ll no doubt happen again. The top level of the sport is skewing younger than ever, but careers are being extended in ways never before seen, too. Forgiving equipment and optimized swing theory helps. But so does the new-age training and post-round recovery. Now well into their fourth decades as professionals, both Westwood and Mickelson are arguably as fit as ever.

“The older golfers are much more capable now,” said Padraig Harrington, 53. “The game you can extend longer. It’s just the mental side of it, the ability to not burn out. So if you can battle through all that, you can see what people on a given week can do.”

What they did Thursday was post up on the early leaderboard and enjoy the walk up 18, just like old times, even if just for one day.