Phil Mickelson has had many memorable mistakes at U.S. Opens

Whether it was at Winged Foot where Phil Mickelson lost his best chance to win the U.S. Open is up for debate.

It certainly was the most memorable, if not spectacular.

A tee shot off the hospitality tent that caromed into yellow grass that had been trampled by a week's worth of spectators. A 3-iron that struck a tree. A shot that started between hospitality chalets and trees and hooked only far enough to catch a buried lie in the bunker left of the green. An explosion shot that raced off the green into 6 inches of rough.

A double bogey, turning his one-shot lead into another runner-up finish.

Mickelson crouched on the green when his hopes were gone, head in his hands.

"I am such an idiot," he said later, an endearing example of how for all his miscues, no one owns it like Mickelson.

He returns to Winged Foot 14 years later, still missing the final piece of a career Grand Slam, more realistic than ever.

He thought back to Harding Park last month at the PGA Championship where he thought he hit the ball well, only to struggle on the greens.

"If I put it together, I think I can be competitive," he said. "And that's what I would like to do is have one or more good chances at it."

Mickelson is 50. The oldest U.S. Open champion is Hale Irwin, who was 45 when he won at Medinah in 1990. The oldest winner of any major was Julius Boros, who was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship.

Sure, Tom Watson was an 8-foot putt away from winning the British Open at age 59. Greg Norman was 53 when he took a two-shot lead into the final round at Royal Birkdale in 2008. That's links golf. The U.S. Open is different, and Winged Foot has a history of being a beast.

Mickelson wasn't the only player who regrets the final hour of that 2006 U.S. Open.

Jim Furyk earlier had a 5-foot par putt on the last hole that he looked at from every direction before missing, leaving him one shot behind.

But this was Mickelson, who already had baggage at the U.S. Open and has since added to it.

Winged Foot was his fourth silver medal at the U.S. Open. He picked up another in 2009 at Bethpage Black, and perhaps his biggest opportunity was at Merion in 2013, when he twice made bogey with a wedge in his hand, from the tee at the par-3 13th and from the fairway on the 15th.

In all but two of those six runner-up finishes. the U.S. Open was remembered as much for Mickelson as the guy who won.

The exceptions were 1999 at Pinehurst No. 2, when Payne Stewart made a 15-foot par putt to win, and Bethpage in 2002 when Tiger Woods beat him by three.

As Geoff Ogilvy said after winning in 2006, "Funny things happen sometimes."