For the better part of four hours on Sunday, I watched a guy grind his way to a loss.
He didn't know it at the time, of course, but Colin Montgomerie, a spirit revived like so many are on this Champions Tour, was playing an incredible round of golf that would be for naught.
It was another perfect example of why golf is so special. No matter what you do on the golf course, you can't play defense like in so many other sports, and no matter the great round of golf you can play at the most important time, you have no real control over everybody else.
Jeff Maggert won the U.S. Senior Open on Sunday, firing a final-round 5-under 65 to snag his second major of 2015 while playing alongside the most intimidating of the plus-50 group in Bernhard Langer.
Langer shot 2-under on a tough test of a golf course in Del Paso, but that wasn't nearly enough to eclipse what Maggert was doing alongside him.
Plenty will be written about Maggert's final round, with the three-birdie start and the six birdies in total on a Sunday when he needed it.
That is the story. Maggert is the story. He won, but so many times in golf, the winner isn't the only positive. That isn't the case in other sports. LeBron James isn't touting his NBA Finals appearance. Novak Djokovic isn't talking about how happy he was to simply make the French Open final, and judging by his no-show at the trophy ceremony, Dustin Johnson wasn't exactly amped up about finishing second last week at the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay.
But for Montgomerie, the defending champion and a man that spent his day playing alongside the hopeful story this week in Sacramento, Calif., (sorry, Kevin Sutherland), it was as much of a win as they come without a trophy.
Montgomerie shot 4-under 66 in a final round where so many things happened. He didn't make a bogey in the fourth round of the U.S. Senior Open when the rough was thick and the greens were lightning. A man who had made a career of falling short in majors has picked up three on the Champions Tour and put himself in a position on Sunday to snag a fourth after just turning 52 on Tuesday.
So many times Monty beat himself in these big events. You think back to Winged Foot and even as a fan want to take a walk around the neighborhood to forget about that 72nd-hole double-bogey (the story then was Phil Mickelson's misfortunes on the final hole, but Monty was just as much to blame there).
Montgomerie may go down as the best player to have never won a major on the PGA Tour, but instead of sulking in his shortcomings, he has embraced the culture on the Champions Tour and went into Sunday on a mission.
The man chasing all day long hit 12 of 13 fairways, 14 of 18 greens and every single time he faced a must-make par putt, he buried it dead center.
For a man with 31 European Tour wins, three European Tour senior titles and those three Champions Tour majors, finishing second isn't exactly uplifting, but for Montgomerie this Sunday, it should be.
That 66 was exactly what he needed, it was what he wanted and it was what he was able to produce. Monty just got beat by a guy that played a little bit better over the weekend. It happens, but it shouldn't be considered a loss.
For Montgomerie, Sunday was a perfect example of the rebranding we've seen since he turned 50. Gone are the days of Monty letting tournaments slip away. He didn't leave with this trophy, but he should be happy with what he was able to produce.
