Brennan: Phil, Tiger separated by more than five shots

Phil Mickelson embraces the Claret Jug and his family after winning the British Open. (Photo: Leo Mason, USA TODAY Sports)

He nods that delightful, goofy, big-kid smile of appreciation at least 100 times during every round of golf. When others walk away, he steps right into a gaggle of kids and parents holding programs and hats and Sharpies, and won't leave for quite some time. Even in crushing defeat, as at last month's U.S. Open at Merion, he still signs autographs for the fans who follow him off the course.

That's Phil Mickelson. We don't know everything about him. We don't know everything about anyone on the world stage in sports. Tiger Woods taught us all about that.

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But we do know that the 2013 British Open was won Sunday by the most polite and courteous man in the chase, the one who handled both the good and bad of Muirfield with a shrug and a smile, the man who ended up in one of most impressive group hugs in the history of both golf and the Mickelson family.

Every now and then, nice guys still do finish first in sports.

People who follow golf will marvel for generations about Mickelson's majestic 5-under-par 66 Sunday to win his first British Open and the fifth major championship of his career. He called it "the greatest feeling" he's ever had in the game, and "probably the greatest round" of his career.

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But there's another side to the story of Mickelson's day, and it might be even better than the golf he played. As you watch him play, you begin to think to yourself that this is a present-day multi-millionaire athlete who actually gets it - who understands that he gets to play golf for a living and who doesn't treat every shot as if it's heroic or a matter of life and death or any of the other overwrought rhetoric some in the game attach to an endeavor in which a person hits a dimpled ball around vast stretches of land with various sticks.

To be sure, Mickelson has made his mistakes and sounded just like any other out-of-touch, pampered athlete. In January, for instance, he complained about the new federal and state tax laws he is facing. He quickly apologized.

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But in the heat of battle on a difficult golf course, amid some of the most challenging conditions any athlete will face on any given day, it was how Mickelson acted, how he behaved, that was so striking, and in such contrast with the man with whom he has been most often linked throughout his career.

Woods had a bad day, shooting 3-over 74 to drop to 2-over for the tournament and finish tied for sixth. If you didn't know Tiger was having a bad day, all you had to do was listen. Knowing of course that ESPN's microphones are always nearby, he cursed loudly on the fifth hole after a bad shot. It wasn't his only bad shot of the day, nor his only profanity.

Woods' fans and apologists will tell us that's just part of sports. Athletes swear. We need to deal with it. Then again, Woods told us after his personal scandal and fall from grace in 2009 that he was going to try to be a better person and role model. That still appears to be a work in progress.

Right after the Woods outburst on No. 5, viewers overheard Mickelson talking to his caddie, Jim "Bones" Mackay, blaming himself for a poor approach to the eighth hole in a decidely G-rated conversation.

Nearly two hours later, now in the lead, Mickelson received a bad break on the par-3 16th, watching a good tee shot roll back off the green. If you were going to swear, that would have been the time to do it. Instead, Mickelson gave us a line worthy of the Disney Channel:

"Wow," Mickelson said to Mackay, "that's as good as I got."

He ended up saving par, then birdied the 17th and 18th holes to win the Open and tearfully fall into the arms of his wife Amy and their three children. At least for this day, the 21st-century game of golf had found a hero who appeared to step right out of the 1950s.