MAMARONECK, N.Y.- With so much bad happening so quickly Sunday evening, it was hard to see the ending to this U.S. Open coming.

The books with all the numbers in them will show that Geoff Ogilvy won it. But anybody who was following the plot all along will remember that Phil Mickelson lost it.

So did Colin Montgomerie and Jim Furyk, who both leaked shots and opportunities all over the final hole as well. But nobody gave away as much as Mickelson, who started the week trying to win a third major championship in a row and finished it looking a lot like the guy who couldn't win any in his first 42 tries.

When he could have wrapped up the title with par on the 72nd hole, he made double bogey. When he needed to hit a fairway from the tee, he hit a hospitality tent with his final drive.

And when he still had a chance to show how much he has changed - to play safely out to the fairway and take a chance at getting get up-and-down for the win or an easy bogey for a playoff - he retro-Philled it instead. Going for broke from a high-risk position in the rough, Mickelson hit a tree, then a bunker, then the deep rough and eventually a putt that meant nothing but the money it earned him.

"I just can't believe I didn't par the last hole. It really stings," said Mickelson, who has now finished second in the U.S. Open four times in the past seven years. "I'm such an idiot."

So maybe this was a big step backward in the Phil Is King campaign, slowing the virtual crusade that has arisen to have Mickelson acknowledged as the game's best player, most popular champion and biggest draw.

But Sunday just might advance another possibility.

Because maybe it says that the U.S. Open is becoming to Mickelson what the PGA Championship was to Arnold Palmer, the one major championship that eludes an otherwise remarkable competitive record.

"This one hurts more than any other tournament because I had it won," Mickelson said. "... It was right there and I let it go."