Although TV always overplays such situations, the most unusual, indeed saddest thing about this year’s British Open was that the two players who finished one-two were deep in mourning for a parent. For a while it seemed that each had a different take on his loss. DiMarco seemed the more religious, noting earlier in the tournament, “I’ve got someone watching over me. I’ve got some divine intervention. I just know it.” Woods by contrast was more inconsolable. “After the last putt, I realized my dad’s never going to see this again, and I wish he could have seen this one last time,” he said at the trophy presentation. By tournament’s end, DiMarco himself was hit by death’s finality. “That’s the hardest part — that I know I’ll never see her again,” he said. Even among the world’s finest, the here and now is all we know.
