Did you see 45 year old Rocco Mediate make Tiger Woods play 19 extra holds of golf to win the U.S. Open. WOW! I don’t know about you but I’m a Rocco fan now. Don’t get it confused though, I’m a huge Tiger Woods fan, but I admire the fact that Rocco brought his A game and played Tiger like no-one else has since Tiger turned pro.

To put this in perspective, going into the final round on Sunday, Tiger was 13-0 in majors, 54-3 in his career, when sharing or leading at the start of the final round of a tournament. Just in case you weren’t watching Sunday Tiger had a one stroke lead(2 over Rocco) when he tee’d off Sunday. But Rocco, played his game and through some cosmic forces Tiger lost his lead and had to sink a birdie putt on 18 to force a play on Monday. (Of course he made it) Then again at on the 18th hole of the play off Rocco force Tiger to sink another birdie put to go to sudden death.

Now I don’t know about you, but there aren’t too many golfers that could have stuck with Tiger, bum knee or not, for an 18 hold play-off. But Rocco did, despite Tiger going up by three strokes at one point and making some amazing shots along the way.

But what did Rocco do?

He just continued to play his game and be his happy go lucky self and in the end it took a birdie on 18 to force sudden death. Now if I’m a PGA Tour Golfer I was watching and taking notes yesterday. How do I compete with Tiger? Let’s see, play my game not his. Hit fairways and Greens. And make him make shots. Easier said than done, but Rocco sure did it.

I say all that to say this, despite being the runner-up in the U.S. Open, Rocco Mediate is a winner. He has scores of new fans, the respect of the greatest golfer on the planet, a good chance to play on the Ryder Cup team and that hefty second place check doesn’t hurt either.