A major championship is so often about what you've missed rather than what you've seen. If the TV fails the test of grandeur, atmosphere and aroma, at least it guarantees that you won't miss a thing. For someone out on the course on the last day of a big tournament, the only guarantee is that you will miss something. Or possibly everything.

So, it mostly comes down to luck, and on a sweltering New York afternoon in June, when five players had a shot at winning the US Open, the arrow seemed to be pointing towards Winged Foot's 18th green.

Abandoning Padraig Harrington on the 14th hole, when he was playing the best golf of anyone in the final found, felt like treachery. Hoping against hope it wasn't going to be similar to leaving Tiger Woods on the 16th tee during the 2005 Masters just minutes before the roar which announced his astonishing chip-in, the die was cast. If the tournament wasn't going to be played out at the 18th, another conclusion to a major was going to pass me by.

As it happened, all roads did lead to the last hole which soon became a theatre of nightmares for all the contenders bar the eventual winner, Geoff Oglivy (right). In the space of a breathless hour, America's national championship was won and lost several times. A delicious, brutal uncertainty, which has been lacking in so many of Woods's triumphs, hung in the hot air.

You could see Harrington's race was run as he padded up the incline towards the green. A share of the lead, and on the verge of a first major title one moment, a statistic the next.

After "nishing with three bogeys in succession, he could only watch as Jim Furyk also succumbed to the pressure. Furyk contemplated a fivefoot putt which might've been for victory for all he knew, but which, as it transpired, would have got him in a play-off. After he had backed away twice, the ball never touched the hole.

Colin Montgomerie was next, drive smack in the middle of the fairway with 172 yards to the pin. The six-iron shot was made for a high, gentle fade, made for Montgomerie who could now see salvation after his major failures. He dithered, chose a seven iron instead, and duffed it into the rough short of the green. A double bogey, and he was out. Not so much ignored, but more politely tolerated as the anticipation of Phil Mickelson's entrance grew, Oglivy, who hadn't broken par in any round, held his nerve to roll in a sixfooter for what he reckoned would be second place.

The swirl of spectators at the corner of the dog-leg meant that Mickelson had missed the fairway off the tee. Undone by hubris, he blasted a three iron into the branches of a tree instead of hacking out, then found a bunker, then splashed out over the green, and turned a one-shot lead into a oneshot defeat. His look wasn't one of disappointment, it was shock. Later that evening, someone said he thought he saw the chalk outline of a body on that 18th green.

The packed train from Mamaroneck to Rye, which smelled of cigar smoke and sweat, was quiet for the first few minutes of its journey. Then the silence was broken by a New York voice. "Hey, who actually won that thing?"