Zach Johnson wins 144th Open Championship in 4-hole playoff

Five days, four rounds, and 76 holes were no chore for Zach Johnson.

Late on a Monday evening, with the breeze from the North Sea still sweeping over the Old Course, Johnson won the long, drawn-out, weather-beaten 144th Open Championship at St. Andrews in a four-hole playoff over Louis Oosthuizen and Marc Leishman.

From start to finish, it was a tournament - contested, rather appropriately, at the birthplace of golf - that was all about time.

It was about trying, desperately, to get the rounds done, on time, and about how little time Jordan Spieth has needed to thrust his name into the sport's fabled history.

And it's time - the fact that Johnson, 39 and yearning, might not have another chance - that makes his triumph all the more special.

Johnson was emotional and disbelieving after winning one of the oldest and most important athletic competitions on the planet, holding off an incredibly competitive field at the home of golf.

"I am honored to be your champion," he said. "Thank you very, very much."

The Open Championship wasn't won with a dominant display. In fact, Johnson's title included many elements of serendipity - defending champion and world No. 1 Rory McIlroy's freak ankle injury notwithstanding.

But it was earned.

Johnson answered a disappointing third-round 70 with a 6-under 66, turned in while most of the top players were still on course. He set the clubhouse mark at 15-under, needing a miraculous distance putt on 18 to get there, and saw that lead threatened time and time again.

But it held. And from there, with his incredible wedge play and continuing good fortune, his opportunity wasn't going to go by the wayside.

In the playoff, he played two near-perfect holes on 1 and 2, and built a one-shot lead before finding himself in one of the most precarious positions on the golf course: short on the Road Hole 17th.

That's where the fortune kicked in.

Johnson punched his third over the pin, and scrambled up and down for bogey before Oosthuizen missed a short putt to tie. Then on 18, he gave himself a putt - shorter than the one he knocked down earlier - to win, but whiffed, only to see Oosthuizen do him another favor.

Johnson now has a Claret Jug to go with his green jacket fitted at the 2007 Masters. He has the two most prestigious titles in the sport, captured on perhaps the two most important golf courses in the world.

"I mean, this is the birthplace of the game and that jug means so much in sport, and in golf," he said seconds after the round. "It hasn't set in yet."

Johnson, of course, isn't done. This is by no means an Ivor Robson story.

But because St. Andrews only hosts this tournament twice each decade, and the game is being overrun by the young studs of the Tiger Woods era, this "guy from Iowa," who appreciates the history of his trade and the Old Course so much, absolutely needed this one.

All in good time.