Remember Chip Beck? Remember how he chickened out of going for the 15th green in two at the 1993 US Masters? Remember how his lay-up back-fired and Bernhard Langer became champion?

All of these things crossed the mind of David Toms as he stood in the rough on the 72nd hole of the US Open championship at Atlanta Athletic Club.

With 209 yards to the clear the water, and with a terrible downhill lie in the rough, Toms initially toyed with going for the green with a five-wood, before deciding to lay-up.

"You know, I hated to do it, but I had to do it," he said later. "The crowd were ooohing and ahhing and moaning. They were thinking, 'you wimp. Is this the Chip Beck thing all over again?' " This time, the move was the sensible one.

Toms's lay-up and subsequent sandwedge approach to 12 feet (he holed the putt) gave him a first career major, and consigned Phil Mickelson to yet another runners-up finish. Toms' 15-under-par total of 265 on the Highlands Course was a USPGA championship record and the lowest aggregate total in major championship history.