He watched the tape of that tournament and the 18-hole playoff that decided it over and over and over again, yet here he was as the 2006 US Open champion, the beneficiary of one of the most dramatic final-hole collapses in golf history.

“I kind of feel bad that no one ever did this for Greg,” Ogilvy offered as he addressed a media throng still trying to come to grips with how their new champion came to be sitting before them.

“No one ever gave him the luck I got today on the last few holes.”

If either Phil Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie par the 72nd hole they win a US Open that would have dramatically altered their careers for vastly different reasons. Yet both made double bogey and were asked to somehow make sense of it.

“I had it right in my hands and I let it go,” Mickelson said. “I just can’t believe I did that.”

“This is as difficult as it gets,” said Montgomerie. “You wonder sometimes why you put yourself through this.”

For Ogilvy, it was the realisation of a boyhood dream as he joined David Graham as the only Australian men to win the US Open.

“Obviously you dream about winning a major championship,” Ogilvy said.

“To have it actually happen, once it sinks in, it’s pretty special.”

WHAT CAME BEFORE

Geoff Ogilvy’s success on the PGA TOUR was something of a slow burn.

His career tally of eight wins in the US puts him level with David Graham and Bruce Devlin and equal eighth for most PGA TOUR wins by an Australian but his first didn’t come until his fifth season on tour.

He won the 2005 Chrysler Classic of Tucson while the big guns were playing the WGC-Accenture Match Play.

Twelve months later he turned up and won that event.

Less than four months later he arrived at famed Winged Foot Golf Club in New York having finished top six at the final two majors of 2005 and tied for 16th at the 2006 Masters, yet he was far from a fancied pick.

Michelle Wie attracted plenty of attention in her attempt to qualify but the headlines were dominated by the pending duel between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Woods was making his first start since the passing of his father, Earl, nine weeks earlier while Mickelson arrived as the sentimental and bookmaker’s favourite and seeking to win a third consecutive Major.

“I’m just trying to win one,” said Mickelson, who had finished runner-up in two of the past three US Opens. “All I’m trying to do is be successful on this one golf course at this one event.”

HOW IT UNFOLDED

Drawn to play the opening two rounds with Englishman David Howell and American Bo Van Pelt, Ogilvy’s campaign began at 2.09pm on Thursday and he was two back at the end of day one with a round of 1-over 71, Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie the only player to break par in the opening round.

There were 14 players within two shots of the lead but by the end of Round 2 Woods no longer featured, missing the cut with a two-round total of 152.

Ogilvy stayed within two of the lead with a second round of even par 70, now trailing American Steve Stricker who had come through qualifying to even play in the event.

Drawn to play with Kenneth Ferrie in the second-to-last group on Saturday, Ogilvy was adamant that he was revelling in the test of intestinal fortitude that comes at a US Open.

“I’m trying to enjoy it,” said Ogilvy.

“It’s not the most fun in the world to be grinding away for pars and missing greens with semi easy shots and having a hard time hitting fairways, but the challenge of getting it up and down and grinding it out, that’s a fun challenge when I’m able to get it done.

“That’s how I’m looking at it, just trying to enjoy it.”

When Mickeslon assumed a share of the 54-hole lead alongside Ferrie at the completion of Round 3, American writers such as Jim Litke from The Associated Press bemoaned the lack of star power at the pointy end of the leaderboard.

“It’s hard to find anyone capable of pushing Lefty out of his comfort zone,” Litke wrote.

Ogilvy, meanwhile, thought his spot in the penultimate group with Ian Poulter one off the lead was exactly where he needed to be after a third round of 2-over 72.

“I started today maybe two back and I ended the day one back, so I’m going forward,” Ogilvy told the assembled press.

“If you told me on Thursday I was going to play in the second to the last group only one shot behind, I’d have been happy.”

If he was viewed as an unlikely threat to Mickelson prior to Sunday – despite his World Match Play title four months earlier – the reaction to Ogilvy’s dramatic win was equally dismissive.

Newspapers such as the Ithaca Journal were fixated on the Mickelson and Montgomerie collapses, Ogilvy’s short-game wizardry on holes 17 and 18 something of an afterthought to the drama that unfolded.

A chip-in from the fringe at 17 followed by an up-and-down straight from the Melbourne Sandbelt playbook at the last gave Ogilvy a Sunday score of 2-over 72 and the clubhouse lead at 5-over for the championship.

Montgomerie had already made a mess of the 72nd hole by making double bogey to post 6-over but when Mickelson stood on the 18th tee at 4-over par a playoff was viewed by many as the worst-case scenario, a coronation into golf immortality a certainty with a four.

Yet the American’s wild drive and even wilder decision to try and carve a slice around a tree from beside the hospitality tents in the left rough that saw his ball advance just 25 yards left the unlikeliest up-and-down for the championship.

His third shot went into the greenside bunker, his fourth over the green, fifth to force a playoff never threatened the cup before the sixth finally fell, and Ogilvy and the New York galleries were left stunned at what had just transpired.

“I think I was the beneficiary of a little bit of charity,” Ogilvy later said.

“I was hitting that putt thinking this may get me in a playoff. I was pretty nervy over it; it was a pretty big putt. But I never thought Phil would make bogey at the last. He’ll hit it on the green, make a par, make New York happy, but it worked out in my favour.

“Sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don’t, and I’m glad it happened in the US Open.”

WHAT FOLLOWED

In the immediate aftermath of his Major triumph Ogilvy moved into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time, a status he would hold for 120 weeks during his career.

Renowned for his interest in golf course architecture, Ogilvy’s best results invariably came at the game’s biggest events.

When he won the Accenture Match Play for a second time in 2009 Ogilvy was second only to Tiger Woods for most World Golf Championship wins and he won the annual congregation of PGA TOUR winners in Hawaii in consecutive years in 2009 and 2010.

A strong supporter of the PGA Tour of Australasia, Ogilvy continued his success when he returned home, winning the 2008 Australian PGA Championship at Coolum and the 2010 Australian Open at The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney.

Ogilvy recorded eight top-10 finishes in Major championships during his career, his last coming at the 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham.