Phil Mickelson, who is one of America’s favourite sons and has completed 25 years as a professional, remains one of the best on the tour, writes GARY LEMKE in Compleat Golfer.
The room was filled with golfing royalty. Arnold Palmer, then 85, sat on a chair while a 79-year-old Gary Player bounded up the stairs into the sponsor’s suite with the elasticity of a springbok.
Between them they shared 16 Majors, forever a part of the rich tapestry of the sport. As the cameras clicked in their faces, someone announced that two more ‘famous’ golfers were coming up the stairs. It had been a ‘surprise’ for a select group of international media who were attending the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews.
The final pairing came into sight and introduced themselves, although they had no need to. ‘Hi, I’m Tiger,’ the 14-time Major champion said as we shook hands. Then, turning to a colleague who had been rushed from the nearby Castle Course after a morning round and had no time to change, Woods said, ‘Nice pyjamas,’ a light reference to the garish trousers he was wearing.
The golfer behind him took off his cap and stretched out his hand. ‘Hi, I’m Phil. Thank you for everything you have done for Rolex and for the sport of golf.’ As introductions go, it was flattering, but untrue. In fact, the delivery should have been the other way around.
But that’s Phil Mickelson for you. Ever the professional, a sponsor’s dream – he wore a Rolex watch,had a Barclays logo on his jersey and ‘KPMG’ on his cap – fulfilling his obligations off the course. He seemed more politician than golfer. If truth be told, he’d probably make a better United States president than the golfer holding office.
Mickelson is now 47 and has 100 Majors under his belt, having won five of them, including the 2004 Masters – which was his first – when he sank an 18-footer for birdie on the last green to pip Ernie Els by one shot.
That had been Mickelson’s 47th attempt at winning a Major, and perhaps he was beginning to think he might be thrown into the category of ‘best golfer to have not won a Major’. Especially with a rampant Woods charging hard at Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 Majors.
But Mickelson was only 33 and he subsequently added four more Majors to that Augusta breakthrough. He names the 2013 Open Championship at Muirfield as his most satisfying. ‘I thought that was going to be the toughest one for me, given the conditions and links golf, bouncing the ball up; and to be able to come out on top there was kind of a career-defining achievement,’ he told the media when he and Els appeared together before their 100th Major appearances, at this year’s PGA Championship.
It was symbolic that Mickelson and Els shared the same stage at Quail Hollow. Both 47-year-olds have trekked down the same golfing path for more than three decades, a sort of Palmer, Player and Nicklaus life journey.
Both were just 14 when Els, a lanky blond more formally known as Ernest back then, had gone to San Diego, where Mickelson was born and raised, to play at the Junior World Championship.
Making his first trip to the US, Els ended up winning the tournament, beating Mickelson by three strokes. An eight-year-old Woods captured the 9-10 title.
‘I think we played 18 holes together there, and I would never have thought we’d be playing basically for life; it’s our 100th Major now,’ Els recalled. ‘It started in a very nice, sunny, beautiful place in San Diego. We’re still goin’, quite a few years later.’
Mickelson chipped in, metaphorically, although he has done it countless times on the golf course, possessing one of the great short games of all-time, and his famed ‘flop shot’ being something golfers everywhere study and would love to replicate.
‘It just goes by so fast; you don’t think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s been a lot of fun. We get to play golf – what most people do on vacation – as our job, and it’s the greatest job in the world.
‘Every time I play a Major, I remember back when I was a kid, ‘competing’ in my yard against the greats, trying to beat them for Major titles, and we have both been fortunate to have won some. I know we want to win a couple more.’
Els however, might not get to tee up at another Major, let alone win one, as all his exemptions have run out. His appearance will depend on a gilt-edged special invite – or he could just go out there and win again on the PGA Tour and get straight back into the mix.
Mickelson’s situation is substantially easier. Although he is starting to feel the aches and pains at 47, he was still inside the world’s top 30 in the middle of September. And he was rewarded for a recent revival when Presidents Cup captain Steve Stricker called him up to represent the US against Nick Price’s International team.
‘It means a lot to me that the players and captains wanted me on the team,’ Mickelson said of the selection. ‘No matter how many of these teams I’ve been on, I’m always just as excited for the next one.’
Having played at international level for more than 30 years, Mickelson is a walking billboard for the sport. He has won those five Majors – three Masters, one Open Championship and one PGA Championship while being a six-time US Open runner-up – and 48 times around the world, including 42 regular PGA Tour titles.
He and his childhood sweetheart, Amy, have been married for 21 years and the couple have two daughters and a son … they are the quintessential all-American family.
His father, Phillip, was a commercial pilot and introduced the youngster to golf. Mickelson lays claim to being the best left-hander the sport has produced, but it could so easily not have been the case. He is right-handed and learned the game repeating his dad’s strokes in a sort of ‘mirror image’.
His golfing CV would need another forest to be chopped down to produce the amount of paper required to write down all his achievements, and somewhat belatedly he is being truly appreciated by golf fans around the globe.
He certainly won over a new fan – a 12-year-old boy called Riley – at the Dell Technologies Championship in early September. Having hit his drive into the light rough down the left, Mickelson spotted the youngster and playfully asked, ‘Should I go for it [the green] or lay up?’ Quick as a flash the kid replied, ‘If I could hit my 3-wood 260, I would probably go for it.’
After regaining his composure, Mickelson said, ‘I like the way you think.’ He promptly produced the shot. ‘You can caddie for me anytime,’ he told Riley.
The event was a comeback of sorts for Mickelson, who missed the cut at The PGA Championship and had to seek medical advice for an ongoing slump.
‘I’ve had a difficult time with my mental focus and energy level,’ he told reporters at TPC Boston. ‘After the PGA, I addressed it and met with the doctor who helped me get through the arthritis I had years ago.
‘He seemed to have found something … this is the best energy I’ve had throughout the round and the best focus; the first time I’ve been able to visualise. My short game has been very disappointing and I haven’t been able to visualise the shot I’ve been trying to hit. And today, and for probably the past few days, I’ve been able to see the shot again, so it was a good day.
‘I guess the best example I can think of is when you’re really tired. You’ve worked however long and you go lie down, and you just can’t get out of bed for a day or two,’ Mickelson said. ‘I have been in bed for days this year, I mean, multiple days, just with fatigue. Three or four days at a time, I can’t get out of bed, and that’s not normal.
‘I finally just kind of figured it out … This is a great first start. It’s not that big a deal as far as there’s no medication – well, there is a little bit, but more natural stuff and change in diet. My doctor said it would take about a week to notice a difference, and certainly after a week I did and I felt a lot better. Hopefully this will continue an upward trend.’
Over the years Mickelson has been able to attempt – and often pull off – miraculous shots, perhaps the outrageous attempt on the final hole of the 2015 Barclays Championship being the most memorable. Not that it is uncommon to see him attempt a ‘backwards flop’, but in such a cauldron on the closing hole of a big tournament it takes something really special.
Mickelson found himself on the slope of a deep bunker next to the 18th green – and the only thing visible to those watching from the other side was his cap. Instead of facing the hole, he turned around, used a lofted club, and hoped the combination of the loft and the steep slope would propel the ball back over his head and on to the green. It did – although it landed back in the bunker, but the gallery gasped in awe, while it became an online sensation.
He has often performed it as a trick shot for the camera, but has not been shy to pull it out when required, including at Muirfield in 2013 when he won The Open.
Mickelson deliberately practises the shot, an example being the 2014 Scottish Open at Royal Aberdeen. With the pin behind him and – aiming away from the hole – he took a swing, and the ball sailed backwards over his head and settled within a few feet of the hole.
As his 25th year as a professional draws to a close, Mickelson will look back on 2017 as one where he wasn’t quite on his ‘A’ game – although from a medical perspective things appear to have stabilised – and one in which he and his long-time caddie, Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay, split.
‘After 25 rewarding and memorable years, Bones and I have mutually decided to end our player-caddie relationship,’ Mickelson surprisingly announced in June. ‘Our decision is not based on a single incident. We just feel it was the right time for a change.’
Mickelson won his first PGA Tour event in 1991 at Tucson, Arizona, as an amateur before meeting Mackay, the only one of his 42 career Tour titles to come without ‘Bones’ – himself having undergone a double knee replacement this year – on his bag.
‘My relationship and history with Bones far exceeds golf,’ Mickelson said. ‘I look forward to sharing life and friendship forever.’
Ever the professional, ever the golfing ambassador. And, with increasing numbers of twentysomethings charging on to the big PGA Tour stage, Mickelson is proving that age is only a number. Write him off at your peril.
– This article first appeared on the cover of Compleat Golfer’s October issue
