Lefty is the golfing story of 2021

Mickelson's victory at the PGA Championship in May nothing short of incredible

He finished 70th in Fed Ex Cup points during the recently completed 2020-21 wraparound season on the PGA Tour. He had just one top 10. He dabbled a little bit on the Champions Tour for the over50 set, but because he only entered three events he didn’t qualify for any of the yearlong awards on that tour. He made a little bit of side money as a “caddie” in television ads for Workday, making important decisions for actor Andy Buckley, such as “cup of decaf, almond milk, no sugar.” And just yesterday he was behind the microphone commenting upon The Match on Thanksgiving Friday featuring Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. His partner on the mic was none other than basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley.

No, Phil Mickelson didn’t win the Fed Ex Cup like Patrick Cantlay. He wasn’t the senior golfer of the year on the Champions Tour like Bernhard Langer. Yet without a doubt, the 51-year-old Mickelson was the most intriguing story line in the world of golf for the 2021 year.

In 2019, Phil won for the 44th time on the PGA Tour, capturing the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach. He finished 39th on the Fed Ex Cup points list, but it looked as if the years were starting to catch up with him. In the truncated 2019-20 season that was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mickelson was winless and came in 60th place on the points list. He did enter three Champions Tour events and made an immediate impact, winning the Charles Schwab at Ozark National in August and the Dominion Energy Charity Classic in October.

The 2021 calendar year dawned and Phil would be turning 51 years of age in June during U.S. Open week. His was the classic story of an aging golfer who could win against his peer group but was merely a middleof-the-pack professional golfer with the younger set.

Then came May, Kiawah Island, and the PGA Championship. Had anyone put big money on Phil to do well, let alone win, at the PGA, their closest friends and associates would have recommended psychiatric help for a wayward gambler. During the course of the past five years,

Phil had missed five cuts in golf’s four major championships, failed to play in the 2017 U.S. Open, and had a best-major finish of a tie for 18th place at the 2019 Masters. There was no reason to believe that Phil wouldn’t gracefully follow the paths of Vijay Singh and Ernie Els and dabble on the regular tour while making an impact with his senior friends.

Yet the middle of May in South Carolina was the all-time eye opener in the world of major championship golf. Mickelson opened play at Kiawah with a 2-under-par 70, came back Friday to shoot 69 and take the 36hole lead, carded another 70 Saturday, and finished with a final-round 73 to finish at 6-under-par, two strokes ahead of Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen. It was an amazing display of tournament golf as Mickelson hit booming drives and

relied heavily on an allworld short game to prevail over golfers young enough to be his sons. He was just three weeks short of his 51st birthday and easily eclipsed the age mark for a major titlist, knocking Julius Boros out of the record books. Boros was 48 while winning the 1968 PGA.

The remainder of Mickelson’s season on the PGA Tour was nothing to write home about. In fact,he made more than half of his season’s earnings at the PGA Championship. He was never under consideration for the Ryder Cup and didn’t get to the third and final stage of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. However, once the PGA Tour’s wraparound season concluded in late August, Phil gravitated to the Champions Tour and won the Constellation Furyk and Friends Tournament in October and concluded the senior season by capturing the Charles Schwab Cup finals in November. Mickelson has only entered six senior tourneys during the past two seasons and yet he has found victory lane four times. He has yet to enter a senior major because of scheduling conflicts with the regular tour, but it’s only a matter of time before he starts adding those titles to his dynamic golfing resume.

The amazing thing about Phil Mickelson is that he doesn’t seem to tire of the competition, the travel or the grind. It was 41 years ago that Phil won the 9-10 age division of the Junior World at Torrey Pines in San Diego. Nine years later he won the first of his two NCAA individual titles while attending Arizona State University. In 1990, he won the United States Amateur and the Porter Cup. In January of his junior year he entered the 1991 Tucson Open on the PGA Tour and turned a lot of heads with a victory over Tom Purtzer and Bob Tway. When the heat of the fourth round was at its hottest, Lefty hung in there with the big boys to prevail by one stroke. Keeping his wits about him, Mickelson declined all offers to turn pro and returned to ASU for the remainder of his junior and senior years. He won the Western Amateur in the summer of 1991 and topped it off with his second NCAA title in 1992. He was automatically exempt for two years on the PGA Tour once he turned pro in the summer of 1992. He won at Torrey Pines the following year, added another victory in the summer of 1993 at the International in Colorado, and has been an impact golfer and personality on the PGA Tour ever since.

In comparison to the colorful figures of golf’s golden era of the 1960s and 1970s, Phil Mickelson is the modern day version of Arnold Palmer. Phil is an “all-or-nothing” shot maker who has sometimes taken risks that have pushed him into the winner’s circle such as the iron off the straw over a distant Rae’s Creek at the 2010 Masters. His gambling instincts sometimes spelled disaster such as the final-hole double-bogey at the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Phil is also arguably the most fanfriendly big-name golfer, actively acknowledging the fans by spending endless hours signing autographs for spectators. He gets his name out there.

Phil Mickelson is 51 years old, has won 45 times on the PGA Tour, and has four victories on the Champions Tour. He’s won six majors. He is a highly popular figure with the fan base and he is able to get his name out there whether it’s in commercials, football talk with the Manning brothers, or now as an on-course commentator for The Match. He also just recently completed one of the most jawdropping years for a professional golfer, whether one is 21 years old or 51 years old. He’s exactly the type of golfing personality that you can’t prognosticate about. He could win again at Pebble Beach or Torrey Pines, and he could win a seventh major sometime in the next few years. Without a doubt, Phil was the most intriguing golf story of 2021.