Mickelson to miss US Open for daughter’s graduation

WASHINGTON: Phil Mickelson will forego another chance to complete a career Grand Slam as he skips the US Open this month to attend his daughter’s high school graduation, he told the New York Times.

Mickelson has finished second in the US Open six times, but it is the only major he has never won.

“As I look back on life, this is a moment I’ll always cherish and be glad I was present,” Mickelson told the Times. “There’s no greater joy as a parent.”

Mickelson is a f ive - t ime major champion who claimed the third leg of the Grand Slam when he captured the 2013 Open Championship at Muirfield in Scotland.

He hasn’t won a title since.

The first round of the 2017 US Open tees off at Erin Hills in Wisconsin on June 15, the same day as Amanda Mickelson’s graduation from Pacific Ridge High School in Carlsbad, California.

In 2013, when Amanda graduated from middle school, Mickelson flew home from Philadelphia for the event, and then flew back and arrived at Merion Golf Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania, about two hours before his first-round tee time.

In 1999, he carried a pager during the US Open at Pinehurst and vowed to leave if he got word his wife, who was expecting their first child, had gone into labor.

He finished one stroke behind Payne Stewart one day before Amanda was born. — AFP