Phil Mickelson

Philip Alfred Mickelson (born June 16, 1970) is an American professional golfer who currently plays in the LIV Golf League. He has won 45 events on the PGA Tour, including six major championships: three Masters titles (2004, 2006, 2010), two PGA Championships (2005, 2021), and one Open Championship (2013). With his win at the 2021 PGA Championship, Mickelson became the oldest major championship winner in history at the age of 50 years, 11 months, and 7 days. He is nicknamed "Lefty", as he plays left-handed.

Mickelson is one of 17 players in the history of golf to win at least three of the four majors. He has won every major except the U.S. Open, in which he has finished runner-up a record six times. In 2022, Mickelson became the only golfer who has won 3 (or more) of the 4 majors to join the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour, leaving his PGA Tour membership of 30 years.

Mickelson has spent more than 25 consecutive years in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking. He has spent over 700 weeks in the top 10, has reached a career-high world ranking of No. 2 several times and is a life member of the PGA Tour. Although naturally right-handed, he is known for his left-handed swing, having learned it by mirroring his right-handed father's swing. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2012.

Early life

Philip Alfred Mickelson was born on June 16, 1970, in San Diego, California, to parents Philip Mickelson Sr., an airline pilot and former naval aviator, and Mary Santos. He was raised there and in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mickelson has Portuguese, Swedish, and Sicilian ancestry. His maternal grandfather, Alfred Santos (also Mickelson's middle name) was a caddie at Pebble Beach Golf Links and took Phil to play golf as a child.

Although otherwise right-handed, he played golf left-handed since he learned by watching his right-handed father swing, mirroring his style. Mickelson began golf under his father's instruction before starting school. Phil Sr.'s work schedule as a commercial pilot allowed them to play together several times a week and young Phil honed his creative short game on an extensive practice area in their San Diego backyard. Mickelson graduated from the University of San Diego High School in 1988.

Amateur career

Mickelson attended Arizona State University in Tempe on a golf scholarship and became the face of amateur golf in the United States; he captured three NCAA individual championships and three Haskins Awards (1990, 1991, 1992) as the outstanding collegiate golfer. With three individual NCAA championships, he shares the record for most individual NCAA championships alongside Ben Crenshaw. Mickelson also led the Sun Devils to the NCAA team title in 1990. Over the course of his collegiate career, he won 16 tournaments.

Mickelson was the second collegiate golfer to earn first-team All-American honors all four years. In 1990, he also became the first with a left-handed swing to win the U.S. Amateur title, defeating high school teammate Manny Zerman 5 and 4 in the 36-hole final at Cherry Hills, south of Denver. Mickelson secured perhaps his greatest achievement as an amateur in January 1991, winning his first PGA Tour event, the Northern Telecom Open, in Tucson, making him one of the few golfers to win a PGA Tour event as an amateur in the history of the PGA Tour. At age 20, he was only the sixth amateur to win a tour event and the first in over five years after Scott Verplank at the Western Open in August 1985. Other players to accomplish this feat include Doug Sanders (1956 Canadian Open) and Gene Littler (1954 San Diego Open). With five holes remaining, Mickelson led by a stroke, but made a triple-bogey and was then three strokes behind. The leaders ahead of him then stumbled, and he birdied 16 and 18 to win by a stroke. It was the most recent win by an amateur at a PGA Tour event until 2024, at The American Express, with Nick Dunlap taking the title.

That April, Mickelson was the low amateur at the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. With his two-year PGA Tour exemption from the Tucson win, he played in several tour events in 1992 while an amateur but failed to make a cut.

Professional career

1992–2003: Trying for first major win

Mickelson graduated from ASU in June 1992 and quickly turned professional. He bypassed the tour's qualifying process (Q-School) because of his 1991 win in Tucson, which earned him a two-year exemption. In 1992, Mickelson hired Jim "Bones" Mackay as his caddy. He won many PGA Tour tournaments during this period, including the Byron Nelson Golf Classic and the World Series of Golf in 1996, the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in 1998, the Colonial National Invitation in 2000, and the Greater Hartford Open in 2001 and again in 2002.

He appeared as himself in a non-speaking role in the 1996 film Tin Cup, starring Kevin Costner. His 2000 Buick Invitational win ended Tiger Woods's streak of six consecutive victories on the PGA Tour. After the win, Mickelson said, "I didn't want to be the bad guy. I wasn't trying to end the streak per se. I was just trying to win the golf tournament." Although he had performed very well in the majors up to the end of the 2003 season (17 top-ten finishes, and six second- or third-place finishes between 1999 and 2003), Mickelson's inability to win any of them led to him frequently being described as the "best player never to win a major".

2004–2006: First three major wins

Mickelson's first major championship win came in his thirteenth year on the PGA Tour in 2004, when he secured victory in the Masters with an 18-foot (5.5 m) birdie putt on the final hole. Ernie Els was the runner-up at a stroke back; the two played in different pairs in the final round and had traded birdies and eagles on the back nine. In addition to getting the "majors monkey" off his back, Mickelson was now only the third golfer with a left-handed swing to win a major; the others being New Zealander Sir Bob Charles, who won The Open Championship in 1963, and Canadian Mike Weir, who won The Masters in 2003. All three are naturally right-handed but play left-handed, A fourth left-handed winner is natural southpaw Bubba Watson, the Masters champion in 2012 and 2014.

Prior to the Ryder Cup in 2004, Mickelson was dropped from his long-standing contract with Titleist/Acushnet Golf after an incident when he left a voicemail message for a Callaway Golf executive. In it, he praised their driver and golf ball and thanked them for their help in getting some equipment for his brother. This message was played to all of their salesmen, and eventually found its way back to Titleist. He was then let out of his multi-year deal with Titleist 16 months early and signed on with Callaway Golf. He endured a great deal of ridicule and scrutiny from the press and fellow Ryder Cup members for his equipment change so close to the Ryder Cup matches. He faltered at the 2004 Ryder Cup with a 1-3-0 record but refused to blame the sudden change in equipment or his practice methods for his performance.

In November 2004, Mickelson tallied his career-low for an 18-hole round: a 59 at the PGA Grand Slam of Golf at Poipu Bay Golf Course in Hawaii. The following year, Mickelson captured his second major at the PGA Championship at Baltusrol in a Monday final-round conclusion due to inclement weather the previous day. On the 18th hole, Mickelson hit one of his trademark soft pitches from deep greenside rough to within 18 inches (460 mm) of the cup and made his birdie to finish at a 4-under-par total of 276, one shot ahead of Steve Elkington and Thomas Bjørn. Mickelson captured his third major title the following spring at the Masters. He won his second green jacket after shooting a 3-under-par final round, winning by two strokes over runner-up Tim Clark. This win propelled him to 2nd place in the Official World Golf Ranking (his career best), behind Woods, and ahead of Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen.

2006: Collapse on final hole at the U.S. Open

After winning two majors in a row heading into the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, Mickelson was bidding to join Ben Hogan and Tiger Woods as the only players to win three consecutive majors (not necessarily in the same calendar year). Mickelson was the joint leader going into the final round, but he was part of a wild finish to the tournament, in which he made major mistakes on the final hole and ended up in a tie for second place at +6 (286), one shot behind Geoff Ogilvy.

Mickelson bogeyed the 16th hole. On the 17th hole, with the lead at +4, he missed the fairway to the left, and his drive finished inside a garbage can, from which he was granted a free drop; he parred the hole. He had a one-shot lead and was in the last group going into the final hole.