Among the many good things about the PGA Tour Champions – if you haven’t checked in on it for a while it’s worth a reminder look – is what it’s doing for Phil Mickelson’s bedazzled career.
Mickelson won again on Sunday, capturing the first Furyk & Friends event against a loaded field and by outdueling the timeless Miguel Ángel Jiménez.
That makes it three wins in four Champions starts for Mickelson, who may be 51 years old but hasn’t lost his last-day-of-school enthusiasm for what’s next.
Winning is winning regardless of the tour.
And Phil is still Phil.
It’s been five months since Mickelson pulled off the shocker of shockers, winning the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course, a hard-to-fathom victory that looks even more remarkable the further removed we are from it.
Winning a Champions event isn’t the same as winning on the PGA Tour, but it still matters. It still asks the same questions of players, demanding them to hit the shots and make the putts that matter even if the vibe is softer and the courses are easier.
Beating Brooks Koepka and everyone else on a course that seemed better suited to tormenting Mickelson and his scatter-shot style off the tee was classic Mickelson – reminding us again of how wrong we can be and how sublimely talented he is.
Mickelson’s form may have come and gone like a phantom that week but it will be the most memorable of his six major championships for the sheer magic he seemed to invoke at a time when many guys his age would be content to ride bikes around Kiawah Island, not take down a beastly golf course and beat the best in the world again.
Mickelson’s thumb may only now be recovering from the sunburn he got from flashing his thank you to fans that week in the South Carolina lowcountry.
Winning a Champions event isn’t the same as winning on the PGA Tour, but it still matters. It still asks the same questions of players, demanding them to hit the shots and make the putts that matter even if the vibe is softer and the courses are easier. It doesn’t matter if they are no-cut events if what really matters is winning, not cashing a check.
For a guy who loves the action, Mickelson has found Champions events make it easier for him to play to his strength – being aggressive. He loves that.
“I’m having fun, I’m having fun playing here,” Mickelson said Sunday. “I’m enjoying being around the guys. I’m enjoying the golf courses, how I can be a little bit more aggressive and like when I made a mistake on No. 5 (he lost a ball there on Sunday), I can still recover. You do that on the regular tour, you just get eaten alive, you just can’t make those mistakes there and have a chance to compete and contend and win.
“So I like how you don’t have to be perfect and I can get away with a shot or two here or there, so it makes it fun to play and play aggressive.”
Like top players before him, Mickelson isn’t ready to jump full-time into the PGA Tour Champions. He intends to keep playing the PGA Tour while dropping in and out with the 50-and-older set.
He intends to play two, perhaps three, more Champions events this fall as the tour heads toward an early November conclusion. Then it will be time to point toward 2022 where Mickelson is likely to play a busy PGA Tour schedule during its West Coast swing.
“I’m having fun playing in these. I don’t feel like there are tournaments on the regular tour that are really exciting for me to get out and play, so it’s fun for me to get out here and work on a few things that I’m trying to improve on and play with guys that I know,” Mickelson said.
“I know all these guys here. With that rain delay, I go into the locker room and everybody in there I know, whereas on the regular tour there’s so many new, young, fresh players, I don’t know who two-thirds of them are.”
There have also been whispers that Mickelson is intrigued by potential new professional golf ventures, ideas that have been floated but have not yet become a reality. Whether Mickelson is or isn’t interested in those remains to be seen.
With 45 PGA Tour victories, Mickelson is tied for eighth on the all-time list and he’s already in the World Golf Hall of Fame. What he does now is like more sprinkles on an ice cream treat.
Like Hale Irwin, Lee Trevino and Bernhard Langer, Mickelson has a chance to add a deeper layer of texture to his career by winning consistently in Champions events. He’s not likely to play there often enough to win as many times as those guys did but he’s likely to be tempted to play more senior major championships.
There have also been whispers that Mickelson is intrigued by potential new professional golf ventures, ideas that have been floated but have not yet become a reality. Whether Mickelson is or isn’t interested in those remains to be seen.
What is clear is how much Mickelson brings to the game, regardless of which tour he plays.
His victory Sunday was one more reminder.