PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — In 2012, an unnamed writer on an unnamed website—we’ll spare them the embarrassment—wrote emphatically that Phil Mickelson would never win an Open Championship after he badly missed the cut at Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s, extending a string of mostly middling career play in golf’s oldest major.
“For whatever reason, the Open Championship is not kind to Mickelson,” the writer noted. “Every little mistake there is magnified and anything that can go wrong for Lefty in England usually does.”
The assessment wasn’t overly harsh. Mickelson never seemed to take to links golf, and in his first 17 appearances he notched just one top-10 finish. We had to figure he’d seize a long-sought U.S. Open in his time, and not one over here.
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Then a breakthrough in 2011: Mickelson tied for second with Dustin Johnson behind champion Darren Clarke at Royal St. George’s, and something clicked. Two years later, in the most recent Open played at Muirfield, Mickelson produced a performance nearly as stunning as his later PGA Championship victory at the age of 50.
Mired in ninth when the final round began, Mickelson stormed with a closing 66, blowing past the likes of Tiger Woods, Adam Scott, Lee Westwood and Angel Cabrera to lift the claret jug.
Fourteen years later, after opening the first round of the 153rd Open with a steady one-under 70 at Royal Portrush that featured only a single dropped shot, a satisfied Mickelson recalled the triumph at Muirfield with a rather notable statement for the six-time major champion.
“I think winning the Open in 2013 was the greatest accomplishment in my career because I had to learn a style of golf that I didn’t grow up playing,” Mickelson said. “It’s kind of the greatest source of pride for me as a player to overcome those obstacles. Now I’ve come to really love it, enjoy it, and I seem to play well in some of the adverse conditions too.”
The Open victory solidified Mickelson’s standing as more than just an American superstar, and the respect for him rose immeasurably across the pond.
“I think it’s a sign of a complete player, to be able to win in all the conditions of the majors that they provide,” Mickelson said on Thursday. “Obviously, I’ve never won a U.S. Open, but winning a Masters requires a whole different style of play than winning a U.S. Open and a PGA. This is unique as well. I just think it’s a sign of a complete player.”
Mickelson, the current LIV Golf player whose grouping didn’t exactly befit a past Champion Golfer of the Year—he went off in the day’s sixth threeball with Daniel Van Tonder and Ryan Peake—got the last smile, because he only had to pull on his rain suit over the last couple of holes, birdied the 17th, and was warm and dry in the clubhouse when heavy rain and wind arrived.
“Our group had a pretty good break, I thought,” Mickelson said.
In 2024, the R&A changed its age limit on Open past champions’ exemptions to 55 years old, and that’s the age of Mickelson now. But he doesn’t have to worry about it yet, because winners before ’24 are grandfathered until 60. Observers have no doubt questioned why Mickelson should even be playing, considering he’s missed the cut in six of his last seven Open appearances. Oddsmakers put him at 400-to-1 this week.
But after three seasons of mediocre play in LIV, Mickelson has seemingly found some form and has three top-10s this year, including a T-4 in Virginia last month.
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Mickelson said he absolutely drew on his past Open experiences in his round on Thursday.
“When you get conditions like this, you start to fall back on realizing that 60, 80 feet in the proper spot is like a good spot, and you start to realize that you can make 20- or 30-footers out here,” Mickelson said. “You don’t have to hit it six feet to make birdie. You can hit it 20, 30 feet because the greens don’t break a lot, you can hit them aggressively.
“I didn’t make a ton of long ones, but I made a lot of short ones and a lot of good up-and-downs and lag putting. You find that going back on past experience, you don’t have to press it. You don’t have to force it.”
Mickelson did have one spectacular shot, holing out from 26 yards on a blast from a pot bunker at the par-3 third. “It was crazy,” Mickelson said. “I was just trying to save bogey, and I got lucky when it went in.”
Mickelson has never been able to truly relive his victory at Muirfield because the Open hasn’t gone back there since ’13, much to the consternation of the tournament’s fans. On Wednesday, new R&A CEO Mark Darbon said discussions about the venue continue, adding “there are some things that need to evolve” to host a “modern Open.”
Mickelson, who isn’t shy about expressing his opinion about American politics on social media, took a pass on jumping into the Muirfield debate.
“I don’t know. I don’t really get into the politics on that,” he said “There’s some things I get in politics on, but not that.”
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
