The fans who remained to follow Phil Mickelson late on Friday at Oakmont loved him, despite everything, though there weren’t many of them. The overcast early evening skies made it look at least an hour darker than it was, and scoreboards flashed an ominous yellow message: Dangerous weather is approaching. Prepare to take shelter or return to your vehicles. Then there was his score—four-over as he stood on the 15th tee, with the cut settling at seven over. If it was true that this was Mickelson’s last US Open—the words he used were “high likelihood,” now that his exemptions into the one major that eluded him in his World Golf Hall of Fame career have run out—it at least didn’t feel like this would be his last day.
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They shouted his name behind the ropes on 15, threadbare in numbers. A woman lifted both hands, to make herself bigger, and Phil, in his green shirt with a white collar, nodded. The feature that has always stood out most are the eyes, wide and fervent, and even now, with his 55th birthday coming on Monday, they give him a sheen of youth. Mickelson yanked his drive right, pushed his second left, and then unleashed a quintessential Mickelson recovery, a pitch from the deep rough that landed in the perfect spot and trickled down the slope and onto the green, 12 feet away.
And then he three-putted. Two of the three buffer strokes between him and the cut, gone in a hole.
“Keep it going Phil!” a man shouted from the near-empty grandstand. “We’re with you!”
The air, though cooler now, was heavy with humidity, heavy with the storm hidden somewhere behind the haze that always seems to hang over Oakmont. A light breeze touched the tops of the fescue, and the one stroke keeping him in the tournament would have felt so much more secure anywhere but here.
On 16, he gave himself a birdie chance from 17 feet and tapped in for an easy par.
Two holes remained.
The story of Phil Mickelson’s denouement is so well-told by now, in books, in article, among fans, and everywhere, that it’s ingrained gospel in those of us who follow the sport—the defection to LIV after years of enmity with the PGA Tour, the description of his new bosses as “scary m**********s,” the strange silence after, the surprise second-place finish at the 2023 Masters and, after that, the odd muted quality of his existence after decades of a presence within the sport that walked a tightrope between colourful and tawdry. It was the ringmaster subdued, aside from an occasional re-emergence to make ridiculous predictions (“Scottie won’t win in 2025”).
On the course, though, among his people, it has felt as though little has changed. The cries of “Phil!” may have more nostalgia baked in than in years past, but they’re no less ardent. You felt, watching him walk to the 17th tee, cutting a lonely figure against a dark sky, that in some way he deserved a coronation rather than whatever this was. We’ll see him again at the Open Championship and the Masters and the PGA Championship, but this is the major, in which he finished runner-up an agonizing record six times, the gambler never won, his national open, and thus in some ways closest to the renegade heart.
His drive on the short par-4 17th just rolled into the rough near the green, and either he tried to be too perfect with his chip over the bunker, or the Oakmont grass grabbed his club and refused to yield. Regardless, the ball dipped limply into the sand. He played his next shot over the imposing face conservatively, but his par putt gathered disastrous speed and rolled eight feet past. He had yielded his last bit of security, and when he missed the bogey comeback, he was now outside the cut line and staring at the anticlimactic end.
He needed birdie on 18, and the only guarantee, being Phil, is that he would give himself a chance. The rain began. The drive was perfect. He moved up the fairway under a black umbrella. The approach, uphill to just inside 15 feet, was far better than the scattered applause made it seem from below. The birdie putt, to survive, to play at least two more days, burned the edge of the hole as it trickled by.
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They called his name as he approached the footbridge, told him they loved him, and a few even had the presence to say thank you. There should have been more of them, and they should have been louder, but the script was impromptu and rough as Mickelson’s 34th US Open appearance had come to an abrupt end. The acknowledgement from the man himself was brief, barely noticeable, and he walked away. The USGA officials told us, the pack of media, gathered by the clubhouse, that they would ask him to stop. When he emerged moments later, one of us had the courage to say, “Phil, could we get a few questions?”
“I’m going to pass,” he answered, not unkindly. He never broke his stride, but when he turned to us, the eyes were as bright as ever.
