By Shane Ryan
In the wake of Phil Mickelson’s win at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic last weekend, Ryan Herrington dug up some impressive numbers on Lefty’s senior career so far. It’s worth diving into the whole jaw-dropping article, but the short version is that in two starts thus far, Mickelson has been great in ways that go beyond his two wins. He’s been capital-D Dominant, and even that word undersells it.

How about this: When I was a kid, I used to be really into the Civil War, and when I watched movies like “Gettysburg,” I’d think, “what would it be like if a few people had machine guns during these battles?” Well, Phil Mickelson on the PGA Tour Champions is kind of like bringing a machine gun to a rifle fight. He’s 50 years old, very fit and with a game that’s still sharp enough to compete on the PGA Tour. On the 50-and-older tour? He’s a monster, and it’s impossible not to fantasise about how good he could be if that were the sole focus of his attention.

Let’s come back to Earth for a moment: Phil Mickelson is not going whole hog on the senior circuit anytime soon. Even after his second win, he’s scheduled to play at the Zozo Championship and the Houston Open in the next three weeks, and there’s not a Champions event on his scheduling horizon. He can still run with the young pups, and as a guy with a healthy ego, I’m sure he’d balk at the suggestion of leaving his glory days behind in a quest to become King of the Graybeards. For the moment, at least, what I’m proposing is pure fantasy.

Now, back to the stratosphere. If Phil did turn 100 percent of his energies to the PGA Tour Champions, just imagine what he could accomplish! The G.O.A.T.s right now are Hale Irwin, with his record 45 wins, and Bernhard Langer, with his record 11 majors. And sure, Mickelson has a very long way to go, with his two victories and zero majors. But! If he started now, how long would it take him to get 10 wins? Five majors? In a non-pandemic year, there are just shy of 30 events on the PGA Tour Champions calendar and five majors. Within three years, on his current form, I’d put Mickelson conservatively at 15 wins and six majors. That’s one win every six events, and while that would be a ridiculous pace on the PGA Tour, it doesn’t seem all that radical for Phil among the AARPers.

Brett Carlsen

There’s a chance that this is coming off as an insult to Mickelson’s new old peers. That’s not my intention; I know the level of play is extremely high. I know that just because Phil has gone 2-for-2 so far, it doesn’t mean he’d continue at anywhere near that same rate. The fact remains, though, that he has an age advantage on his competitors, and an uncommonly strong game for a 50-year-old … as you can tell by the lack of other 50-year-olds who are still competitive enough to finish second in a World Golf Championships events after their golden birthday (Mickelson did just that at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude in August). Plus, he seems to be in the best shape of his life, he’s hitting the ball a mile and though he’s sustained a couple of down years on the greens, he’s at worst an average putter by PGA Tour standards. In other words, the man still has his touch.

So let’s talk about legacy. What does Mickelson have left to accomplish playing the young man’s game? The way I see it, there are three milestones left:

Win a U.S. Open to complete the career Grand Slam.

Win any major to become the oldest man to do it, and the only man older than 50.

Win a PGA Tour event after age 52 to break Sam Snead’s record as the oldest PGA Tour winner.

As for Nos. 1 and 2, Mickelson can still compete in the majors as a senior golfer. For No. 3, maybe he can come back when he’s old enough. None of it, in the theoretical world, would keep him from becoming a full-time PGA Tour Champions golfer today.

On the flip side, the stakes of transitioning to the PGA Tour Champions are high. With a decade of success, he could become the greatest senior golfer ever. How many people can say they are the greatest at anything in the world? It’s a serious opportunity, and I’d bet any amount of money that on some level, in some idle moment, Mickelson has already considered it. He craves newness, risk and challenge, and he’s enough of a maverick that there has to be some appeal to the idea.

This is my final pitch: Mickelson is already one of the greatest golfers of all-time, but he’s not the G.O.A.T. He’s not even the G.O.A.T. of his era. There’s only one thing that can change that—making a sudden and swift career transition to the PGA Tour Champions. I’m not saying it would be easy to reach the dizzying heights, or that success is a foregone conclusion. But his performance so far proves that he’s got a great shot, and nothing but time ahead of him. Plus, it would be the ultimate golf adventure. Who else can say, at age 50, that they’re starting a journey to become the best in the world?

The post Should Phil Mickelson go for broke and become the greatest senior golfer ever? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
The sample size is small. Very small. And yet, it’s big enough to generate some numbers that will grab your attention.

With a victory on Sunday at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, Phil Mickelson became only the third player in PGA Tour Champions history to win his first and second starts. He joined Bruce Fleisher, who originally accomplished the feat in 1999, and Jim Furyk, who matched it last month. Furyk has finished T-9 and T-13 in his next two starts, apparently having already hit his senior career peak. (Kidding!)

Telling, too, is the fact that neither of Mickelson’s two victories were nail-biters. Rather, they’ve been dominant performances suggesting that if the five-time major champion were to focus on playing the senior tour, he could have a chance at re-writing many of the records on the 50-and-older circuit.

On Sunday, Mickelson beat fellow Masters champion, Mike Weir, by three strokes at the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond, Va., shooting a 17-under 199 total. This comes after he won by four over Tim Petrovic in his PGA Tour Champions debut at the Charles Schwab Series Ozarks National event in August, tying the tour’s record for low 54-hole score (22-under 191).

Phil checks in after his second consecutive @ChampionsTour win! ? pic.twitter.com/kbEi444x5A

— KPMG Mickelson (@MickelsonHat) October 18, 2020

Six rounds of play doesn’t qualify Mickelson for any of the stat categories on tour (a minimum of 27 rounds is needed), but checking out his stats in those six rounds makes for interesting reading. Here are five numbers that have captured out attention.

65.0
This is Mickelson’s stroke average on the PGA Tour Champions. That’s after rounds of 61-64-66-68-66-65. By way of comparison, Ernie Els is currently the scoring leader on tour with a 68.29 average in 34 rounds. More context: the tour average for the 2020 season is 70.97.

311.7 yards
This is Mickelson’s driving distance average through two events. He would easily be No. 1 on tour if he qualified for the ranking, as John Daly is the current leader with a 298.7-yard average. The overall tour average for the season is 276.0 yards.

79.63
This is Mickelson’s greens-in-regulation percentage. Once again, he’d be the tour’s leader if he was eligible, with Els holding the top spot right now with a 77.61 GIR percentage. The tour average is 67.81.

2.85/3.67/4.33
This is Mickelson’s average on par 3s, 4s and 5s. Of course it would stand to reason that if his overall average was 65.0, that these numbers would be equally low. Each is lower than the leaders in any of the three categories: Jerry Kelly on par 3s (2.92), Bernhard Langer on par 4s (3.88) and Robert Karlsson on par 5s (4.40).

56.79
This is Mickelson’s driving accuracy percentage. Not surprisingly, this would NOT be leading the PGA Tour Champions. Furyk is doing that with his 68.29 percent fairways-hit clip. And it’s well below the tour average of 70.97 percent. But, it’s interesting to not that it’s better than the 54.0 percent mark Mickelson posted on the PGA Tour during the 2019-’20 season, or his 50.77 from 2019, or his 52.91 in 2018. In fact, you have to go back to 2014 when he finished the PGA Tour season with a 58.01 percent mark, to find Mickelson putting up a better number.

The post 5 telling stats from the dominant start of Phil Mickelson’s PGA Tour Champions career appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Strege
Phil Mickelson does not follow convention, as we know, and so it was that his road to Augusta began in an unfamiliar place on an unlikely stage, though not with an unexpected result.

What Mickelson took away from his second PGA Tour Champions start was a second victory on Sunday and whatever confidence one can glean form a test less stringent than those ahead of him.

Mickelson won the Dominion Energy Charity Classic in Richmond, Va., the first time he has played there in more than 27 years. He beat Mike Weir by three shots at the Country Club of Virginia and joined Bruce Fleisher and Jim Furyk as the only players to win their first two senior starts.

“I have a lot of fun playing out here [on the senior tour], because I can play aggressive,” he said. “I can get away with a couple of misses and play the way I like to play, to play a little more attacking style. I really like that.”

Mickelson began the final round trailing Weir by three, then shot a seven-under-par 65 for a 54-hole total of 17-under 199. He made only a single costly swing, hitting his drive out of bounds on the par-5 ninth hole leading to a bogey.

“That kind of fried me a little bit,” Mickelson, a three-time Masters champion, said. “I was able to play a good back nine. That’s something I’ve been working on and it’ll give me something to work on in the coming weeks as we head into Augusta.

“This is a good momentum start for me. I put a driver in I haven’t used before to try to get a little more pop for Augusta, a little bit more carry. It might have been a little bit off line at times, but I’m working with it and it was a good successful week.”

Mickelson, who won the Charles Schwab Series in August in his senior debut, will return to PGA Tour play in the run-up to the Masters next month. He will play the Zozo Championship at Sherwood Country Club outside Los Angeles next week and then the Houston Open the week before Augusta.

Weir, also a past Masters champion, is also a senior tour rookie who was seeking to win for the first time since the 2007 Fry’s Electronics Open. This was his eighth senior start, his third top 10 and his best finish.

He shot a 63 in the second round on Saturday, was unable to carry over the momentum into Sunday. He shot a one-under-par 71.

The post Phil Mickelson begins his Masters prep with a second victory in two PGA Tour Champions starts appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Strege
Winning does not necessarily beget winning, though it is a reliable inducement to continue the chase, and toward that end, Phil Mickelson has committed to playing in the Dominion Energy Charity Classic in Richmond, Va., next week.

It will be Mickelson’s second PGA Tour Champions start. He won his senior debut, in the Charles Schwab Series in August, two months after turning 50.

“We are thrilled that Phil Mickelson, one of the game’s most accomplished and popular players, has committed to the 2020 Dominion Energy Charity Classic,” the tournament’s executive director Steve Schoenfeld said. “His presence will bring another layer of excitement and energy to the tournament, especially for our fans watching around the world on Golf Channel.”

Though he began 2020 optimistically, his year has been wildly uneven. In January, he would not commit to playing any senior events and instead talked enthusiastically about making the U.S. Ryder Cup team (the Ryder Cup has been postponed).

“When I stop hitting bombs I’ll play the Champions Tour, but I’m hitting some crazy bombs right now,” he said then. “No, I still have speed. There’s no reason I couldn’t play out here [on the PGA Tour].”

Mickelson finished third in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in early February, then missed two straight cuts before the PGA Tour was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. When play resumed in June, he struggled until tying for second in the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in August.

A week later, he tied for 71st in the PGA Championship and a month after that missed the cut in the U.S. Open. The senior tour, meanwhile, obviously is friendlier than the PGA Tour to those who turn 50, to wit, Jim Furyk winning his first two PGA Tour Champions starts.

The post Phil Mickelson commits to playing a second PGA Tour Champions event appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Strege

The effort to weaken Bernhard Langer’s stronghold on the Charles Schwab Cup was strengthened instead, when he eagled the final hole to win the opening of three playoff events, the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, on Sunday.

Langer, who has won three straight Charles Schwab Cups and four overall, began the final round with a three-stroke lead, but struggled with his putter, until the tournament was on the line.

He came to the par-5 18th hole at the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond, Va., trailing Scott Verplank by a stroke. Langer hit a fairway-wood second shot to 15 feet left of the hole and made the putt to wrest the victory from Verplank.

“Played really good this week,” he said. “Didn’t miss a fairway, missed only one green the first day. Similar the second day. Made no bogeys. Today was a little more shaky. I was a little bit out of rhythm. The putter was ice cold. That was the difference. I finally made one when it really mattered.”

The victory was the sixth of the season, a personal best for the 60-year-old who seems to be getting better with age. It also was the 35th win of the PGA Tour Champions career.

Langer had a final-round two-under 70 for a 54-hole total of 16-under-par 200. It was the 56th time in 64 rounds he’s posted an under-par score this year.

Verplank closed with a six-under-par 66, but came up short in his bid to win for the first time on the PGA Tour Champions.

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Lets just say we’re done saying that this is the most amazing year for outrageous rules controversies and crazy penalties. From incorrectly placed golf balls on greens to bathroom breaks that result in extra strokes to balls picked up when they’re not conceded to balls touched while still moving in match play to balls touched while still moving in stroke play, anything and everything seems to have happened in 2017. But what is putting us over the top is this incident on Friday involving Scott McCarron at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, the first event in the PGA Tour Champions’ Charles Schwab Cup playoffs.

McCarron—a serious threat to end Bernhard Langer’s three-year reign as Schwab Cup champ—was taking a drop on the 18th hole during his first round at the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond, Va. With his ball back in play, he started leaning down to pick up the tees he used in the drop process when his driver slipped out of his hands and, well, did this:

Tough break. Scott McCarron receives a 1-shot penalty after accidentally dropping club and moving ball. pic.twitter.com/4bAs6Onafy

— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) October 20, 2017

As you hear from the commentary, because the club moved the ball, McCarron incurred a one-stroke penalty. And as you see from the clip, McCarron was none too thrilled with himself. Or his driver.

Ouch.

McCarron wound up taking a double-bogey 6 on the hole and finished with an even-par 72, putting him five strokes off the lead (held, of course, by Langer, along with Rocco Mediate, David Toms and Joe Durant). Tied for 44th place is not the way McCarron wanted to start the playoffs.

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