Mickelson magic! Lefty secures PGA Championship to become oldest to win golf major
The crowd size may have been limited because of the coronavirus, but the roars were nevertheless deafening Sunday at Kiawah Island Resort’s Ocean Course, pushing the longtime people’s champion on to history.
Phil Mickelson won the 103rd PGA Championship by two shots with a 6-under 282 to become the oldest major champion in history less than a month from his 51st birthday.
Mickelson broke a record that had stood since 1968, when 48-year-old Julius Boros won the PGA Championship, and became the 14th pro golfer to win at least six major titles.
Mickelson needed a police escort to the 18th green to get through a throng that surrounded him after he hit his approach to 16 feet to all but clinch the victory, which is Lefty’s 45th on the PGA Tour.
“It was an incredible experience. I’ve never had something like that happen,” Mickelson said. “It was a little bit unnerving, but it was exceptionally awesome too. So it was kind of a special moment that I’ll be appreciative of, the way people here supported me the entire tournament.”
The vaunted Ocean Course took its toll on the contenders in the final round, as the eight players within four shots of Mickelson’s lead of 7 under through three rounds all shot over par Sunday.
Making history
Sunday’s title is added to Mickeson’s major mantle that already includes three Masters (2004, 2006, 2010), the 2005 PGA Championship and 2013 British Open.
He is a U.S. Open title away from the career Grand Slam, and has six runner-up finishes in the tournament. The 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines outside San Diego begins June 17, a day after Mickelson’s 51st birthday.
“It’s very possible that this is the last tournament I ever win. Like if I’m being realistic. But it’s also very possible that I may have had a little bit of a breakthrough in some of my focus and maybe I go on a little bit of a run, I don’t know. But the point is that there’s no reason why I or anybody else can’t do it at a later age. It just takes a little bit more work.”
MIckelson is also the first player to win PGA Tour events 30 years apart, surpassing golfers including Raymond Floyd, Sam Snead and Davis Love III, who won 28 years after their initial tour wins. Mickelson was an amateur when he won his first tour event in 1991, and has now won in four decades.
He said he has been working on his mental acuity and focus recently, the factors he believes require the most attention to enable good golf now that he’s 50. He took extra time before each stroke at Kiawah to envision his shot.
“I’m just making more and more progress just by trying to elongate my focus,” he said. “I might try to play 36, 45 holes in a day and try to focus on each shot so that when I go out and play 18, it doesn’t feel like it’s that much. I might try to elongate the time that I end up meditating, but I’m trying to use my mind like a muscle and just expand it because as I’ve gotten older, it’s been more difficult for me to maintain a sharp focus, a good visualization and see the shot.
“Physically I feel like I’m able to perform and hit the shots that I’ve hit throughout my career.”
Mickelson was once the hard-luck loser and some might say “choker” in major championships. He was winless in his first 46 majors through 2003 with eight top-three finishes. But he has joined Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino with six major titles.
He was the fifth player age 50 or older since 1900 to hold at least a share of a 54-hole lead at a major, joining Tom Watson (2009 Open Championship at Turnberry, 59 years old), Greg Norman (2008 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, 53), Boros (1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club, 53) and Harry Vardon (1920 U.S. Open at Inverness Club, 50).
Mickelson’s two most recent wins had come on the PGA Champions Tour, and he had fallen to 115th in the Official World Golf Ranking entering the week.
“I believed for a long time that I could play at this level again,” Mickelson said. “I didn’t see why I couldn’t, but I wasn’t executing the way I believed I could, and with the help of a lot of people, my wife especially, [swing coach] Andrew Getson and my brother [and caddie] Tim and [agent] Steve Loy, I’ve been able to make progress and have this week. . . . Although I believed it, until I actually did it, there was a lot of doubt.”
Brooks Koepka was trying to make some history of his own Sunday by becoming the first winner of three PGA Championships in four years since the tournament format changed from match play to stroke play in 1958. Jack Nicklaus won three in five years from 1971-75.
But Koepka tied for second with Louis Oosthuizen with a 74 Sunday after beginning the final round a shot out of the lead.
Mickelson and Koepka comprised a heavyweight final pairing, boasting nine major championships between them — Koepka with four since 2017.
A wild ride
It was a wild ride through the first seven holes for Mickelson and Koepka in the final group, with multiple lead changes, five birdies, four bogeys, a double, a hole-out and a missed three-foot putt. Mickelson emerged from the frantic seven-hole stretch with a two-shot lead at 7 under.
Mickelson 3-putted the opening hole from 57 feet for a bogey and Koepka made a 12-footer to take the lead at 7 under with the immediate two-shot swing. Mickelson regained the lead on the par-5 second with a birdie and a double by Koepka, who made a mess of the hole from start to finish.
Koepka pulled within a shot on the third when Mickelson flew the green with a chip shot from 30 yards in the rough for a bogey, but he missed an opportunity to tie for the lead by missing a 3-foot birdie putt.
Mickelson holed out for birdie from a greenside bunker on the fifth to again open up a two-shot advantage. “I just needed to get that up-and-down and to have it go in was a bonus, but I knew I had a lot of work ahead,” Mickelson said.
He bogeyed the sixth and Koepka hit a wedge to 3 feet for birdie to tie for the lead. Mickelson holed a 10-foot birdie putt on the par-5 seventh and Koepka bogeyed the hole to fall two behind.
That was as close as Koepka would get for the remainder of the round, as he joined every other contender in succumbing to the relentless Ocean Course layout and seaside breeze and falling well off Mickelson’s lead, which was at 8 under after Mickelson birdied the 10th hole.
Kevin Streelman was one shot back following a pair of opening birdies but made four bogeys before his next birdie.
Gary Woodland was two shots back at 4 under after birdies on two of his first three holes but played a stretch of eight holes 7-over par.
Oosthuizen birdied the 12th to pull within three shots of the lead at 5 under, where he began the final round, but hit a ball in the water on 13 to make a double bogey and fall five shots back.
Mickelson made it harder on himself with a pair of bogeys on holes 13 and 14 to fall to 6 under, and a bogey on 17 following a birdie on 16, though he limited the damage on 13 after hitting his approach to the green into the water.
Mickelson got off to a rough start at Kiawah. He was 3-over par through his first six holes of the tournament, and captured the lead when he played a stretch of 18 holes over the second and third rounds 10-under par.
Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay was Mickelson’s caddie for his first five major titles, but his brother Tim has been carrying the bag for nearly the past four years. It’s a pairing that worked Sunday.
“I had made some uncommitted swings the first six holes,” Mickelson said. “He pulled me aside and said, ‘If you’re going to win this thing, you’re going to have to make committed golf swings.’ It hit me in the head: I can’t control the outcome, I have to swing committed. The first one I made was the drive on 7. Good drive on 7 gave me a chance to get down by the green and make birdie. From there on, I hit a lot of really good shots because I was committed to each one.”
Mickelson said Sunday he was inspired by Watson nearly winning the 2009 British Open at the age of 59, coming one barely long approach shot on the 18th hole from winning before eventually losing in a playoff to Stewart Cink, and Mickelson has now become the inspiration for golfers advancing in age.
“It gives me hope . . . I’m still playing at 50, but to be able to come out and compete and actually win, that’s a whole other thing,” Koepka said. “So kudos to him. It was really cool to see.”
The Ocean Course, the longest in major championship history on the scorecard at 7,876 yards, played 7,557 yards Sunday, the shortest of the week. It was set up at 7,660 on Thursday, 7,655 on Friday and 7,700 on Saturday.
PGA purse distribution: How much money did Phil Mickelson win?
The PGA Championship purse is $12 million, with the winner taking home $2.16 million in addition to the Wanamaker Trophy.
Co-runners-up Koepka and Oosthuizen took home $1.056 million each. Fourth place paid $576,000, 10th was worth $297,000, 20th was $163,000, 50th was $26,000, and 70th was $19,600.
Players making the cut but finishing below 70th received less than $19,600 in increments of $100 per place. Everyone in the tournament who turned in two scorecards made $3,200, so it was worth the trip for the 18 club pros who missed the cut.
The 14 players with six major titles
Jack Nicklaus 18
Tiger Woods 15
Walter Hagen 11
Ben Hogan 9
Gary Player 9
Tom Watson 8
Harry Vardon 7
Bobby Jones 7
Gene Sarazen 7
Sam Snead 7
Arnold Palmer 7
Lee Trevino 6
Nick Faldo 6
Phil Mickelson 6
Oldest players to win a major
- Phil Mickelson: 2021 PGA Championship, 50 years, 11 months, 7 days
- Julius Boros: 1968 PGA Championship, 48 years, 4 months, 18 days
- Old Tom Morris: 1867 British Open, 46 years, 99 days
- Jack Nicklaus: 1986 Masters, 46 years, 2 months, 23 days
- Jerry Barber: 1961 PGA Championship, 45 Years, 3 months, 6 days
- Hale Irwin: 1990 U.S. Open, 45 years, 15 days old
- Lee Trevino: 1984 PGA Championship, 44 years, 8 months, 18 days
- Roberto de Vicenzo: 1967 British Open, 44 years, 93 days
- Harry Vardon: 1914 British Open, 44 years, 41 days
- Raymond Floyd: 1986 U.S. Open, 43 years, 9 months, 11 days
- Ted Ray: 1920 U.S. Open, 43 years, 4 months, 16 days
This story was originally published May 23, 2021 at 7:11 PM.
