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In general, “He did it to himself!” isn’t the burn you think it is. “He” is really we, and when it comes to this sort of conversation, we do everything to ourselves, pretty much. We all make critical decisions; we’ve all done stupid things; we’ve all made calls that worked out even better than we might’ve imagined. He did it to himself? Well, yeah. That’s life.
So we won’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the king-sized hole Phil Mickelson dug in his own yard. Plenty of folks have expended plenty of energy clucking tongues over the litany of Mickelson miscues. Let’s just say it is a list that continues to thrive.
But as the PGA Championship unfurled itself across the gorgeous but treacherous Southern Hills Country Club course in Tulsa this week, it seemed like the time to start wondering — and this is fan talk, not political talk — about what a future without Phil might look like. After all, he wasn’t there.
The championship is the proper setting. It was at the PGA a year ago, on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, that Mickelson became the oldest player ever to win one of golf’s majors, a stunning achievement. He was nearly 51 at the time, and it really was a moment for the sport to savor. The crowd chanted his nickname, Lefty. The tour sort of felt like its cylinders had clicked into place. Phil winning majors is good for golf, after all.
Spin ahead one year. At the annual champions dinner, always held early this week before the PGA Championship itself teed off, about a dozen former winners gathered, including Rory McIlroy and Colin Morikawa. “It was a fun evening. Phil was not missed,” said Dave Stockton, who won the PGA in 1970 and again in ‘76, referencing Mickelson’s decision to withdraw. “I think Phil would have been a big distraction. The story this week is the PGA.”
Maybe. The story is the PGA, sure; but the PGA is players, not pin placements. People don’t show up so they can watch rules being enforced or stimpmeters employed. They want to see the best players in the world try to win a major, and Phil Mickelson is one of the best players in the world. There’s no scenario on earth under which his not being around to defend his own title is a good thing.
With that said, this might be the time to get used to it. Golf fans have had a couple of dry runs with this sort of thing, because Tiger Woods was there, then he wasn’t, then he was, then — well, you follow. If there’s one thing we learned, it’s that life and golf go on.
And they will go on again, absent Phil. It’s really anyone’s guess as to whether, when and under what circumstances Mickelson ever returns to a PGA Tour he’s essentially tried to blow up. But look at that leaderboard at Southern Hills this week. It’s full of superstars in their own rights: McIlroy, Morikawa, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, on and on. These pros were already on the world stage; now they move closer to center stage. It happens all the time.
The truth about Mickelson is that, at 51, his hours on the main tour were winding down anyway. You could say that about Tiger, albeit for different reasons. Even under the best of circumstances, golf fans would already be looking ahead to a world without these guys — and as I said, they’ve had some practice at it.
They’ll find new people to love. They already have found them. That’s what fans do.
At Southern Hills this week, a great, incredibly popular young golfer, Jordan Spieth, said this about Mickelson: “His accomplishment last year was insane, one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the game, so I just think it’s really unfortunate that as the defending champion he’s not here. Hopefully, things can get back to normal, and everybody can kind of get back to the way things were.”
The thing is, normal changes pretty fast. The new normal is a world without Phil. We will soldier on. I mean, he did it to himself, right?