A look at the 20 top players in the world of Golf today: Phil Mickelson
Phil Mickelson was born on June 16, 1970 in San Diego, California to Phil Sr. a pilot and Mary a nurse. Mickelson has an older sister Tina and a younger brother Tim. The family moved later moved to Arizona where Mickelson harnessed his golfing talent.
Mickelson was born to play golf; he started swinging a homemade golf club before he turned 2 years old. When he was 3 Mickelson tried to run away from home, and told his neighbours that he was running away from home to go and play golf at the golf course,
the neighbours drove him around the town and dropped him home.
Mickelson is nicknamed as lefty because of his left handed swing when he is actually right handed. He learnt to play golf from his father and tried to mirror his right handed swing and ended up with a lefty swing. He is also known for playing both brilliant
and horrendous strokes of play, and fans love him for the type of game he plays, unpredictable and very exciting.
An example of his wild play was when Mcikelson at the 2006 US Open was in a tie for second place at +6(286), one shot behind champion Geoff Ogilvy, with the lead at +3 missed the fairway and the drive finished inside a garbage can, he was granted a free
drop. Mickelson then needed a par for a one-shot victory, and surprisingly he chose to hit driver on the final hole of the tournament, but he hit it left of the fairway and the ball bounced off a hospitality tent and landed in between trees. Mickelson decided
not to play it safe and pitch out into the fairway for some reason and decided to go for the green, his ball hit a tree and dropped within 50 yards, and the next shot was into the bunker and he ended with a double bogey, costing him the championship.
Mickelson has been tagged somewhat of a choker because of his collapses in tournaments. He was for a long time known as the best player without winning a major, although he got that monkey off his back when he won the 2004 Masters. He then went on to win
another major in the following year at the PGA Championship, and the third major came at the 2006 Masters.
Mickelson won a Tour Championship for the first time at the WGC-CA Championship with a one-stroke win over Nick Watney. In September of the same year Mickelson recorded his second Tour Championship.
In April of 2010, Mickelson won the Masters Tournament with a 16-under-par performance defeating Lee Westwood, resulting in a third Masters Victory and his fourth major Championship.
2011 has not been a great year for Mickelson; he lost the Farmers Insurance Open to Bubba Watson and then tied for second at the 2011 Open Championship.
Mickelson although a great player of the game, has been hot and cold for the most part of his career, with moments of brilliance and patches of misjudgement. In 2004 Ford had an advertising campaign that had the tagline, “What will Phill do next? Both media
and fans got a lot of play out of it from his antics at the golf course, when he showed up at Augusta with 2 drivers to win the Masters and when he used 5 wedges to win the Colonial. Still He remains in the Top 10 list of Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR)
but has failed to reach the Top spot in his career, coming as close as 2nd.
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