Phil Mickelson had earned kind of a bad rap during his professional career. It’s true that he was 0 for 42 in major championships in that span, but somehow along during that stretch of missed opportunities, Mickelson earned a reputation as a choker.
In actuality he was far from it. The knock on Mickelson was that he could never win on Sunday, and that was an appropriate criticism. His track record in majors spoke for itself. However, in none of his 17 Top-10 major finishes did Phil do anything that resembled a Greg Norman or Jean de Velde type choke job.
In 1999 Payne Stewart made a 15-foot putt on the 18th hole of the U.S. Open to beat Mickelson by one stroke after Phil made a furious comeback in the last nine holes. In the 2001 Masters, Mickelson shot 2-under in the Final Round only to see Tiger Woods shoot 4-under. In the 2002 U.S. Open Mickelson fired an even-par 70 on Sunday at Bethpage Black, the second lowest score of the day, but it wasn’t enough to catch Woods who had run away from the field.
It was more of the same in other majors. Mickelson had never been in the final pairing of a major championship and had never had sole possession of the lead on the final nine holes. He never lost a six-stroke lead on a Sunday or double-bogeyed the 18th hole when all he needed was bogey.
Phil never really lost the tournament, but he also never won. He wasn’t a choker, he just got beat… often.
It might have been unfair, Mickelson being called a choker, but the only way that he was going to shed the label was to have a Sunday showdown in a major and emerge victorious.
Yesterday he did exactly that and won one of the great duels in Masters history against Ernie Els.
Battling down the stretch, shot for shot, Mickelson and Els provided the greatest major championship duel in recent memory. In the end, Els had a Mickelson-like finish. He played great in the final round, but he just got beat.
There was something different about Mickelson this week. He looked, well, different. Normally when Phil is in contention on the weekend of a major he has the same look on his face as a 9-year old on his way to get a tetanus shot. He never seemed like he wanted to be there.
This week at the Masters that look was gone. It was replaced with a goofy smile that stayed on Mickelson’s face after good shots and bad. Big putts that fell were met with exuberance instead of relief. And when Phil heard the roars of Ernie Els’ eagle on 13, he promptly sunk a 20-foot birdie putt on the hardest hole of the course. The old Phil would have two-putted. Not this Phil. He knew he was three down to Els, nailed the putt and later said his thought was “after I birdie 13, I’ll only be one behind.” Had this been 2002 maybe he would have instead thought “if I bogey 13, it’ll be over.”
In recent years Phil had grown exasperated with the incessant questions by the press about not winning a major. He was almost defiant. This week, it all changed. He welcomed the question, even joking about it during Wednesday’s pre-tournament press conference.
The pressure was off Mickelson. Not from the press, but from himself. And once he lifted that burden, all he had to do was play the Masters like he did his other 22 wins on the PGA Tour.
After that, it was easy.