Phil Mickelson’s place among the all-time greats? It’s complicated

Editor’s note: In the new book, The Golf 100, veteran golf writer Michael Arkush took on the daunting task of ranking the best golfers of all time from 100 to 1. In the excerpt below, which has been lightly edited from the original version for context and clarity, Arkush explains how and why Phil Mickelson landed 13th on his list.

The piece was excerpted with permission from THE GOLF 100: A Spirited Ranking of the Greatest Players of All Time by Michael Arkush, to be published by Doubleday on April 1. Copyright © 2025 by Michael Arkush. You may preorder the book here:

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Six major championships, the most of anyone in the 21st cen­tury, except for Tiger Woods.

Forty-five wins overall, tied for the eighth-most with Walter Hagen.

The only player, male or female, to win a professional major after turning 50.

I could go on and on in listing the accomplishments of Philip Alfred Mickelson. And yet…Mickelson is another all-time great who underachieved. Too harsh? I can understand that sentiment. Please know I set out to commend the top 100 players, not criticize them, but facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things.

Like Greg Norman, his accomplice in the LIV rebellion, Mickelson didn’t know when to play it safe. “The difference between [Mickelson and Tiger Woods] is that Phil wants to hit an amazing shot, but all Tiger wants to do is hit the right shot,” said Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee.

You want examples? I have two words for you:

The first is Winged. The second is Foot.

I had no problem with the tee shot on the 72nd hole in the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot that ended up in the left rough. Mickelson, leading by one, went with a driver.

I had a huge problem, and I’m far from alone, with his second shot.

Instead of playing for a 5, at worst, and an 18-hole playoff with Geoff Ogilvy, by punching out to the fairway to set up a wedge, Mickelson’s biggest strength, for his third, he attempted to slice a 3-iron around a tree. I won’t rehash every detail of his implosion at 18, but bottom line: the gamble didn’t pay off and another U.S. Open was lost. (Mickelson has come in second a record six times in the Open, two more than Sam Snead.)

“I just can’t believe I did that,” Mickelson said afterward. “I am such an idiot. I can’t believe I couldn’t par the last hole.”

I know what some of you might be thinking: Lefty, like Ernie Els, had the misfortune of playing in the Woods era. And, yes, only 13 players — I’m counting victories by John Ball and Harold Hilton in the British and U.S. Amateur — have won more majors than Phil Mickelson.

Normally, you’d have a point.

Not in this case.

Not when Mickelson, who won everything there was to win as an amateur, was supposed to be the Next Big Thing.

He wasn’t a natural lefty, but when he swung the club so smoothly left-handed, his father, Phil Sr., saw no reason to make a change.

In those early years, the younger Phil worked at Navajo Canyon (now Mission Trails), a course in San Diego. His job was to pick up trash and, later, range balls.

“Rainy days were my favorite time because nobody else would be there,” the son later said.

“So I’d put on my rain gear, grab a bucket of balls, and go out under a palm tree. I’d have the entire place as my private driving range . . . one time, it really started to pour and one of my friends who worked in the pro shop came out and asked me what I was doing. ‘This extra practice right here is going to help me win a couple of Masters someday.’”

He won the Junior World Golf Championship in San Diego when he was 10, and at 15 the first of a dozen American Junior Golf Association tournaments. Then three individual NCAA championships while attending Arizona State, along with the 1990 U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills.

In early 1991, he captured the Northern Telecom Open in Tucson, becoming the first amateur to win a PGA Tour event in six years. (No amateur would accomplish that feat again until Nick Dunlap in 2024.)

Mickelson prevailed at Tucson in a fashion we would become accus­tomed to, a roller-coaster ride to the finish.

On No. 14 he made a triple that included two unplayables to go from a one-shot advantage to a two-shot deficit. Yet he pulled himself together to birdie two of the last three holes, canning an 8-footer on 18 for the win.

“I never thought I’d see anyone come back from something like that,” said Corey Pavin, who was paired with him.

Mickelson, who joined the Tour in 1992, collected his first victory as a pro at Torrey Pines a year later and by the summer of 1996 had a total of eight. In August of ’96, he captured the World Series of Golf at Firestone.

I covered the event for Golf World. I couldn’t have been more excited, working on the story until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Only Mickelson wasn’t on the cover that week. Tiger Woods was.

Woods, turning pro, agreed to a $60 million deal with Nike and Titleist and had just won a record third straight U.S. Amateur.

It wouldn’t be the last time Woods upstaged Mickelson.

To blame Woods, however, for Mickelson underachieving wouldn’t be fair.

In 10 majors, starting with the 1997 U.S. Open at Congressional, while Woods retooled his swing and went winless, Mickelson posted just three top 10s.

His best chance came in the 1999 Open at Pinehurst No. 2. Although Payne Stewart earned the victory with his clutch play down the stretch, the tournament was there for the taking — if only Mickelson didn’t miss makable putts at 16 (8 feet) and 17 (6 feet).

Not until the 2004 Masters, when he was 33, did Mickelson break through, rallying, you may recall, from a three-stroke deficit on the back nine to steal the green jacket from Els.

A new Lefty?

Not really.

Two months later, at the Open at Shinnecock, Mickelson, tied for the lead, three-putted the par-3 71st hole for a double bogey — from 4 feet! He endured a bad break when a small rock behind his ball in the bunker kept him from putting any spin on it, but as he later told Fred Funk, his playing partner, “I never should have been in the bunker in the first place.”

On the other hand, when the gambles paid off — and even (especially) when they didn’t — there was no one more exciting to watch than Mickelson and no one has been that exciting since.

He was a trapeze artist. Without a net.

Take the shot from the pine straw on No. 13 in the final round of the 2010 Masters. His ball roughly 200 yards from the green, Mickelson, leading by one, could have punched out into the fairway to set up a wedge for his third.

But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.

Out came the 6-iron, the Rae’s Creek tributary be damned. It paid off, leading to his third green jacket.

Maybe we can’t have it both ways.

Maybe taking the gambler out of the man would have removed the soul.

Good thing he picked up two majors late in his career that would forever alter how he should be judged.

The first was the 2013 British Open at Muirfield.

Trailing the leader, Lee Westwood, by five through 54 holes, Mickelson birdied 13, 14, 17 and 18 for a five-under 66 to prevail by three.

The second was the 2021 PGA Championship on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island.

No one saw it coming.

“This is just an incredible feeling because I just believed it was pos­sible, yet everyone was saying it wasn’t,” said Mickelson, 50, who hadn’t recorded a top 10 in a major since the British Open in 2016. “I hope that others find that inspiration. It might take a little extra work, a little harder effort, but gosh, is it worth it in the end.”

While the two victories don’t make up for the ones that got away, there is a big difference between winning four majors and winning six.

If only Phil hadn’t been…Phil.

“He would have won a lot more,” Jack Nicklaus said in 2021. “Right after he won the PGA this year I dropped him a note. I can paraphrase what I said: Hey, you reined yourself in, you didn’t try to do dumb stuff, and look what happened? You won…

“Golly, he’s cost himself so many tournaments over the years with the double and triple and quadruple bogeys.”

I can’t close this chapter without addressing Mickelson’s fall from grace, which started when he joined LIV in 2022. It wasn’t just that he aban­doned the tour that made him rich and famous. A lot of guys did that. It was how strongly he defended the move, even after referring to the Saudis as “scary mother f—ers.”

Is it a temporary fall, or has he tarnished his legacy forever? Too early to tell. Forever is a long time.

Mickelson, a huge gambler off the course as well, built up a lot of good will with the public — no one in his era signed more autographs — and that might still rescue him in the end.

The victory at Kiawah would have been one hell of a way to go out.

Instead, his career pivot has been hard for many observers to get past. 

“I don’t know if there has ever been a more disappointing figure in the game of golf than Phil Mickelson,” said 21-time PGA Tour winner Lanny Wadkins.

I prefer to think of the Mickelson before LIV, my favorite moment occurring on the final hole at Torrey Pines in January 2011. His ball 72 yards from the pin, he needed to hole out to tie Bubba Watson. He walked up to the green, paced off the exact yardage, and had his longtime caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, tend the flagstick.

He didn’t make it — the ball ended up a couple of feet away — but that didn’t matter.

He thought he could make it, and so did we.