Brendan Steele
“I met him at Phoenix my rookie year in 2011 and I introduced myself to him probably the first 10 times I met him because I just didn’t want to be the guy he was looking at going, ‘Who are you?’ And every time he’d go, ‘Yeah, I know. I know who you are.’ So we started playing together, the first time, was at the Players that year, with Keegan Bradley, and we played a 9-hole practice round. And I guess he liked us enough that he kept wanting us to play more practice rounds.
“He’s such a big star and he’s done so much for the sport that you just don’t feel like you belong anywhere around him. But the great part of Phil is that there is nothing about his personality that makes you feel that way. He’s so welcoming, so genuine, so nice and so helpful. I remember the first time we ever played together, we were on No. 3 at the Players, the par-3, and short left there’s that big run off and I went down there trying to figure out the chip. And I said, ‘Phil, how do you hit this shot? This shot is so hard, you’re short-sided, it’s into the grain, what do you do?’ And he came over and he said, ‘You putt it.’ Well, OK.
“Phil is so funny. We always joke that if you just wrote down the things that he says, it would sound like he’s a jerk. But the delivery is in such a way that it makes you laugh. He’s always ready to talk trash, always doing it in a fun way.
“The first time I went to Augusta National to practice for the Masters in 2012 I played with Phil and I was shocked at how hard he was working around the greens. Hitting putts, writing things down. The guy had won it three times already. But he was grinding on every hole and checking all these different things. I was shocked at his enthusiasm at how to figure out this puzzle we all face in golf.”
Jim Furyk
“When I was younger, and even through college, I think Phil has always enjoyed pulling the wool over your eyes or trying to get one past you or making up a story to see if you will believe him. Sometimes they’re true, sometimes they’re not. I’ve called his bluff before and caught him and I’ve called his bluff and been wrong. Now he’s kind of like the boy who called wolf a lot, everyone is looking for it.
“He definitely has a sense of humor, which is what I’ve enjoyed the most. We’ve been in team rooms and he knows how to keep guys loose. He knows how to say the right thing at the right time, and sometimes it’s the wrong thing at the right time. He just likes to make people laugh.
“He’s ultra, ultra, ultra-talented. He can do things with a golf ball that even the best players in the world can’t do. What’s fun about playing in those team events is you learn your strengths, that you can do a few things yourself that other folks struggle to do, but you also put yourself in the same room with Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods and Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth and you just go down the list and you realize how much talent is in the room and everyone is capable of doings things that everyone else wishes they could do. And with Phil, there’s definitely a lot of that, from the short game to iron play to how he approaches the game. I enjoy how he breaks a golf course down and how he uses his strength to attack a golf course.”