A pair of caddies are taking their talents to the Saudi-backed league.
LIV Golf’s Phil Mickelson and Caleb Surratt have dipped into the PGA Tour caddie ranks for not one but two regular caddies, sources tell Golfweek.
Mickelson announced on social media that his younger brother, Tim, who had served as his caddie for the past eight years including during the 2021 PGA Championship victory at Kiawah, has retired as his caddie. But he didn’t name a replacement. Golfweek has learned that veteran caddie Jon Yarbrough will be on the bag starting next week at the LIV Golf Miami event and the following week at the Masters.
Yarbrough, who has caddied for more than 20 years and for Scott Stallings for the past decade, won’t be on the bag for him this week at the Tour event in Houston. Yarbrough has previously caddied for the likes of Gary Woodland, Bill Haas, Smylie Kaufman and on the LPGA for Kelly Robbins, Morgan Pressel and Suzann Pettersen. Stallings, 39, made the Tour Championship in 2022 but is winless since the 2014 Farmers Insurance Open and has missed the cut in five of eight starts this season. Stallings is expected to have his swing coach on his bag this week. According to a source, Stallings and Yarbrough are very close, but the amount of guaranteed money offered “was incredible.” Reached via phone, Yarbrough declined to comment.
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That’s not the only LIV Golf caddie change. Caleb Surratt, who signed with LIV out of Tennessee earlier this year and joined Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII, has wooed Brian Dilley, another veteran Tour caddie, who had been on the bag of Akshay Bhatia, to take over for him. Dilley is tight with Adam Hayes, the caddie for Rahm, and likely had a role in linking Surratt and Dilley together.
“I’m still learning, growing, and working on everything that I’m beginning to see what I need as a player in order to grow and be able to compete to the highest level, and I think Brian Dilley‘s gonna be able to help me get to that point,” Surratt wrote via text of Dilley, who has worked with Aaron Wise, Billy Horschel, and the LPGA’s Gerina Piller, among others. “He has caddied at an extremely high-level for longer than I’ve been alive, and undoubtably will be a great set of eyes to have on my golf game. Everyone on my team around me, speaks very highly of him, and I’m very excited to get to work with him in the coming weeks. It’s been a very enjoyable ride so far, and I’m excited to keep learning myself, and learning professional golf game, and eventually grow to be one of the best players in the world.”
“I’m very lucky to have had him on the bag for me the past eight years and as my brother for life,” said Phil.
Lefty needs a new looper.
Phil Mickelson announced on social media that his brother, Tim Mickelson, has retired from caddying, ending an eight-year on-course relationship highlighted by Phil’s historic 2021 PGA Championship victory and subsequent move to LIV Golf. Tim took the job after Phil and longtime caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay split in 2017 and was on the bag for Lefty’s wins at the 2018 WGC-Mexico Championship and 2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Before he caddied for his brother, Tim was a college golf coach at the University of San Diego and Arizona State University, where he coached Jon Rahm. He then briefly served as Rahm’s agent for a year before he started his career as a caddie.
I’ve had some great accomplishments in my career and getting to share them with my brother Tim has been beyond special. I’m very lucky to have had him on the bag for me the past eight years and as my brother for life.
Jon Rahm is a big believer in karma. “It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending. I could just tell,” he said.
SAN DIEGO – Jon Rahm is a big believer in karma.
Fifteen days after he was informed that he had tested positive and had to withdraw from the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament despite holding a commanding six-stroke lead, the 26-year-old Spaniard sensed that the 121st U.S. Open at Torrey Pines belonged to him.
“It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending. I could just tell, just going down the fairway after that first tee shot, that second shot, and that birdie, I knew there was something special in the air. I could just feel it. I just knew it,” he said. “It was like, man, this is my day; everything’s going to go right. I felt like that helped me become. I just knew that I could do it and believed it.”
Rahm woke up to crows on a cool overcast Father’s Day morning, his first time celebrating the occasion as a father, and poured himself a cup of coffee and pulled up a Call of Duty tournament from the night before featuring a team he follows, OpTic Chicago, and settled in to watch the 90-minute competition. Wife Kelley had noticed that he had been nervous the day before – which for Rahm means being quiet – but today she sensed a new-found calm on what would be a chaotic final round at the U.S. Open.
“I told my dad this is going to be really good or really bad,” Kelley said.
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Big things have been expected for Rahm for some time. He grew up in the Basque coastal town of Barrika, Spain, population 1,500, and met the great Seve Ballesteros just once before Seve died. Rahm was around 12 years old at a prize-giving ceremony. Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal was there too.
“I knew who Olazábal was,” Rahm recalled. “I had no idea who Seve was and I shook Olazabal’s hand and I almost missed Seve. And my dad almost had a heart attack because I had the chance to shake Seve’s hand and I almost didn’t. I have that memory. I never got to meet him again, never got to speak to him again.”
Jon Rahm has Phil Mickelson after winning the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course. (Photo: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)
But whether he knows it or not, Rahm has been compared with Seve ever since and chasing his records to be known as the greatest Spanish golfer. Rahm arrived in the U.S. in 2012 when then-Arizona State University men’s golf coach looked at Rahm’s position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and sent him an e-mail offering a scholarship to play golf sight unseen. The next day Rahm accepted. He had never been to the United States, barely spoke English and he was not sure if college golf was for him. But he learned to speak fluently by repeating the lyrics to rap songs by Eminem and Kendrick Lamar. Rahm’s coach provided the necessary motivation, enforcing a stiff penalty of a burpee for every Spanish word Rahm uttered. His golf game? That translated in any language.
“His golf game was very refined from the first day he came to campus,” Tim Mickelson said.
At Arizona State, Rahm met Kelley, a javelin thrower on the track-and-field team, at a Halloween party her freshman year. She was dressed as an NFL replacement referee with a blindfold and walking cane, he as a SWAT officer, and she thought she was on a bathroom line, but it turned out to be a drink line. They began talking. Well, she did.
“I’m just going on and on and on and thinking he was the best listener ever,” she said.
Rahm kept a promise to his parents and stayed four years and graduated and wasted little time making his mark in the pro ranks. TaylorMade executive Keith Sbararo tells the story about how the first time he watched Rahm play he called Golf Channel analyst Tripp Isenhour and said he’d just met the sixth-best player in the world, and he still was an amateur.
“I may have sold Jon short when I said he was the sixth-best player in the world,” said Sbarbaro, who eventually signed Rahm to an endorsement deal.
Count Phil Mickelson among those who recognized raw talent when he saw it. He famously won a bet from fellow Tour pro Colt Knost, who gave Mickelson 2-to-1 odds that Rahm would reach the top 10 within a year of turning pro. Rahm did just that by May 2017.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Tim Mickelson said of the wager with a smirk, “but I can tell you that neither of us would ever bet against Jon.”
Even before Rahm turned pro and notched his first PGA Tour title in dramatic fashion at the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open, Rahm and his wife have loved Torrey Pines and the surrounding area, which he said reminds him of home – from the coastline to the blue skies and temperate weather. He proposed to Kelley at Torrey Pines Reserve Park during a hike and they were married in nearby Del Mar. “I think it’s something that really just resonates with me,” he said, adding “I love Torrey and Torrey loves me.”
When Rahm reached World No. 1 last year, the expectations to win a major grew. All that seemingly was holding him back was his fiery temper. Rahm’s outbursts – from slamming clubs to smashing tee markers to foul language – have been well documented. Still, Tim Mickelson said he’s misunderstood by the public and his wife agreed.
“It’s very upsetting. People mistake his passion for anger. They want to see the highs but they don’t want to see the lows,” she said. “He’s tried before to be, you know, happy all the time and not show emotion but it just doesn’t work for him.”
Phil Mickelson called Rahm “a gentle giant,” and said, “he’s got the kindest heart, and yet he has a great fire and passion to the game.”
“He’s actually terribly shy off the golf course,” Kelley said. “At home, he only likes to go out to one restaurant because he only like to go where he knows the waiters and he knows where he’s going to sit.”
Shy off the course, but once his competitive juices start flowing, she said, “get him on the golf course and he wants to step on people’s necks.”
Jon Rahm and his family celebrate with the trophy after winning he U.S. Open golf tournament at Torrey Pines Golf Course. Mandatory Credit: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports
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The general consensus was that despite 12 victories heading into the U.S. Open – six on the PGA Tour and six on the European Tour – if Rahm could only learn to mask his emotions better and accept failure, his record would be even better. Rahm tried, but he always fell back on the excuse that getting mad helped him win tournaments. His caddie, Adam Hayes, feared he was trying too hard to act mature. Then along came Kepa in April. The proud new papa radiated joy when he arrived at the Masters, but that only lasted until he made his first bogey. During the third round of the PGA Championship, he behaved unprofessionally. His latest Mount Vesuvius eruption proved to be an A-ha-moment.
“I know I can perform at my best without showing my frustration so much. I made that deal with myself after the third round of the PGA. I wasn’t happy with how I ended, and I could have handled it better, and I vowed to myself to be a better role model for my son,” he said.
Kelley concedes it’s a cliché but she says the birth of their son changed Rahm for the better. When he tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5, he handled the situation with grace and said all the right things at his pre-U.S. Open press conference. It was the most telling sign that he could maintain his composure at the most mentally-taxing championship. Rahm also benefited from calls from European Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington who recounted how much like Rahm at the Memorial he was leading a tournament by five strokes after 54 holes when he was disqualified for signing the wrong scorecard. Harrington’s message: “He learned a lot more than he would ever learn from the win,” Rahm said.
Nick Faldo texted a similar story and emphasized how he had won the very next week. Rahm thought of those stories on Sunday as he faced a leaderboard with Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Louis Oosthuizen, Collin Morikawa, all major winners to boot. He tried to keep his head down and go about his own business, but the fans, who seemed to be in his corner all week, perhaps feeling he was owed one after the strange circumstances at the Memorial, kept telling him about the wild fluctuations on Sunday.
“I decided to embrace it. You see all those great names, and to myself I thought whoever wins this one is going to be the one who won a U.S. Open with a star-packed leaderboard,” he said.
Let’s not forget that Rahm is a believer in karma and he kept telling anyone who would listen that “something good is going to come. I don’t know what, but something good is going to come, and I felt it today out there on the golf course,” he said. “I just had to be close. I knew I could get it done.”
He got a grip on his temper in time to win the U.S. Open on the course he loves and reclaimed the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking. He did so with two unforgettable putts. The first was a 25-foot putt at 17 to tie for the lead. None of this surprised his father, Edorta, who had been here in 2017 to see his son win for the first time and had arrived only a week earlier after not having seen his son for more than a year due to COVID. He recalled seeing his son make hundreds of putts as a kid at home in Spain always to win a major. Of the winning 18-foot left-to-right bending putt at the final hole, Rahm recalled how Lee Westwood had missed a similar putt to tie Rocco Mediate at the 2008 U.S. Open and aimed 3-4 feet to left.
“As soon as I made contact, I looked up and saw where the ball was going. It was exactly the speed and line I visualized, and I told myself, that’s in,” he said. “If you could see my thoughts with 10 feet to go, in my mind, I’m like that’s in the hole, and it went in.”
No Spaniard, not even Seve, had ever won the U.S. Open, just as no one had ever birdied the last two holes to win the U.S. Open by one shot until Rahm.
“He’s won two tournaments in a row. I don’t care what anyone says. He had that title [at the Memorial],” Rory McIlroy said. “It was unfortunate. Mentally, I think you have to be in a good place to bounce back from something like that. Obviously, he knew his game was there. He just had to go out and play the way he knows he can.
“And he’s obviously had success here at this golf course. I don’t think there’s a golf course where he can’t have success on. He’s that good of a player. He was a major champion in waiting. It was just a matter of time.”
Or as Rahm put it, the stars were aligned.
“It almost feels like it’s a movie that’s about to end and I’m going to wake up soon,” he said.
When he does, his name will be engraved on the silver trophy and he’ll have quite the story to tell Kepa some day.
Phil Mickelson, who turned 51 the day before the first round, got off to an inauspicious start in the U.S. Open in his hometown.
SAN DIEGO – “Gosh, darn it, Phil.”
That was a common refrain uttered by Phil Mickelson during the first round of the 121st U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course.
One day after celebrating his 51st birthday, Mickelson got off to a sluggish start, shooting 4-over 75 in his bid to win the one major championship that has eluded him and would complete the career Grand Slam. The reigning PGA Championship winner battled hard but had a few too many loose shots that did him in.
“Two-over would have been a pretty good round and I ended up at 4,” Mickelson said, “so, I’m a little disappointed about that.”
After a 90-minute fog delay to the start of the round, the marine layer broke and sunshine bathed the fairways. Mickelson got off to an inauspicious start at No. 10, short-siding himself in the right greenside bunker after backing off his second shot to reset and his 10-foot par putt horseshoed out.
Mickelson was locked in last month at Kiawah Island en route to hoisting the Wanamaker Trophy and becoming the oldest major championship winner. That meant he didn’t require the special exemption that the USGA had extended to him and he already had accepted. His confidence was high and he spent the last two weeks at home prepping for a course where he’s won twice earlier in his career, but has struggled with ever since architect Rees Jones took a scalpel to one of Mickelson’s boyhood tracks. His former caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, suggested that Mickelson would be riding a wave of momentum into this week with a chance to put an end to his unrequited love – a record six runner-ups in the U.S. Opens – with his national championship.
“I don’t care if they’re playing on the moon,” Mackay said, “he’s going to come in feeling very bulletproof.”
But Mickelson couldn’t find his major mojo on Thursday.
At the par-5 13th hole, Mickelson found the fairway and pulled a fairway wood, trying to launch one into a greenside bunker and avoid a wedge shot for his third from a layup zone that he’s always found tricky. But his state of Zen was interrupted, not once, not twice, but three times. He backed off the shot and asked for quiet. On the third occasion, with more than a tinge of anger in his voice, he said, “Seriously, can someone help him?”
Mickelson fanned his shot left into a bush and he had to take a penalty stroke for an unplayable lie and made his second bogey of the day.
“It’s the video ding. They just kept going off,” Mickelson said. “I don’t understand why you just can’t turn that little button on the side into silent. I probably didn’t deal with it internally as well as I could have or as well as I need to. It’s part of playing the game out here at this level. Certainly, I didn’t do the best job of dealing with it.”
Phil Mickelson talks with his caddie Tim Mickelson on the 14th tee during the first round of the U.S. Open golf tournament at Torrey Pines Golf Course. (Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)
Mickelson’s tee shot at 15 was another “gosh, darn it,” moment. He pushed this one into the spinach and could barely advance his second shot 100 yards en route to a third bogey in his first five holes.
“It was covered over the top,” said Mickelson, who chopped away with a 7-wood. “It glides rather than digs, and it just pops the ball up a lot quicker, even quicker than a wedge.”
He had a chance to right the ship late on the first nine. Mickelson wedged to 8 feet at the 17th and carded his lone birdie of the day, but he had a chance to make another at the par-5 18th. Unfortunately, he took three putts from 60 feet for a demoralizing par and turned in 2 over.
Still, Mickelson kept doling out thumbs up to his faithful fans, who serenaded him with happy birthday despite the fact that they were a day late.
“They wished him a happy birthday on just about every hole, every 50 yards,” Xander Schauffele said. “I don’t know if he enjoyed that, but I’m sure he felt the love from the fans.”
He also had the support of his biggest fans – parents Phil Sr. and Mary – who yelled to son Tim, on Phil’s bag, and gave him a thumbs up.
“We’re so happy to be out here. We weren’t sure it was going to work out with COVID. It’s so much more nerve-wracking to watch at home on TV,” she said. (Phil took care of the tickets for this week.)
Mary had watched her son win the PGA at home while texting with her only daughter, Tina, who posted this classic message from Momma Mickelson: “Tina, text Philip and tell him just to par in. Don’t hit bombs or activate calves. Just pars. They will have to catch him. He won’t listen to his mother.”
When his father was stopped by a journalist on the second hole and asked if he was enjoying watching his son play, Phil Sr. said, “I’m not seeing as many good shots as I want.”
He would have to witness a few more stinkers. Phil’s tee shot at the par-3, third hole drew yet another “gosh, darn it,” as he slapped his right leg for slapping his tee shot into the front-left greenside bunker. He saved par in typical Mickelson fashion and again at the fifth, after another “gosh, darn it,” tee shot sailed left.
Mickelson was avoiding big numbers and minimizing mistakes, but then he short-sided himself at the sixth and missed a curler on the right edge and made the most painful miscue of the day at 7, where he hammered a 25-foot birdie putt 6 feet past the hole and missed the comebacker.
“To let two bogeys slide on 6 and 7 when I really shouldn’t have – like they weren’t that hard of pars – you probably saw the disappointment there,” Mickelson said.
As if setting a major championship record wasn’t enough, Phil Mickelson did it with his brother in his ear and on his bag.
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – In the madness that engulfed the 18th green as Phil Mickelson became golf’s oldest major winner, brother Tim Mickelson made sure to tend the flag and secure it as a prized possession.
“It’s already in the golf bag,” he said.
When it was over and Phil had claimed his sixth major championship at age 50, 11 months and 7 days, he and Tim embraced in one of the long hugs where big brother and little brother tell each other ‘I love you, man.’
Tim called caddying for his brother his third career in the game. First, he was the men’s golf coach at the University of San Diego for eight years and then at Phil’s alma mater, Arizona State, from 2011 to 2016. He left to become an agent for one of his players, Jon Rahm, who had all of the makings of the superstar he has become. Tim served in that role for 17 months until Phil and caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay split in June 2017 after 25 years of working together. What began on an interim basis became official several months later and together they have won five times together – three on the PGA Tour and two on the PGA Tour Champions.
But this one was extra special, coming at a time when Phil was largely being written off as finished, turning 68s into 72s.
“As a coach,” Tim said, “I always used to say, ‘It’s all about the process.’ You hope that the results will come when you want them to, but you have to trust that the process will lead you to the promise land.”
And so, Tim kept the faith.
“We all knew it was there, and he actually had told me [two] weeks ago, I think it was right after Charlotte, he said, I am going to win again soon. I just said, ‘Well, let’s just make sure we’re in contention on a Sunday.’ ”
Phil made sure of that shooting rounds of 70-69-70 to claim the 54-hole lead, and Tim remained his brother’s biggest supporter.
“As much as the fans want it, I want it more for my brother,” he said after the second round. “I see how hard he works, not just at tournaments. When he’s home, he’s playing every day. So, I see how much he wants it, and I want to do anything I can to help him have that.”
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He delivered more than just the yardages, wind direction and helping with club choice on Sunday. At the fourth tee, Phil was concerned that the 4-wood he added to the bag at the last minute on Sunday might go too far. But Tim’s reassuring words gave Phil the confidence to commit to the shot.
“I think certainly my brother has played a big part in kind of keeping me present and in the moment and not letting a couple of bad swings affect me here or there, and so I think we’re having so much fun that it’s easy to stay present,” Phil said on Saturday.
When asked after he had captured the Wanamaker Trophy 16 years after he had done so for the first time, how Tim had been critical to his success on Sunday, Phil didn’t even wait for the question to be finished before jumping into his answer.
“I’ll tell you a perfect example, and this is an intangible that makes him relatable or understand me, get the best out of me and makes him a great caddie is I’m walking off 6, I had made some uncommitted swings the first six holes. I had been striking the ball awesome the first three days. I had a wonderful warm up session, like I was ready to go and I made some uncommitted swings the first six holes. He pulled me aside and said, ‘If you’re going to win this thing, you’re going to have to make committed golf swings,’ ” Phil said. “It hit me in the head, I can’t make passive (swings), I can’t control the outcome, I have to swing committed. The first one I made was the drive on 7. Good drive on 7 gave me a chance to get down by the green and make birdie. From there on, I hit a lot of really good shots because I was committed to each one.”
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Later he added, “It was the turning part of the day for me. It was the perfect thing to say.”
Phil said his brother doesn’t say much, but this week Tim estimated he told his brother 200 times to keep a quiet mind.
“I just told him to stop thinking so much. When he would get ahead of himself, I reminded him, ‘Hey, we’ll worry about that when we get there.’ A few stories here and there. Maybe one or two might have been made up, who knows, but anything I can to keep his mind off of the shot that’s coming up when it’s not even our turn to hit,” Tim said.
And so Phil followed in the footsteps of Dustin Johnson who won a major championship (2020 Masters with Austin) with his younger brother on the bag.
Said Phil’s longtime agent Steve Loy: “I mean, he’s now going to all of a sudden be one of the Top-10 players in the history of the game, and his brother is on the bag to share it. That’s as good as it gets.”
So good that it brought Tim to tears.
“To win a major championship at this stage of his career,” Tim said, “I definitely teared up for the first time since caddying for him four and a half years ago.”
Justin Thomas, who is using Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay as a substitute caddie, is paired in the final round Sunday with Phil Mickelson.
Justin Thomas says he’s getting more comfortable working with substitute caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay every day. On Saturday, Thomas fired a 4-under 66 to sit alone in fifth place at 8-under 202 and four strokes off the lead held by Brendon Todd at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
On Sunday, Thomas and Mackay are paired in the third-to-last group with Phil Mickelson, Bones’ longtime boss, which should make for some interesting banter between the two.
Thomas’ regular sidekick, Jimmy Johnson, is sidelined after suffering from dizziness at The Memorial two weeks ago. Thomas said Johnson, a veteran caddie who previously worked for Steve Stricker for several years, is undergoing a battery of tests.
“His first test came back was fine,” Thomas said. “He’s fine when he’s inside and not in the severe heat like that. The big thing is we’re just trying to figure out what it is or if there’s something in particular, whether it’s some medicine he takes. More often than not, it’s not something crazy major. It’s just like I told him and I think that he’s figuring out, it’s a lot bigger than caddying. It’s about his health.
“I love Jimmy to death, he’s part of the family and I want him over anybody else in the world on my bag for the rest of my career, but if it means his health, then that’s what it is. So that’s what he’s trying to fix so that he can get himself better first and foremost, and then caddying is just a bonus.”
Thomas has said that Mackay will be on the bag next week at the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park while Johnson undergoes some additional tests.
“He’s got a couple weeks to kind of figure out some sort of game plan. I told him I’ll be as helpful or as involved or uninvolved as he wants me to be,” Thomas said. “You know, whether he’s here this week or not, he’s still on the team and I’m still a part of his team as well. So, I’m going to do, and everybody else on my team is going to do, what we can to help, but glad he’s home resting right now.”
Of working with Mackay, the longtime caddie for Mickelson who has become a respected on-course reporter for Golf Channel, Thomas said, “Luckily I had him before, Sony a couple years ago, so it’s not a totally new experience. It’s what it is for the time being until my man Jimmy gets all good and hopefully we can go have a good day tomorrow.”
In other caddie news, Webb Simpson’s bagman, Paul Tesori, missed his first round in 20 years due to back and hip pain. He was replaced by Joe Duplantis. Simpson said it doesn’t look good for Tesori to be able to work at the PGA Championship next week.
“His back went out last week and it’s been really painful for him this week,” Simpson said. “He managed kind of the first two rounds, but yesterday was really tough for him. He woke up and it was a little bit worse, so he thought it would be smartest to take it off.”
For the 1st time in 20 years, I can’t caddie today. Terrible Back & hip pain. Good news is I have @joeduplantis to take over and he’s more than capable. It doesn’t hurt to have @webbsimpson1 hitting all the shots! #fanfortheweekend
Phil Mickelson shot a 4-under-par 66 to move to 7 under through 54 holes and within five shots of leader Brendon Todd heading into Sunday.
Standing on the fourth tee during Saturday’s third round of the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, Phil Mickelson’s score was on a southward trend and his chances for victory seemed as dull as the cloudy skies.
He had bogeyed the second at soggy TPC Southwind, failed to make birdie on the par-5 third and stood nine shots out of the lead. Another poor week seemed to be at hand – he’d missed five cuts in 10 starts this year, notched just two top-3s, and rolled into Memphis, Tennessee, coming off ties for 58th and 54th in the Dublin Double at Muirfield Village in Ohio.
That’s when the forever optimistic Mickelson turned to his brother and caddie, Tim, and instead of unloading a mouthful of frustration, he teed up a message overflowing of positivity.
“This is so much fun,” Mickelson said he told his brother. “Like I’m having so much fun because I can feel my game turn around, I’m starting to play well again, I’m starting to putt well and starting to drive the ball well and it just feels good and I’m having fun. I just think the results are going to start to slowly come back.
“It’s been really fun for me to come out and play and start to play well.”
The results – at least for 18 holes – came back quickly as Mickelson turned in a 4-under-par 66 to move to 7 under through 54 holes and within five shots of leader Brendon Todd heading into Sunday’s final round. The first page of the leaderboard is loaded with the likes of Brooks Koepka, Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas, Louis Oosthuizen and Todd, who has won twice this season, but Mickelson has placed himself within range of his 45th PGA Tour title.
“Well, I’m going to have to shoot something really low, probably 63, 64 to have a realistic chance,” Mickelson said. “It’s certainly out there, I’ve shot it before, but a good test of golf. I mean, it’s a really good golf course. It punishes any mis‑hit off the tee. When you’re trying to hit these greens that are so small out of the rough, it’s really tough. Fortunately, I’ve been driving the ball pretty well and been able to get aggressive with my irons.”
Mickelson has been feeling pretty good since he arrived in Memphis. He loves the challenge of TPC Southwind and said it’s one of the most underrated courses on the PGA Tour. His track record is a source of confidence, too – although he’s never won here, he has two runner-up finishes and six top-25 finishes in eight starts. And after posting 67-70 the first two rounds, Mickelson took to Twitter and posted a photo of himself walking tall that was accompanied by a caption that read, “Mood heading into the weekend,” and a smiley-face emoji in sunglasses.
“I saw the picture and just thought why not,” he said.
And then he backed up the tweet.
“I hit a lot of good shots, made a lot of good putts and played really well,” he said. “You can always look back and you feel like you let a couple go. I wish I would have finished the round off a little better. I wish I had birdied 16 and not bogeyed 17. Those two shots coming down, you’ve really got to close the round out a little better than I did today. But I hit a lot of good shots in the heart of the round, made seven birdies and really had a good day.”
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The 50-year-old Mickelson could have been enjoying some good days in Michigan this week if he’d decided to make his debut on the PGA Tour Champions in the Ally Challenge at Warwick Hills outside of Flint.
He would have played there if he hadn’t been eligible for this week’s WGC. He wanted to get sharp ahead of next week’s PGA Championship, the first major of the year. And he’d like to make a deep run in the FedEx Cup Playoffs when they start in three weeks. And then the U.S. Open next month and the Masters in November.
“It’s really exciting that we’re going to be able to compete in three majors,” Mickelson said. “It’s exciting that I’m starting to play well as we head into them and exciting that golf has been able to do this in a safe environment.”
Phil Mickelson’s brother Tim won’t be on the bag this week for Lefty at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club.
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Phil Mickelson will have a different caddie on the bag this week at Riviera Country Club for the Genesis Invitational.
Lefty’s brother Tim, a former agent at Lagardère Sports and college golf coach at San Diego and Arizona State, took over the looping duties in 2017 when Phil’s longtime caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay joined NBC and the Golf Channel as an on-course commentator.
On Wednesday afternoon Tim took to Twitter to reveal he was dealing with “a couple lingering injuries” and needed to take the week off to recover. This week at the Genesis Invitational Phil will have Andrew Getson on the bag.
Due to a couple lingering injuries, with Phil’s blessing and encouragement I’m taking this week off from caddying to rest and recover. Andrew Getson will be on the bag this week for me. Gotta be healthy for the ‘majors’ stretch coming up soon.
Getson, a star junior golfer as a child and former professional on the Asian, Australian and then-Nationwide Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, and is a golf instructor.
Phil finished third while attempting to defend his AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am title last week at Pebble Beach Golf Links and will compete in his fifth consecutive event this week. He previously missed the cut at both the American Express and Farmers Insurance Open before heading to the European Tour’s Saudi International, where he finished T-3 the first week of February.
