Two Drivers, Five Wedges, One Beeper and 'I Am Such an Idiot': Ranking Phil Mickelson's U.S. Open Near-Misses and Meltdowns
The United States Open and Phil Mickelson will always be linked.
Kind of like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, British Petroleum and Deepwater Horizon or George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin.
They all had histories together that weren’t necessarily peaches and cream, not even Peaches and Herb (“Reunited”).
The U.S. Open is The One That Got Away for Mickelson, just as it did for Sam Snead, just as the PGA Championship got away from Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.
Our Man Phil had his chances. A case can be made that he could’ve-should’ve won 15 major championships instead of the six he earned the hard way during the Tiger Woods era. He holds the record for Open runner-up finishes with six, a remarkable feat in itself.
As the U.S. Open heads to unchartered territory at Los Angeles Country Club this week, here’s a look at Phil’s most memorable U.S. Open moments …
10. We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges Drivers, 2008
Torrey Pines, at 7,643 yards, was the longest Open course ever at that time at so Counterintuitive Phil figured he’d win using no drivers, unlike the 2006 Masters, where he won using two drivers. If there’s one thing Phil likes better than winning, it’s winning by outsmarting his peers. Phil got a lot of attention for his no-driver ploy, almost as much as Tiger Woods got for being Tiger. It was an epic fail. Phil shot 71-75, was six shots behind Tiger (who trailed leader Stuart Appleby by one), so he put a driver back in the bag for the weekend, shot 76-68 and tied for 18th. “When I made some terrible swings and hit in the rough, it defeats the game plan because now I’m short and crooked,” Mickelson said of his 3-wood ploy.
When he revived the two-driver idea at the 2019 Memorial Tournament, he was asked about the 2008 Open again. “That was a mistake, obviously,” he said. Yeah, we thought so.
9. Clear and Present Danger, 2007
Let’s say you go to Oakmont Country Club to get a look at the course setup two weeks before the 2007 U.S. Open, you notice the rough is fierce so you practice hitting out of it. And you practice hitting out of it so much that you hurt your wrist. Is it your fault? Nope, said Phil, who did exactly that and was forced to withdraw mid-round from the Memorial Tournament due to pain in his left wrist. After he later shot 74-77 at Oakmont to miss the cut, he blamed the USGA for having “dangerous” rough. "Well, it's disappointing to dream as a kid about winning the U.S. Open and spend all this time getting ready for it and have the course setup injure you," he said. "You're trying to win and hit great shots but you're also trying to not end your career on one shot." A New York Daily News headline read, “Hurting Mickelson comes across as sore loser.”
8. And So It Begins, 1995
Shinnecock Hills was a place that tortured Phil repeatedly over two-and-a-half decades. In ’95, his first-round 68 left him in third place, two behind Nick Price. He was still third after 54 holes, three behind co-leaders Greg Norman and Tom Lehman. Norman shot 73, Lehman posted 74. The Open’s door to victory was, well, open. Our Phil didn’t walk through it. He was 2 over par on the front, birdied the 14th, then doubled the 15th hole and finished at 4 over, four shots behind winner Corey Pavin, whose closing 68 was the difference. It was Phil’s first top-10 finish in a major. He played the par-5 16th hole in 6 over par for the week, however. “If I played that hole in even par, I could have won,” he told the Associated Press in 2018. Math rules.
7. One for the Thumb, 2009
This event at Bethpage Black made history as Phil notched his fifth runner-up Open finish, breaking a mark shared by the non-slouch group of Sam Snead, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Third-round leader Ricky Barnes faded with 76 but Lucas Glover, David Duval and Phil were in the mix in Monday’s rain-delayed finish. Phil tied Glover for the lead with a spectacular eagle at the 13th hole—finally, this was going to be it! But then he missed a short birdie putt at 14, three-putted 15, missed a putt at 16 and bogeyed 17. He finished two shots back with Duval, who tripled the 3rd, and Barnes. The blame here was solely on the putter.
6. The Almost Famous Showdown, 2002
The final round began with Phil trailing 54-hole leader Tiger Woods by five shots. Enough said, right? Phil never got closer than three shots during a final round that featured a rain delay but it was one of the rare times when someone got as much, or more, crowd support as Woods did. Bethpage Black Fans took a liking to Mickelson after early-week stories about his Cinderella career of 20 PGA Tour victories and an oh-for-36 mark in major championships as a pro. It was the only major where Woods and Phil came close to a Jack-versus-Arnie moment and it wasn’t that close—they weren’t paired together in the final round. It was another near-miss for Phil if slogging three shots behind Woods counts as a near-miss. But it established Phil as The Man of the People in New York and a fan favorite from then on.
5. King of the Wedges, 2013
When Phil holed a 76-yard wedge for eagle at the 10th hole in Sunday’s final round at Merion to take the Open lead, it looked as if he was finally going to write that storybook ending. It would’ve been a classic Phil tale, considering he’d horribly lost the lead with two double bogeys in the opening five holes. As usual, though, stuff happened. At the par-3 13th, playing a mere 121 yards, the man with five wedges in his bag either chose the wrong one, played the wrong shot or executed it poorly. He airmailed the green on Merion’s shortest hole and made a bad bogey. At 15, he found himself in such an awkward place on the green that he had to chip, not putt. Another bogey. At 16, he narrowly missed a birdie putt.
Somehow, Justin Rose took the lead despite making five bogeys during the final round, three of them on the back nine. Phil had to chip in on the final hole for birdie to force a playoff. He made bogey and lost by two. It was a storybook ending … for Rose.
4. An Object in Motion Stays in Motion Unless Acted Upon by an Unbalanced Force, 2018
Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion was on display at Shinnecock Hills during the third round starring Phil on his 48th birthday as, you guessed it, The Unbalanced Force. The final-round situation: He’d just bogeyed five of his previous eight holes and wasn’t going to land his white whale (The Open). When his 18-foot downhill putt for bogey careened past the cup with no sign of stopping, The Force became Unbalanced and batted the ball back toward the cup with its putter, breaking golf’s most fundamental and important rule.
Surprisingly, he played on, finished the round, and met with USGA officials. He’d made an 8 with his cheating move and was given a 10 after being assessed a two-shot penalty. It was controversial because many thought Phil should have been disqualified. It was a favorable ruling for Phil, or was it? He had to come back the next day to play another 18, hear snarky comments from the crowd and face more unsympathetic media scrutiny. He finished at his age—48th.
3. It’s a Girl!, 1999
Phil carried a beeper to Pinehurst because his wife, Amy, was due any day to deliver their first child. (Spoiler alert: It turned out to be their first daughter, Amanda.) If the beeper went off during the Open, Phil vowed, he would leave immediately and fly home to Scottsdale, Ariz., to be there for the birth. It never came to that—Amy didn’t get enough credit for holding on. But it did come down to the last two holes. Phil and Payne Stewart hit it close at the par-3 17th hole. Phil missed from 7 feet, Stewart made it from 4 feet to take the lead. At 18, Stewart made a scrambling par for the victory and famously grabbed Phil’s face with both hands and said something like, “You’re going to love being a father!” It was a tear-jerking moment for viewers that made them feel good about both players.
2. The Sand Pebbles, 2004
Despite Shinnecock Hills’ greens being absurdly firm—another USGA setup controversy/epic fail—Phil made an Arnold Palmer-like Sunday charge. Phil was three shots behind Retief Goosen with six to play, but then birdied three of the next four holes to take a one-shot lead. The galleries were going crazy, same Noo Yawkers who had adopted majorless Phil in 2002 at Bethpage Black. The atmosphere was beyond electric. This win was going to be epic but … Goosen came up with one remarkable par save after another.
They were tied going to the par-3 17th hole, Mickelson found the front bunker and blasted long when his ball, curiously, didn’t check up. NBC analyst Johnny Miller theorized that a small stone got between the ball and Phil’s wedge at contact. Phil had a slick, dicey downhill putt that he had to make. He gave it some speed to hold the line, a bold move that meant he was probably going to make either a 3 or a 5. He missed, the putt raced past the hole and he made 5. Suddenly, Goosen had a two-shot lead and it was over. The crowd went silent—well, by Noo Yawk standards.
1. Land of the Lost, 2006
This Open at Winged Foot featured a list of casualties. Jim Furyk bogeyed the 18th and missed a playoff by one shot; Padraig Harrington bogeyed the last three holes to miss a playoff by two; and Phil and Colin Montgomerie needed pars on the final hole to win but instead made double bogeys to lose to Geoff Ogilvy. Mickelson led for much of the last round, then had his infamous moment at 18, a dogleg-left par-4.
The day before, he’d cut a driver over the corner and had wedge to the green. So he tried it again and blocked it into the trees off a concession tent. Was hitting driver with a one-shot lead a mistake? No. But what he did next was. He could have pitched out to the fairway, wedged it on the green and had a putt for the win or two putts to join Ogilvy in a playoff. Instead, he tried a hero shot through a window he thought he saw in the trees. It hit branches, instead. He tried a second shot through the trees, this time getting it into a greenside bunker. He pitched out and did not get up and down, making a 6. It was a crushing disaster, prompting him to say later, “I am such an idiot.”
Of course, Montgomerie’s finish at the 18th was worse. He made 6 from the middle of the fairway with a 7-iron in his hands. But that’s another story. Phil’s disaster finish here almost made us forget about Jean Van de Velde at Carnoustie.