AVIDGOLFER

When Phil Mickelson Lost His Ever Lovin’ Mind

Rick Arnett /

Phil Mickelson is one of golf’s great figures. He has five majors and 43 PGA Tour events. As good as some of the names were atop the U.S. Open leaderboard, none had the cache or fan following of Lefty.

Mickelson also likes to make public statements on subjects he believes needs to be addressed (outing Tom Watson’s failed Ryder Cup captaincy in 2014 comes to mind–which ultimately did cause the PGA of America to start a task force to address the American Team’s woes).

So, as his chances to fulfill a Career Slam sank quickly down the leaderboard, Mickelson did something truly strange and literally shocking.

Thus, the court of public opinion reacted harshly and quickly. Most wanted him to be DQ’d–including a good bunch of Tour pros.

Anyway, if anyone believes Mickelson had the wherewithal to know the rules as he’s running down the hill…I’ll take the skeptic’s angle as his “intelligent” excuse didn’t pass the sniff test. For as Phil stood near the 18th green , the standard bearer offered this nugget…“He was talking to the scoring official and said, ‘Whatever I get, I get. Just tell me what it is,'” said Connor Buff, the standard bearer on the course. 

In addition, better rules-knowing folks than I offered this response to the self-proclaimed smartest golfer on the planet.

More Lefty.

“Look, I don’t mean disrespect to anybody,” Phil said. “I know it’s a two-shot penalty. At that time, I just didn’t feel like going back and forth and hitting the shot over. I took the two-shot penalty and moved on. It’s my understanding of the rules. I’ve had multiple times when I’ve wanted to do that. I just finally did.”

 

Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger offers a good reasonable take.

As for the penalty — two shots — many commentators, amateur and professional, think he should have been disqualified. The opinion of this bureau is that the USGA got it right. To be DQ’ed, of course, is golf’s ultimate penalty. The act has to be egregious. You step on your opponent’s ball. You drop a ball down your pant leg. You fudge your card. You do something that steals, in some fashion, from others. All Mickelson did with his ridiculous act was hurt himself. He made a 10 when he likely, if he had just let the ball come to rest, would have made an 8. Viewed through that prism, he hurt only himself.

“Breaks rules spoken and unspoken; brazenly lies about what happened even though we all saw what happened with our own eyes, which wasn’t a player taking advantage of a rule but a guy intent on making a mockery of the competition; doubles down on his lie in media interview afterwards, telling anyone offended to ‘toughen up,’ with the implication that his critics are snowflakes. Leaves in his wake a broken governing institution, a divided sport, and a damaged sporting ethos. Sound familiar?”

Phil will learn from this. The reputation he enjoys is his off-the-course payday. There’s too much at stake here and there’s no way Mickelson’s action on 13, and his explanation of it, is going to get anything like Donald Trump’s 42% approval rating.

CBSsports.com’s Kyle Porter has a good take as well.

The other problem here is with the actual rule book. I know it’s shocking that the convoluted rules of golf both (a) Don’t cover this specific instance, and (b) Allow linguistic gymnastics to acquit one of the 10 best players of all time. But that’s where we’re at. Of course, it wouldn’t be a U.S. Open if we all didn’t spend at least half of one day parsing through all 9,000 pages of the rule book. I understand that you can’t legislate every situation, but that’s exactly what makes this entire thing more absurd. The USGA exists to sort out situations like this one. They keep making the wrong choices.

I feel like a curmudgeon here. I understand why people are triggered by the stuffiness of golf and enjoy Mickelson having a little fun with all of this, even if it was like watching a crazy uncle whip roman candles around a gaggle of nieces and nephews on July 4th. Ha-ha-ha … ha-ha-ha … wait, is this a good idea? Mickelson’s zaniness covers over a multitude of sins. This is what he does, who he is.

“Imagine if that had been Patrick Reed,” one media member quipped to me.

Mickelson’s putt, on one hand, is not as big of a deal as everyone is making it. It was a moment of madness in a tournament that deals specifically in engendering moments of madness. In that sense, it was perfect. It was peak Phil … and maybe even peak USGA. I still can’t believe it happened. It defined the tournament and maybe the entire week.

But while that truth holds, another must also be considered. Mickelson should have been disqualified. He knows it. We know it. Other players know it. The USGA knows it.

Ultimately, Phil will survive the brain fart. Yes, the fiasco will follow him probably forever (definitely every U.S. Open broadcast) but he–like us–is remarkably imperfect. We’ll surely cast our votes on what coulda, shoulda been done. And like Tiger’s infamous drop at the 2013 Masters, it will be a mere historical side note replayed countless times when the situation is opportune.

Let’s laugh, deal with it and move on to the next future calamity.

 

Beef Johnston Phil Mickelson Shinnecock Hills U.S. Open USGA