Phil Mickelson: Can Lefty Complete the Career Grand Slam in 2016?
By Matt Cochran
The clock is ticking for Phil Mickelson, but he probably has the stuff to win the US Open and complete his Grand Slam.
While most of the media was concerned about the future of Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth’s incredible play in 2015, Phil Mickelson’s down year sort of flew under the radar.
Just like Tiger, Lefty is seeing his career come to a close as he has only a few more years to win the U.S. Open and complete his career Grand Slam. Luckily, it’s his game that he needs to work on rather than trying to recover from serious injury.
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At the age of 45, time is dwindling for the five-time major champion. He’s reached a time in his career where he only gets excited for certain tournaments on the PGA TOUR calendar. Other events it seems like the energy and emotion is there, which makes it harder to win at an elite level.
He does, however, still look forward to America’s major as that’s the one trophy missing from his prestigious collection. Fortunately for Lefty, he can still win the damn thing against all odds.
If Mickelson can get his game to peak in the middle of June, then he has a legitimate chance of winning, but we haven’t seen him peak since he won the Scottish Open and Open Championship in 2013.
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Phil has dropped all the way to No. 36 in the Official World Golf Ranking, the lowest he’s seen since 1993. He hasn’t won an event since that British Open in 2013 and only has three top-10 finishes since then. Those kinds of numbers aren’t going to win you any majors.
Lefty can still bomb the ball and create magic with his wedges, but some would attribute his drop in the rankings due to the flatstick. What used to be his bread and butter is simply no longer there. He dropped to 50th in strokes gained putting on the PGA TOUR in 2014 and T-41 last year.
In some more surprising news, Phil Mickelson cut ties with his long time swing coach Butch Harmon in 2015 and hired Andrew Getson to lead the way. It’s easy to criticize Mickelson for firing a guy he’s had so success with, but sometimes changes are needed. This shows that he still cares and has the desire to improve in his remaining years.
So can Lefty win the U.S. Open in 2016 to complete the career Grand Slam? Sure he can. When he won the Open Championship in 2013, he caught everyone by surprise. No one on Sunday morning thought they’d be seeing Mickelson holding the Claret Jug at the end of the day.
Not only that, but no golfer in the history of the Open had won a tournament the week before and gone on to win the British Open. Lefty did so with the Scottish Open.
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So yes, Phil Mickelson can win the U.S. Open in 2016, but it’s not going to be an easy task. He’s going to have to dig deep for some vintage Mickelson magic and hope that this Getson character can find the solution to a problem that Butch Harmon couldn’t figure out.