Six players could make history at this year’s British Open

Phil Mickelson

Mickelson probably has more to lose at Portrush than any other player in the field.

Considering only the major events, 2019 has not been a good year for Phil. His tie for 18th at the Masters is his best showing, followed by ties for 71st and 52nd at the PGA and U.S. Open. In combination, those performances have cost Mickelson’s career score 1.30 points worth of standard deviation.

That means that having started the year ranked 35th on the career list, he enters the British Open ranked 36th and with the very real prospect of falling further.

Given the natural decline that follows aging, it would be asking a lot of Mickelson to reverse that backward trend and use the British Open to springboard back up the career list. But it is perhaps not too much for him to hope for a strong showing this week that would erase the impact of what to this point has been a disappointing 2019 major season.

A top 10 finish would probably provide the approximately -1.25 standard deviation margin he would need to do that. If he gets it, Mickelson could expect to finish 2019 in essentially the same mid-30s spot on the career list that he began it.

But there also be dragons looming for the veteran American star. Mickelson has missed the cut in his last two starts and three of his last four. A missed cut generally imposes a penalty of about 3.5 standard deviation points on a player’s career record. If Phil were to depart Friday, 2019 could become a disastrous season for his career standing, dropping as many as 10 spots into the low 40s.

In fact, the scenario is not out of the question that if McIlroy and/or Day were to do well and Mickelson was to miss the cut, the two younger stars could swap places with the veteran on the career ranking.