Phil Mickelson: Why he’s still chasing distance

Phil Mickelson is extremely focused on improving his game and extending his distance to maintain his competitive edge.

Some people think that Bryson DeChambeau is the mad-scientist of the PGA Tour, but when you get down to it, there’s another PGA Tour pro who is also focused on the technical aspects of the sport. That’s Phil Mickelson.

Mickelson turns 50 in June, and while he’s undecided which Tour he will play after that big birthday, he does know that he can’t be competitive on the PGA Tour without the ability to hit the ball a long way. Distance translates backward to several other factors, but mainly clubhead speed and the appropriate ball for the driver being used.

“There is a point, in my opinion, of diminishing return at about 182 mile an hour ball speed, which is going to equate to about 122 mile an hour clubhead speed,” he said to media at the AT&T National Pro-Am .

More from Phil Mickelson

• Can Rory McIlroy Win 50 Titles in His Career?
• LIV: Not Golf But Louder — Golf Made More Confusing
• Justin Thomas The New Fan Favorite Sans Phil Mickelson?
• Davis Love III Dishes on Workings of PGA Tour Media Rights
• Rory McIlroy hits back at Phil over controversial LIV comments

Interestingly, swinging faster than 122 miles per hour, for him, doesn’t help.

“You start going faster than that, you start losing a little bit of control, and it almost has a diminishing return and that’s why, you’ll find all the top guys right in that area,” he added.

When he started this most recent distance effort, a couple of years ago, he said he only had a ball speed of 170 miles per hour. That didn’t equate to enough distance.

“It took me probably a year before I overnight had five, six miles an hour more clubhead speed. You know, I was struggling to swing 115,” he said. “Now it’s easily over 120. If I need to get to 122, 123, I can at will.”

He used strength training and some swing aids to get him there, including something called Super Speed Golf and Speed Sticks.

Mickelson has studied his numbers with the driver and says that in 1993-1994, he was 25th in driving distance with an average of 269 yards.  He said in 2003, he was still 25th with an average of 299 yards.

“I’m averaging just over 300, I don’t know, 303, 307, something like that,” he said about his current stats. “That is equating to just training and swinging the club faster. I’ve always been right around 25th in distance, give or take, and I’m back to that area.”

There were other factors that allowed him to hit farther, too. The modern golf ball, which is solid core versus the wound ball had a lot to do with it in the early 2000s, he said.

“The longer guys with more speed, the stronger guys, would swing that wound ball and it would just over spin. It would spin 34-, 3,500 RPM,” he explained, adding that the ball then had a lot of drag due to the spin.

Drag slows things down, like a ball flying through the air, which is not what you want.  The solid core balls, he noted, were able to reduce the spin, and they increased the launch.

If you want to see some technospeak, try this excerpt from a Titleist patent.

"“The same core can be encased within a plurality of intermediate layers having either increasing hardness or decreasing hardness to provide selective golf balls for either low swing speed players or advanced players.”"

Or in real words, they changed the inside layers of the ball to different substances that, in theory, benefit high speed swingers of the golf club in one instance and low speed swing swingers of the club in another.

But back to Mickelson’s mad scientist material.

“When we (he means golf manufacturers) created that solid core technology, we were able to reduce the spin and increase the launch and also perimeter weight the ball, so that made a big difference too because it wasn’t curving as much, and that allowed guys to hit it the same speed off the face, but get rid of 12- to 1,500 RPM’s of spin and reduce the drag and get the ball to fly right through the air,” he said.

Basically, the ball manufacturers make the outside layer of the ball from of a material that is denser than the inside ones. Think of a small scoop of lead compared to a same-sized scoop of marshmallow. If both are the same size scoop, the lead one is going to be heavier. You know that. It just makes sense based on your experience with lead and marshmallows.

So, back to the golf ball, the outer (lead) layer is denser, heavier, than the inside (marshmallow) layer, and that affects ball flight. It’s somebody’s physics experiment and has to have a boatload of math.  We’ll trust them on that!

Now that he’s gained the distance he needed, Mickelson has to massage other areas of his game.

“Maybe my iron play hasn’t been as great, my putting hasn’t been as great, maybe my accuracy could be better. Well, that’s not maybe, that could be,” he added and said he was addressing those.

“But if I didn’t have the speed to start with, it wouldn’t even give me a fair chance.”

He means a fair chance against guys like Brooks Koepka or Rory McIlroy or Dustin Johnson. And while length isn’t everything, and while guys like Zach Johnson and Jim Furyk, who are shorter hitters, have been prolific winners over their careers, it does make it easier.

“You can win on the PGA Tour not hitting the ball long. You can out-putt, you can out-strike, you can have great weeks and win golf tournaments without being the longest guy or without overpowering a golf course, but you cannot dominate the sport without speed,” he noted. “You might be able to do it for a year or two, but you can’t out-perform everyone consistently without clubhead speed.”

Clubhead speed allows golfers, like Mickelson, to put more spin on the ball when they want to. It allows them to hit longer. It also allows them to hit the ball high, which means they can on the green more softly.

“It allows you to do more with a golf ball than if you don’t have speed, and the best players in the world are going to have to have speed,” he concluded.

Mickelson has played three events since January 1. His PGA Tour stats for the entire 2020 season, which started in October, have him at a driving average of 305 yards which is 40th place.  He needs to get to an average of 309 yards to be 25th, which he said is his average for his career.