Phil Mickelson relives his youth at the PGA Championship

Phil Mickelson cavorted around Kiawah Island this week as if he had stepped out of a decade-long time warp. Statistically, Mickelson put up performance numbers he used to generate four or five times a season, but hadn’t even approached in three solid years.

First and foremost, Mickelson won because of his iron play. He was a dominant figure with approach shots Thursday, Friday and Saturday, averaging about a two and three-quarters stroke advantage over the field in that skill alone.

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On Sunday, a survival day, Mickelson’s iron play was modestly substandard, amounting to -0.125 strokes worse than the field average. But in the face of equally ordinary play by all of his challengers, that was not enough to cost him the lead he had already built up.

He finished fifth in iron play, often the most decisive skill in a PGA Tournament. But he decisively beat the four guys ahead of him – Martin Laird, Will Zalatoris, Charley Hoffman and Paul Casey – in all other aspects of the game, paving his way to his victory.

For the week he also finished 29th in Strokes Gained Off The Tee, 18th in Strokes Gained Around the green and 37th in Strokes Gained Putting. That added up to pack leadership in both Strokes Gained Tee to Green and Strokes Gained overall.

It also left many wondering what happened to the poor sap who’d been impersonating Mickelson during PGA Tour events the last two seasons. Phil entered the tournament ranked 193rd for the season in SG Off The Tee, 131st in SG Approach, 158th in SG Around The Green and 122nd in SG Putting. Last year he ranked 118th, 64th, 13th and 124th respectively in those four categories.

To find a week when Phil played the way he did this week at the PGA, it is necessary to go back 48 pages into the Mickelson playbook. That would be the 2019 ATT Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, when Phil bested the field by an average of 3.64 Strokes Gained per round. Not coincidentally, that was also his most recent victory before this one.

Next. 2021 PGA Championship: Big Names Miss Cut at Kiawah Island. dark

There was a day, of course, when Phil did this sort of thing routinely. Prior to 2009 – when Phil was a mid-30s whippersnapper – he routinely averaged between 1.50 and 2.00 Strokes Gained for entire seasons, which is Tiger level. Phil hasn’t seen the productive side of +1.0 Strokes Gained since the 2017 season; he was negative for the first time in his career in 2019, only fractionally above neutral in 2020 and – until this week at least – appeared doomed to even more negative territory this season.

How does one explain such a sudden and unpredictable reversal of form by a seemingly over-the-hill player? Only be recognizing that golf is an unpredictable game. This weekend Phil Mickelson demonstrated the extent of that unpredictability.

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