Phil’s Focus Overcomes Age, Doubt and Golf History at PGA

I don’t know about you, but I had a hard time watching the final round of the PGA Championship because I was nervous. I was nervous for Phil Mickelson because it was such a mountain he was trying to climb. If he had lost, it would have been like Charlie Brown when Lucy takes the football away just as he kicks at it. Painfully heartbreaking.

Face it. Of all the golfers in the field, except for the PGA of America pros, he was the least expected to make the cut and totally least expected to win. Mickelson, after all, was playing on a past champion exemption, not on his world ranking and not for winning a tournament in the last year. His last victories were in PGA Tour Champions events. And he was staring down his 51st birthday in less than a month.

Nevertheless, he overcame doubt, age and a passel of younger players to win his sixth major championship at age 50, something which has never been done in the history of golf. Not ever.

“I believed for a long time that I could play at this level again. I didn’t see why I couldn’t, but I wasn’t executing the way I believed I could,” he said to media after his victory.

“I’ve had a few breakthroughs on being able to stay more present, be able to stay more focused,” he noted.

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All week, and in fact, earlier this year and even last year, he had talked about having a hard time focusing. After his victory he talked more about trying to quiet his mind.

For Mickelson, who is a high energy guy, who sees everything that’s going on around him, that has to be hard. In fact, for most people, even those who are not that high energy, it’s hard. We all chase the next shiny object. It’s hard to let it go and focus on what you are supposed to be doing to the exclusion of everything else. He explained what he had to do to achieve it.

“I’ve tried to stay more in the present and at the shot at hand and not jump ahead and race. I’ve tried to shut my mind to a lot of stuff going around,” he explained.

He said he wasn’t watching TV. He was also staying off his phone. You know, Twitter, Instagram, email, Phil’s Phireside Chats. Shutting those down kept his mind from taking off to other destinations. He found his mind became calmer.

“I don’t want to get all spiritual but that’s kind of been the biggest thing for me,” he said about his mind games.

Now the other piece of the puzzle, and this is hard to fathom, is that Mickelson wanted a little more help with his swing. For that, he turned to Andrew Getson, who had played in Asia and on the Korn Ferry Tour before becoming a teacher at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, where Mickelson lived for a while.

“He’s really helped me get my ball-striking back,” Mickelson said of Getson. “He has helped get my swing on plane from parallel to the ground.”

Mickelson said Getson simplified rather than complicated things and told him to make committed swings.

But Getson wasn’t the only person who got credit for an assist. Tim Mickelson has also been a rock as a brother and as a caddie.

The example Phil gave was that he had been hitting the ball really well the first three days, and that his warmups, including Sunday were very good. But after six holes Sunday, his brother Tim pulled him aside and told him if he was going to win he would have to start making committed swings.

He realized he hadn’t been doing that. He realized it’s the kind of thing a brother can say to you that maybe somebody else can’t.

That led to his good drive on the 7th, he said.

The last person he thanked, though not last in his mind ever, was his wife, Amy, who he has absolutely adored since college.

Mickelson is always very enthusiastic about improvements as well as success, and who wouldn’t be after what he has just achieved. He thinks if he can stay sharp mentally, he’ll be able to play well at Torrey Pines, a course he knows well and where he has won three times, although all were before the 2008 U.S. Open remodel. He intends to spend plenty of time on the poa annua greens in preparation.

With his victory, Mickelson gets five years of exemptions to the U.S. Open as well as the other three majors. However, he doesn’t need an exemption to the other three because he is already exempt as a past champion.

“This could very well be my last really good opportunity, although I get five more, but really good opportunity to win a U.S. Open, so I’m going to put everything I have into it,” he added.

Everything, from Phil Mickelson, turns out to be quite a lot.

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