It's no secret that LIV Golf does not receive Official World Golf Ranking points, as the OWGR board has issues with how the Saudi-backed circuit runs its events, the main gripe being the 54-hole format.
Even so, however, some who jumped ship from the PGA Tour have been able to maintain a decent position, mainly due to strong finishes in the four major championships.
For example, Bryson DeChambeau, who signed with LIV Golf just ahead of its first event in June 2022, is currently the 11th-ranked golfer in the world despite appearing in just six qualifying events over the past year.
Yes, he's a bit of an outlier, as those six starts included last year's win at the U.S. Open, a runner-up at the PGA Championship, and a pair of top-six finishes at The Masters.
But even without a bunch of top-10s in the majors, Tyrrell Hatton is still ranked 18th thanks to notching a couple of wins on the DP World Tour. Now, with not jumping to LIV until last year, he still has the luxury of having some PGA Tour events on his board, as the OWGR runs on a rolling two-year period.
But the same applies to Jon Rahm, who also didn't make the move until 2024, and he's fallen all the way down to No. 69.
So, there are several roads these guys can take to somewhat keep up with those on the PGA Tour.
But Phil Mickelson hasn't been able to find any of them. And as such, the six-time major champion has hit a low point regarding the world rankings.
Phil Mickelson now sits outside the top 1,000 in the Official World Golf Ranking
With his T2 finish at the 2023 Masters recently coming off the board, Mickelson's OWGR point total took a significant hit. And after missing the cut at Augusta last week, Lefty now sits at No. 1025 in the world, marking the lowest position of his career.
Mickelson's OWGR history as a whole is fascinating.
His first-ever ranking was No. 580, which came following his T19 finish at the Northern Telecom Tucson Open in January 1990 as a 19-year-old amateur. A year later, of course, Phil won that same tournament, becoming just the seventh golfer in history to win a PGA Tour event as an amateur, thus upping his ranking to No. 164.
On November 28, 1993, roughly a year and a half after turning professional, Mickelson cracked the top 50 for the first time, moving up to No. 47 following a runner-up finish at the Japan Golf Tour’s Casio World Open.
And for nearly 26 years, he remarkably never once fell out of the top 50, finally dropping to No. 51 on November 3, 2019, following a T28 finish at the WGC-HSBC Champions. He also spent more than 27 consecutive years in the top 100, falling to No. 101 a few months before his record-setting win at the 2021 PGA Championship at age 50.
Despite that remarkable run of consistency, however, Mickelson never reached No. 1 in the world rankings, obviously thanks mostly to Tiger Woods, who easily owns the all-time record for the most weeks spent in the top spot at 683.
He reached No. 2 on several occasions and spent more than five combined years in that slot, but could just never get to the top of the mountain.
When Phil made his final PGA Tour start at the 2022 Farmers Insurance Open, he was ranked 38th. But by the end of that year, he was out of the top 200.
He bounced back in a big way with that aforementioned T2 at the 2023 Masters, jumping from No. 425 to No. 72. But that's likely the highest we'll ever see his name on the board again.
Since then, Mickelson has missed the cut in five of eight major championship starts. And even in the three in which he did play the weekend, he never cracked the top 40, tying for 58th at the 2023 PGA Championship, tying for 43rd at the 2024 Masters, and tying for 60th at the 2024 Open Championship.
The irony of Phil hitting the lowest ranking of his career is that he's having his best LIV Golf season yet.
Coming into this year, he'd recorded only three top-10 finishes in his first three seasons on the circuit and had never cracked the top five. But in four events in 2025, the 54-year-old already has a pair of top-10s and has yet to finish outside the top 25.
This includes his first podium, as he took third in the individual event in Hong Kong while helping his Flyers GC squad to its first top-three finish in the team portion of the tournament as well. He then finished sixth in Miami the week before The Masters and currently sits in 12th in the season-long standings.
Now, there is one silver lining for Mickelson in this scenario. Even at No. 1025 in the world, he's still 282 spots ahead of Tiger, who's fallen to No. 1307 and will continue to drop as he recovers from the ruptured Achilles that kept him out of The Masters and will likely keep him out of every major championship this season.
So, at least Phil has that going for him.