His mother was trying to get a message to him. His sister told her she'd try to contact his brother. They both thought the brother was the only one he would listen to.
But they were wrong.
He was way beyond all that.
By the time he hit the back nine, he was listening to himself.
And maybe God.
On Sunday, May 23, 2021, on a spit of land off South Carolina's coast, Philip Alfred Mickelson was making history. Only weeks short of his fifty-first birthday, he was winning the PGA Championship, one of golf's four majors. In so doing, he became the oldest golfer ever to win a major. Older than Jack Nicklaus, who pulled a rabbit out of the hat at Augusta in 1986 to win the Masters at 46. Older than Old Tom Morris, one of golf's legends, who won The Open (the British one to us unschooled Americans) in 1867 to became the oldest winner of that tournament, also at the age of 46. Older than even journeyman Julius Boros, who won the 1968 PGA Championship at the age of 48.
It would be Mickelson's sixth major, his second PGA Championship victory, and . . .
His umpteenth or so miracle.
Phil Mickelson is golf's everyman. In a sport that penalizes both daring and courage, counsels patience, and routinely frustrates out-of-shape middle aged codgers who wail away every weekend, he is one of us. Nicklaus, with 18 victories at majors, and Tiger Woods, with 15, are golf's perfectionists, logicians who always knew the percentage shot and never let the field catch them by acting otherwise.
Mickelson?
He never met a lead he did not threaten to give away.
Or a ball knee deep in fescue, surrounded by canopied trees, that he'd take a drop on.
Phil just always had to give it a go.
Hence, the miracles.
On Sunday, per usual, he toyed with the weak hearts of golf's middle kingdom, those of us north of fifty and beyond who were glued to our couches and television sets (we still call them that, smart or otherwise) waiting for something to go wrong.
And, of course, it did.
Even his mother was worried.
As he made the turn, that message she was trying to get to "Philip" (that's his proper name; you know, the one she used when he was a kid to let him know she really meant business) was simple. Just shoot par. No need to be spectacular. Or, as she put it, "activate [the] calves."
Good luck with that.
On the thirteenth hole, Phil let his approach shot leak into the meandering ocean inlet to the right of the green. And on the par 3, 238-yard fourteenth, his six iron couldn't climb the fairway front and promptly fell back twenty yards from the green. Two holes, two bogeys.
And just like that, a five shot lead was down to three.
A birdie at fifteen paired with a bogey at seventeen (on this 223-yard par three, his tee shot raced through the green to long back rough) reduced the lead to two when his pursuers -- Koepka and Oosthuizen -- each picked up a shot with their own birdies at fifteen.
So there was Phil.
Standing on the teebox at 18 with a two shot lead.
No one my age was anything less than very nervous.
In 2006 at the US Open at Winged Foot, Mickelson had a two stroke lead with three to play and stood on the 18th with a one shot lead, only needing par to win. (I was at the 18th green that day, waiting with the multitudes, ready to crown our king.) He then drove his tee shot into a corporate tent. (The multitudes groaned in unison.) He should have pitched out with his second, which would have allowed him to get to the green on his third with a putt for victory and two for a tie. But Phil, being Phil, had to go for the green, which basically required anywhere from a 30-to-40 degree slice around trees and a two hundred yard carry.
The shot hit the trees. (The multitudes groaned some more.)
And Mickelson double bogied his way into a three way tie for second place. (The multitudes cried.)
So, at Kiawah Island on the 18th in 2021, it could have been "deja vu all over again".
But it wasn't.
Why not?
Because the other thing Phil proved on Sunday is that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
The Phil playing these days is a plant-based shell of his former self. Gone are the diet soft drinks, extra helpings and extra pounds. He'll wax eloquent on the anti-oxidant effects of his special blend of coffee. Channeling Arnold Palmer, golf's first everyman, he still responds to the crowd with a ubiquitous thumbs-up. And there's no absence of the old magic. On five, just to remind us, he holed his bunker shot, and on 15, he outdrove the field. But he was otherwise zen-like as he moved from shot to shot, sun-glassed and studious as he and his caddie, brother Tim, planned the next offering.
From the left rough on 18, his second shot, a nine iron from 150 or so yards out, landed sixteen feet from the hole.
At which point his biggest problem was escaping the post-Covid crowd that could not contain itself.
In 1980, Caddie Shack used golf as a comedic window on life's theatre of the absurd. On Sunday at Kiawah Island, however, what was once thought to be absurd was turned into something real.
Age was just a number.
Maybe.
When it was all over, a reporter asked him to identify the biggest sacrifice he had made on his way to Sunday's rendezvous with destiny.
"Food," said Phil.
At home, those for whom age is not just a number heard that . . .
And popped another beer.
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