Like Cameron Smith and several other LIV players, Phil Mickelson, one of the banished from the PGA Tour, will start his 2023 season at Saudi International on the Asian Tour.
Phil Mickelson, situation
The list of LIV players at the start of the first tournament of the Asian Tour season in early February in Jeddah continues to grow.
After Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, it is the turn of the six-time Major winner, Phil Mickelson, to confirm his presence. Recently released from the world’s top 200 for the first time in more than 30 years, the Californian left-hander, who at the end of 2021 called the Saudis “frightening assassins”, did not really manage to shine on the dissident circuit financed by the Fund.
Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia last year. Philip Alfred Mickelson (known as Lefty for his left-handed swing even though he is right-handed in everyday life) (San Diego, June 16, 1970) is an American golfer. He is one of the best players of his generation and has won six major tournaments: the Masters three times (in 2004, 2006 and 2010), the PGA Championship twice (in 2005 and 2021) and The Open Championship once in the edition of the 2013.
He is one of 13 players in golf history to have won at least 3 of 4 majors and has also finished as runners-up in the US Open Championship six times without ever managing to win this tournament. With his victory in his second PGA Championship on May 23, 2021, he became, at 50 years, 11 months and 8 days, the oldest player to win the record in one of the four major tournaments.
The exceptional performance on the Kiawah Island course – where he beat his compatriot Bruce Koepka and the South African Louis Oosthuizen, twenty years younger after an exciting three-way duel – came eight years after his last major win in the 2013.
Mickelson, who had gradually slipped beyond the hundredth position in the world rankings, has thus risen suddenly to number 32. During his almost thirty-year career he was for over 700 weeks in the top 10 in the world according to the Official World Golf Ranking, arriving on several occasions to occupy the second place, but never the first, in a period dominated by Tiger Woods, of which Michelson was one of the few rivals able to put him in trouble.
