Phil Mickelson’s long walk into the sunset
Phil Mickelson finished at 13-over this week in North Carolina, well outside the cut line
Twenty-five years ago on the 18th green at Pinehurst No. 2, Phil Mickelson was one-half of one of the most beautiful, touching moments in golf history, surrounded by love and adoration. Friday afternoon on that exact spot, he was a man alone, tapping in for double-bogey, and the silence was almost absolute.
As Mickelson made the turn at 12-over for the tournament and walked to the first tee for his second nine of the day, a few “Let’s go, Phil!” and “Thumbs up, Phil!” calls were audible, though not nearly as loud or frequent as the cheers for Mickelson’s playing partner Rickie Fowler. Once Mickelson teed off and walked down the first fairway, you could count on two hands the number of fans accompanying him along the course.
When you step back and think about it, this is an astounding decline from even a few years ago. Mickelson was once the favorite of U.S. Open galleries. Everyone — from wine-sipping, sponsor-tent dwellers to beer-drinking, sunscreen-slathered rope liners — saw a little of themselves in Phil. He played the game they wanted to believe they could: Swing away and damn the consequences. The fact that Mickelson finished runner-up in six — six! — U.S. Opens wasn’t as important as the fact that he kept teeing it up the next year, ready to try again.
You can see one clear indication of Mickelson’s fall from grace in a subtle organizational maneuver. Back in the old days — that is, pre-LIV — Mickelson and Tiger Woods would always be on opposite sides of the draw. If Woods teed off in the morning, Mickelson would go in the afternoon, and vice versa.
Since both were major draws for television and the on-course gallery, dividing them up made sense. Now, Mickelson goes wherever he fits — this year, just two groups behind Woods. Mickelson teed off 22 minutes behind Woods — who, it probably doesn’t even need saying, still draws ocean currents’ worth of fans.
At this point, Mickelson’s descent from U.S. Open darling to afterthought isn’t exactly newsworthy or even shocking. He’s not the only star to fade from public view after joining LIV; Dustin Johnson also spiraled his way out of the tournament, and Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell aren’t anywhere near North Carolina. But Mickelson’s fate is somehow sadder and more profound. It’s damn near Shakespearean in the way he lit the match that started the fire that consumed his entire reputation built over a 30-plus-year career.
The simple, inescapable truth is that Mickelson did all this to himself, aligning with LIV Golf and its Saudi backers in an effort to wound the PGA Tour and reshape professional golf. The fact that he succeeded in doing exactly what he set out to do — giving players more of a voice on the business end and breaking the PGA Tour’s stranglehold on the game — doesn’t exactly endear him to the masses of golf fans. Some object to LIV Golf on moral or political grounds; others just want to see the best players in the world on the same course more than four times a year.
Phil Mickelson will miss the cut at the U.S. Open yet again this week in North Carolina. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Phil Mickelson will miss the cut at the U.S. Open again this week in North Carolina. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
The U.S. Open is the one major Mickelson hasn’t yet won, the one major that keeps him from a career grand slam. Barring some kind of miracle that would dwarf even his 2021 PGA Championship victory, he’ll end his career with that unfinished business. Thanks to that PGA win at Kiawah, he has one more year’s worth of exemption remaining.
That means next year’s U.S. Open at Oakmont in Pennsylvania could likely be Mickelson’s final one, and that will bring a whole new symphony of emotion and opinion. The galleries will find him then, if only to get one more look at Lefty, and wonder what might have been.
‘It may or may not be’ his last U.S. Open after missing cut
Tiger Woods finished at 7-over for the week in North Carolina, which was well outside the cut line
He had plenty of chances, but Tiger Woods’ latest major championship appearance has once again been cut short.
Woods posted a 3-over 73 on Friday at the U.S. Open, which dropped him to 7-over on the week. That was several shots outside the projected cut line at Pinehurst No. 2.
Woods has now either missed the cut or withdrawn from six of the last eight major championships. He hasn’t made the cut at the U.S. Open since 2019 — which was his only made cut at the event in the past decade. Though he’s battled seemingly countless injuries and off-course issues in recent years, and he looked better on Friday physically despite the hot afternoon in North Carolina, Woods just can’t seem to find a way to consistently play into the weekend anymore.
It’s a par for Tiger Woods at the last.
He will not make his 18th career U.S. Open cut.
“It was probably the highest score I could have possibly shot today,” Woods said. “I hit a lot of good shots that just didn’t go my way, or I hit good putts, and then I put myself in a couple bad spots with some bad lag putts.”
Woods’ round on Friday wasn’t horrible, especially early on, but he didn’t do nearly enough to make up for his start on Thursday. Woods carded a 4-over 74 while making six bogeys to open the tournament while frequently leaving himself out of position. At one point, he made five bogeys during a seven-hole stretch.
“It can go so far the other way here, the wrong way,” Woods said Thursday. “It’s just so hard to get back. This is a golf course that doesn’t give up a whole lot of birdies. It gives up a lot of bogeys and higher.”
After opening with a birdie in his first four holes, Woods just narrowly missed several great birdie looks down the stretch on Friday that, while they wouldn’t have vaulted him into contention, could have saved him. He pushed a birdie putt at the 13th, and then had a great birdie opportunity lip-out on him at the 15th — which left him looking incredibly defeated after taking a step toward the cup early.
From there, Woods kind of fell apart. His drive at the 16th landed well left in the trees, which sent him scrambling to recover. He missed a 12-footer for par there, too, which forced him to settle for his fourth bogey of the day. That dropped him to 7-over, which sealed the deal and ended Woods’ week.
Woods confirmed after his round that he’ll play in the British Open next month. After that, though, he’ll “come back whenever I come back.”
“In order to win a golf tournament, you have to make the cut. I can’t win the tournament from where I’m at, so it certainly is frustrating,” Woods said. “I thought I played well enough to be up there in contention. It just didn’t work out.
“As far as my last Open Championship or U.S. Open Championship, I don’t know what that is. It may or may not be.”
Other notables who missed the cut
Former top-ranked golfer Dustin Johnson struggled again. He finished at 9-over, thanks in part to a rough opening nine on Friday that included four bogeys and a triple.
Justin Thomas missed the cut, too. He opened the week with a 7-over 77, though he managed just seven pars in a first round that was all over the place. He finished at 11-over. While he finished T8 at the PGA Championship last month, that run was largely an outlier. Thomas has missed the cut at five of the last seven majors.
Phil Mickelson played a little better on Friday, but it still wasn’t enough to make up for his rough start to the week. Mickelson carded a 9-over 79 on Thursday, and then finished the week at 15-over. Only a handful of golfers finished worse than he did on the leaderboard. Mickelson has now missed the cut at four of the last five major championships. His lone finish came at the Masters earlier this year, though he went T43.
Other notable names that missed the cut include Max Homa, Viktor Hovland, Mackenzie Hughes, Ben An, Will Zalatoris, and Rickie Fowler.
The U.S. Open is now in the hands of a player who’s never teed it up on the weekend in a U.S. Open.
Ludvig Åberg stands atop the leaderboard at the U.S. Open, despite the fact that this is his first U.S. Open. Moreover, he had never even played in a major at all before this year. And yet here he is, taming — or at least surviving — a course that chewed up everyone from Scottie Scheffler to Brooks Koepka to Tiger Woods.
“A U.S. Open is supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be tricky, and it’s supposed to challenge any aspect of your game. And I feel like it’s really doing that,” Åberg said after his round. “But super fortunate with the way that things have turned out over the last couple days, and hopefully we’ll be able to keep it up.”
“The guy is like a machine, from what I saw,” Tony Finau said of Åberg, who he played with Thursday and Friday. “He hit a lot of fairways and a lot of greens. He sure makes it look pretty easy.”
Thursday night leaders, Patrick Cantlay and Rory McIlroy, struggled but are still very much within striking distance. Matthieu Pavon kept pace with Åberg, even holding a share of the lead for much of the afternoon. Bryson DeChambeau rode an up-and-down -1 round to end at -4. Thomas Detry and Finau also lurk amid the top seven, and only DeChambeau and McIlroy have major wins among them all.
A total of 14 players are within a shot of Åberg heading into the weekend — a traffic jam the USGA will be more than happy to maintain into the weekend.
The best moment of Friday afternoon happened nowhere near the top of the leaderboard. Francesco Molinari, who had missed the cut in eight of his last 10 majors, drained a hole-in-one on his final hole of the day to make the cut on the number:
So far, Pinehurst hasn’t really shown its teeth to the top of the leaderboard. But with scorching temperatures and clear skies in the forecast, the course might — might — get much tougher to manage.
“This golf course is going to play very challenging over the weekend, especially with the forecast that we have,” Cantlay said. “So I think being smart and being patient, it’s inevitable there’s going to be some mistakes made, but that’s just part of playing a U.S. Open.”
At this point, it’s debatable who’s in better shape to handle that kind of carnage — players who have been here before, or a player who doesn’t know what he should fear.
