A lot has been said about Phil Mickelson recently, not much of it complimentary in the wake of his reported comments regarding his involvement with the Saudi Golf Tour. Which is not exactly new.
To my mind, Phil has always been underappreciated outside of the United States. I’m not sure the rest of the world fully ‘gets’ how good a player he has been over the years, clearly the second-best American player of his generation behind Tiger Woods.
Indeed, you had to be there in the States when he was playing to really know how talented he was and is. He had a massive impact in his home country and is a huge star. It certainly blew me away the way Phil would play what some might call ‘crazy golf.’ He has used weird clubs, graphite-shafted irons and was always up for trying the unlikeliest shot. In that respect, he was, in some ways, the ‘class clown’ on Tour.
Still, it wasn’t until I played with him that I
