It was Rejuvenation Sunday last weekend on the three major American golf tours. The world’s top men linksters were south of the border competing in the World Golf Championships’ Mexico Championship. The over-50 golfers on the Champions Tour teed it up in the Cologuard Classic in Tucson. The women of the LPGA Tour were on the other side of the world playing in the big-money HSBC Women’s World Championships in Singapore.
Phil Mickelson prevailed in overtime in Mexico, beating Justin Thomas in a one-hole sudden-death playoff. Steve Stricker captured his first senior tour event with his victory in Tucson. Meanwhile, Michelle Wie sunk a bomb putt from off the green on the final hole to win the HSBC. It was Stricker’s first win since the 2012 Tournament of Champions on the PGA Tour. The last time Mickelson found the winner’s circle was way back in 2013 at the British Open. Wie’s most recent victory was in 2014 when she captured the U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst. It was inevitable that Stricker would win on the Champions Tour once he fulfilled his obligation as the captain of the winning Presidents Cup team last autumn. Wie is still very young even though she has been part of the public consciousness since 2002 when she was a 12-year-old. Mickelson’s triumph was the most surprising as he is currently 47 years old and is trying to survive on the PGA Tour against the likes of Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm, all of whom are young enough to be one of Phil’s sons.
Mickelson’s victory at the WGC Mexico was impressive not only because he hadn’t won in close to five years, not only because he was playing a super tight course that doesn’t necessarily set up for his style of play, but mainly because professional golfers pushing age 50 don’t have a great deal of success at this stage in their careers. Sam Snead won after age 50 and more recently Davis Love III took home a win on the PGA Tour as a 50-year-old. However, those accomplishments are few and far between. While some of Mickelson’s contemporaries such as Vijay Singh and Ernie Els are still active on the PGA Tour, a top-25 finish is considered a big deal for them. It’s not so much that 47-year-old golfers have a blatant drop-off in their ability level, but the real issue is that they aren’t capable of putting in the long hours of practice time to work on pounding golf balls for hours on end and follow that up with quality time spent on their short game and putting. Less practice time, less top level play.
Phil’s win in Mexico is his 43rd victory on the PGA Tour and puts him ninth on the career wins list. The eight golfers ahead of him can easily be identified by just their first names and they include Sam, Tiger, Jack, Ben, Arnold, Byron, Billy and Walter. Mickelson is now two career wins out of eighth place as Walter Hagen owns 45 titles. Of course, at his after-overtime press conference on Sunday evening, Phil said he believed he could ultimately get to 50 wins. I’m not sure of that possibility, but Mickelson has been playing well of late as evidenced by four straight finishes in the top six. He played four years of college golf, didn’t play a professional schedule as a teenager, and seems to have a lot of life left in his full swing.
Michelle Wie is just 28 years old and yet we’ve watched her on golf’s center stage for the past 16 years. Early on I felt bad for the lifestyle she was thrust into, playing in events against men and experienced women pros. She won the U.S. Public Links as a teenager, but more often than not she was merely a sideshow. She would have been far better off competing in junior tournaments with other girls rather than trying to make the cut in the PGA Tour’s Hawaiian Open.
Yet there’s a personal resilience to Michelle Wie regardless of how much she was thrust into the limelight by her overly aggressive father. In a quest for normalcy, Wie attended Stanford University and was a regular student, playing professional golf in her free time and summers while avoiding college golf. Since her school days, she has had an up-and-down career as a pro although she is well respected by her peers, has played on five Solheim Cup teams, and has a major win on her resume. She has had injury issues in the past to go along with a balky putter.
Michelle has had a longtime affiliation with golf guru David Ledbetter. Yet she is also a chronic tinkerer, constantly working on adjustments to her swing and to her putting stroke. A most intriguing story regarding her win last Sunday is that she used three different putting grips during the course of her round. Regardless of her eccentricities, the LPGA Tour is a much more popular place when Michelle Wie finds the winner’s circle. She moves the needle.
Steve Stricker is one of the most normal people in the world of professional golf. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, Stricker has always appreciated the Midwest lifestyle, even when the snow drifts of December affect his practice plans. Some years back, Stricker and fellow Wisconsinite Jerry Kelly brought a single-wide mobile home to their local driving range, had it outfitted with fake grass, and pounded range balls into the snow-covered range through open doors. Stricker obviously has enough money to own a winter home in Florida or Hawaii, but he wanted his kids to be raised in a Midwestern environment similar to what he and his wife experienced as children. As an interesting sidebar, the top two leading money winners on the Champions Tour at this moment are Jerry Kelly with $437,683 in earnings and Stricker with $353,560. Practicing in a parka in December in Madison could be the answer.
A two-time Comeback Player of the Year on the PGA Tour, Stricker was the adult in the club room while paired with Tiger Woods at the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup. A number of top golfers had a hard time and a general lack of success in team events playing with Tiger, yet Stricker had the right demeanor and the correct mentality to deal with the Woods partnership.
In the world of golf, you never really know when your most recent win will turn out to be the final victory of your career. The nature of the game is that one reaches a magic moment when you fall off the proverbial cliff and never find the winner’s circle again. Yet on the same Sunday on three different major tours, Phil Mickelson, Michelle Wie and Steve Stricker returned to victory lane after what seemed like an awful long time. Stricker will probably win again on the Champions Tour and his game is still solid enough as evidenced by his entry into this week’s PGA Tour event at Valspar. Because of her age, Michelle Wie will also win again on the LPGA circuit. For Phil, this could very well be the last moment of glory of a Hall of Fame career. All three will have great memories of that first Sunday in March in 2018.
