‘One of the greatest shots I’ve ever seen’: Phil Mickelson can still make a golf ball talk

Phil Mickelson remains a magician with a golf club in his hands.

The six-time major championship winner, who will turn 55 next week, treated a disbelieving gallery to perhaps the most improbable shot of his career - which is saying something for one of the most creative players in history - during Sunday’s weather-delayed final round of LIV Golf Virginia at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.

Mickelson’s birdie from the bunker at No. 17 with his back to the flagstick overshadowed Joaquín Niemann outlasting a charge from a group of major champions to win the event in Gainesville, Virginia. Even as Niemann celebrated onstage, the chatter from patrons around the property remained squarely on Mickelson’s wizardry.

“So that was one of my better ones,” said Mickelson, who added a birdie at No. 18 for a 6-under 65 and a 54-hole total of 13-under 200, two shots off the pace. “Even I was a bit surprised.”

The moment unfolded after Mickelson landed his approach at the par-4 17th in a bunker guarding the left front of the green. Facing an uphill lie, Mickelson glanced at the target, addressed the ball for the last time with his right side pointed at the green and proceeded into his backswing gripping his sand wedge.

At contact, the ball sailed high and travelled practically behind Mickelson’s head, landing within two feet of the pin and trickling into the cup, triggering a wild celebration from his legion of fans who had endured miserable conditions to track Mickelson’s round to completion.

“Man, he created some Phil magic there,” said Bryson DeChambeau, playing in the threesome with Mickelson and finishing tied for fourth at 13 under. “You could just see his wheels turning, and then he hit the shot, and I got the perfect angle of it. … I go, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s going to make it,’ and it went in the hole, and I was like, ‘That’s got to be one of the greatest shots I’ve ever seen in my entire life.’ ”

The dazzling shot was the highlight of LIV Golf’s second stop in three years in the shadow of the nation’s capital, where the tour’s future has been oft debated. In February, Tiger Woods joined PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and player director Adam Scott in a White House meeting with President Donald Trump and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund that bankrolls LIV Golf, for negotiations to reunify the fractured sport.

The feud did not appear to keep golf enthusiasts away this week from Robert Trent Jones. Galleries six rows deep lined the fairways and surrounded the greens.

Even with intermittent rain early in the final round, fans showed up in hearty numbers to catch a heated stretch run that featured 36-hole leader Anirban Lahiri attempting to fend off charges from, among others, Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters champion; Mickelson, a six-time major champion; and DeChambeau, the reigning US Open champion.

However Niemann put on a clinic with his iron play and putting down the stretch to win his fourth LIV event of the season. But the Mickelson miracle no doubt will continue to resonate as a topic of conversation in the coming days, when he plays in what he indicated likely would be his final US Open, the only major tournament he has not won.

Washington Post