AUGUSTA, Ga. — As Phil Mickelson prepared to begin his second round at the Masters, a patron was heard to say, “He’s just a shadow of himself.”
The reference was to Mickelson’s weight loss, an impressive 25 pounds, but the same might be said of his image and perhaps even his golf game, although he may have boosted both Friday.
Mickelson carded a 3-under-par 69 and moved to the brink of the Masters leaderboard at 4 under par, although he is eight shots behind leader Brooks Koepka. It is the best golf Mickelson has played since he won the 2021 PGA Championship a month shy of his 51st birthday.
That was a remarkable story, in which he became the oldest golfer ever to win a major championship. Since then, the only headlines Mickelson created have been outside the ropes.
He was the lead domino in the defection of dozens of PGA and European tour players to LIV Golf, a rival tour backed by Saudi Arabia influencers.
Mickelson, arguably the sport’s second-biggest draw behind Tiger Woods, lost much of his fan support as he left the PGA Tour.
Ignoring the Saudi record on human rights, Mickelson said of the PGA, “They’ve been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage.”
Mickelson later backed down on those comments, made in February 2022, and was humbled to the point that he skipped last year’s Masters to take “time away to prioritize the ones I love most and work on being the man I want to be.” He hadn’t missed a Masters since 1992.
He has worked hard on his game and his conditioning, but before this week the results didn’t show. Mickelson finished in the back half of the field in all three LIV events this year.
Returning to Augusta National, where he is one of only…
Read the full article here